Firewire Drives...Fans or No Fans?

[MattiMattMatt]

FWIW, I have had a bunch of problems with OWC recently -- one example: they sent me a drive I never ordered, out of the blue, then asked for a restocking fee to take it back. They insisted it was my fault until I was able to track down the person at OWC who made the actual mistake.

There have been a number of other similar, time-consuming hassles, YMMV.

-MattiMattMatt

[Philthy]

I've been using OWC 60 GB mercury elites extensively- at least one per movie score, plus three of my own at home that I recycle for whatever projects are active. My oldest drive is over a year old and has performed flawlessly. I've been through 25 or 30 of this model from OWC on a less-stressed basis and have yet to experience any problems.

On the other hand, my cheetah SCSI kept corrupting data and freezing the computer- so I disconnected it...

[tomhartman]

Originally posted by Philthy:
I've been using OWC 60 GB mercury elites extensively- at least one per movie score, plus three of my own at home that I recycle for whatever projects are active. My oldest drive is over a year old and has performed flawlessly. I've been through 25 or 30 of this model from OWC on a less-stressed basis and have yet to experience any problems.

On the other hand, my cheetah SCSI kept corrupting data and freezing the computer- so I disconnected it...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Phil, what kind of track count are you getting on those 60gs? Are you on a TDM system?

[Lee Blaske]

Phil,

If you've used 30 drives, you're obviously spreading out the wear and tear. OTOH, if you're going through that many drives, why don't you get a hot-swap Firewire enclosure? Trays are a lot cheaper than OWC cases.

Tom,

Here's an example:

WD1200JB (from newegg.com) $141 and a #3630 Granite Digital FireVue for $139.00 = $280 (installing the drive is a snap)

OWC case with a WD1200JB is $267.99

So, the difference is $12. You might, however, want to go with a fancier GD case, maybe the built-in LCD diagnostics or hot-swap.

Both cases, BTW, come with a Firewire cable. There doesn't seem to be much info on the specific cable included on the OWC site. The GD cable is quite impressive.

I don't think OWC is making a bad product (I might be buying some soon for my portable rig). It's just a different design goal and philosophy optimized for a different purpose.

BTW, it might be superstition, but I'd avoid IBM at the moment. IBM is getting out of the drive making business, and transferring the manufacturing over to Hitachi. Maybe things will go smoothly, but sometimes, weird things happen when new lines are started up. The disastrous IBM 75GXP debacle happened when production was started up in Hungary.

Lee Blaske