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G-Tech, Fantom or OWC?

B

buxtone17

macrumors regular
Original poster
I'm looking at getting a pair of 500gb external hard drives to back up photos. I'm running a PowerBook G4 with a 1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. Old, I know, but I don't have the cash for a new one.

Anyways, I've narrowed my search down to three HDs but I wanted to get some opinions before I buy:

-G-Technology G-Drive Q

-Fantom G-force Quad

-OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro

Your thoughts?
 
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They're all good picks. My Fantom triple interface runs as well as the day I bought it and is fairly speedy and well-designed, to boot. Only problem with it is sound. Its fan (always on) is louder than my mac pro.
 
TheStrudel said:
They're all good picks. My Fantom triple interface runs as well as the day I bought it and is fairly speedy and well-designed, to boot. Only problem with it is sound. Its fan (always on) is louder than my mac pro.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that.

Any suggestions for other products would be much appreciated as well.
 
I buy Fantom only, never a problem. Don't buy a drive with a fan...too noisy. Shop around for price. I just bought a 1 TB Fantom Green drive for $124 (eSATA & USB), $99 after rebate (buy.com...NewEgg has it for $129), so that price at Amazon for only 500 gb is WAY too high.
 
GregE said:
How about this one with 2 1TB drives? Then you would have it in a RAID 1 so if a drive failed, you would still be good. You could format it into 2 500GB drives if you wanted.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax
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I need to research RAID 1 more I suppose.

I know all about disk failure, but if something else goes wrong with a RAID drive, would the disks be safe? Is it possible that a power issue on a RAID drive could knock out both disks?

Either way, I think I feel more comfortable with separate disks in separate enclosures...
 
Also, I know from personal experience that most raid drives sound like jet engines due to fan noise. Again, buy a fanless aluminum enclosure drive like the fantom you referenced...just don't get scammed on the price.
 
I just got the owc dual drive enclosure. Fan is rather loud. Luckily they sent
me the wrong one so I can exchange for free. Going to go with a single enclosure that doesn't have a fan. Way too loud!
 
kellen said:
I just got the owc dual drive enclosure. Fan is rather loud. Luckily they sent
me the wrong one so I can exchange for free. Going to go with a single enclosure that doesn't have a fan. Way too loud!
Click to expand...

I second that, the OWC Mercury Elite-Al dual drive enclosures are way too noisy. Don't know why they don't use quieter fans. I have mine sitting behind my 24" iMac and the noise is still irritating.
 
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