G-Tech G-raid Mini 2

[alphaod]

How is this thing? I'm looking to buy one, but they are quite pricey. I have a Drobo to store all my stuff already, but I want something that is bus-powered for one-the-go; this will be used strictly for traveling. Is it bus-powered? And is it a good choice?

Also if the HDD inside dies, do I replace the drive myself or do I have to send it in? Also if I buy says the 500GB model, is that with 2x250GB drives or 2x500GB drives?

Thanks.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I have the original G-Tech G-Raid Mini (1) which is pretty much the same thing but has twin 250gb 5200 rpm disks (in a raid0/striped array. For the g-raid m2 you'll be able to reconfigure the array apparently)

I can't speak towards their reliability since i've had two of their drives, but only for a short amount of time. One was used (the g-drive q) and still works great after three years.

It was costly, but I got it for 299 (marked as 399 in most apple stores) because Apple and G-tech discontinued it about a month or two ago.

Good buy? Definitely. The FW800 alone makes it worth it. Honestly depending on what drives you get (5200 rpm vs 7200 rpm) eSATA may be a bit overkill. on the g-raid mini ssd its absolutely necessary, but for platter based storage it may only be useful for smart status or something to that degree.

Its only bus powered when using FW800. Warranty requires you to send it back into g-tech if it dies within the warranty period (more than likely the drives). After that you can crack it open and do whatever you want with it. The drives are hitatchi based.

You can also daisy chain from either the second FW800 port or the FW400 port (I don't know if thats how it is on the other drives since i've only used fw400 enclosures).

 

[alphaod]

Right now I'm using a OWC Mercury enclosure with a 500GB HDD; it also has the Oxford chipset with 2xFW800 ports. I don't care about eSATA. The only reason I would buy it, would be for the RAID 1 functionality. It's a tough choice.

 

[alphaod]

Nobody owns this thing? I know it's expensive, but still!

 

[fortheclueless]

crap

I've had one since November last year but haven't yet been able to use it. The device had hard disk failure in January and I've been working with their support organization ever since to fix it. Admittedly a lot of the lag is my own fault. I haven't dissected the device to see what type of disks they use though they are a Hitachi company so I'll imagine they use their own dogfood. I sent them my drive...it sat with them for almost a month. When I got it back all looked good until I tried to write to the device...and I had the same problem I started with.

The support team is pretty good in that they are responsive. But as for overall quality of the device I have to give it 2 thumbs down.

If you do use one of these I'd recommend highly you use the mirroring option so at least one of the drives will still yield usable data. I don't have the raid2, but rather the original, which only supports raid0 (concatenation). So I have 2 drives that stripe data across both of them in order to provide me all the disk space of the 2 drives.

But honestly I can't imagine I had bad drives replaced with bad drives...which points to the raid controller. If you mirror but had a bad controller you still can't access the device in reliable manner.

Personally, I'd suggest you don't buy this thing. I'm not impressed with the quality in the least.