G-Technology external triple interface drive/bus power?

[steffi]

I've had this G-Technology Triple interface 2.5 inch FW800 enclosure which came with a full height 12.5 mm Hitachi 500 gb drive. Sometime ago I noticed that this drive wouldn't work with bus power and needed an external power supply and having just bought the WD 640 GB low power drive I see the same is true also. It's hard for me to believe that the enclosure could be damaged in such a way that it would only work with an additional power adapter so just how reliable are the Unibody FW800 ports are providing bus power to external 2.5 low power hard drives? I'm wondering if that I'm seeing is a change over time in how well the FW ports provide bus power.

Is anybody able to reliably bus power their G-Technology drive over firewire?

 

[Bill Gates]

I am using the same enclosure, but mine came with a slightly newer drive inside, a 500GB Hitachi 5K500.B. It runs fine off of bus-power when using the FW800 port on my unibody MacBook Pro, and also works through USB power when I use the special USB cable that connects to both the DC-in port and the USB port on the back of the drive. Have you tried connecting yours in the same fashion? Have you tried a different computer to verify that the port is working OK and supplying power as it should on your MacBook?

 

[steffi]

Interesting.... so yours is the full height one and not the slimmer one then?

on your grill far right you have 3 or 4 vertical holes? I see 4 holes which is consistent with the earlier 12.5 mm drive enclosures.

Like I said it's hard to believe this could only be damaged where bus power didn't work on firewire.

I am using the same enclosure, but mine came with a slightly newer drive inside, a 500GB Hitachi 5K500.B. It runs fine off of bus-power when using the FW800 port on my unibody MacBook Pro, and also works through USB power when I use the special USB cable that connects to both the DC-in port and the USB port on the back of the drive. Something must be wrong with your unit.

 

[Bill Gates]

Interesting.... so yours is the full height one and not the slimmer one then?

on your grill far right you have 3 or 4 vertical holes? I see 4 holes which is consistent with the earlier 12.5 mm drive enclosures.

Like I said it's hard to believe this could only be damaged where bus power didn't work on firewire.

The enclosure is tall enough to accept a 12.5mm-height drive, but the drive inside is a 5K500.B, a 9.5mm-height model. Either your enclosure is damaged or the computer is.

 

[steffi]

No computer isn't as it's happily bus powering the G-Tech RAID SSD 2.5 over FW800.

The enclosure is tall enough to accept a 12.5mm-height drive, but the drive inside is a 5K500.B, a 9.5mm-height model. Either your enclosure is damaged or the computer is.

 

[Bill Gates]

No computer isn't as it's happily bus powering the G-Tech RAID SSD 2.5 over FW800.

Well that leads me to the conclusion that something is wrong with the enclosure itself.

 

[steffi]

Well that leads me to the conclusion that something is wrong with the enclosure itself.

Yeah I'm probably going to throw it away but in the meantime what's the enclosure to replace it with if you don't need eSata?

Is Oxford 924 or 934 preferred?

 

[Bill Gates]

Yeah I'm probably going to throw it away but in the meantime what's the enclosure to replace it with if you don't need eSata?

Is Oxford 924 or 934 preferred?

I don't know about the Oxford 924 vs 934, but here are a couple possibilities as far as the enclosure is concerned:

OWC Mercury On-The-Go
Rosewill RX82-MP-SUF82-SLV

Of course there are many more out there, but those are the two that I personally would consider if my own G-Drive enclosure were to fail.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Some g-techs are just flaky. I can power my 2.5" g-raid mini but for some reason it sometimes doesn't get enough juice to complete the spin up so I just plug it in. Defeats the portablility aspect It also died on me after three months (no spinup). I looked at that rosewill but it's kinda fugly. My boss had one of those Mercury OTG's and never had any complaints so I may try it out.