My 5-star recommendation for Iomega's UltraMax Pro

[UnixMac]

Well after a couple of days of amazing and Mac-Like trouble free operation, I had to share how happy I am with my new Iomega Ultramax Pro drives I am!

I was looking at far more expensive rack mount type RAID solutions for my video editing and while the performance was a bit better, the price was an order of magnitude higher. I paid about $250 for the LaCie eSATA II card and the drives were just over $500 each.. with 1.5TB per drive (two disks), that's 3TB, plus my built in 1.5TB and I'm good for a LONG time for what I do.

Anyone looking for inexpensive, fast and easy to use (plug-n-play) external storage, this is it!

You can save the $250 for the eSATA card and do a firewire 800 connection btw, but I didn't want to risk bottle necks..

Pics here:

 

[Rydther]

Nice set up, I have been looking at these as well.

How noisy are they?

 

[UnixMac]

Nice set up, I have been looking at these as well.

How noisy are they?

all but silent.. small fans, but they're not any louder than the mac pro

 

[Vocte]

I was wondering how well it matches the exterior of the Mac Pro and the Cinema Display? Is it the (exact) same color/look/feel?

 

[fivepoint]

Can anyone explain RAID to me? I back up everything on my computer using regular external HDs right now... and I never understood the difference.

Oh yeah... and by the way... I don't even know what RAID is, and I think that setup looks sweet! Well done, sir!

 

[yippy]

Does it have eSATA and Firewire 800 on the same case or do you have to buy different cases depending on what connection you want?

Also, instead of spending $250 for an SATA controller, would there be a performance hit using this instead?

 

[janstett]

Can anyone explain RAID to me? I back up everything on my computer using regular external HDs right now... and I never understood the difference.

RAID is Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Interchangeable) Disks. Using multiple disks together instead of individually. There are many kinds, the point being greater space and/or redundancy.

RAID 0 = concatenating two disks together, e.g. two 1TB disks look like one 2TB disk.

RAID 1 = mirroring. Writes everything to two disks at the same time. One disk can fail and the other disk still has all your data.

RAID 3,4,5 = different types of "striping" or "interleaving" over 3 or more disks where tiny bits of your files are written on two different disks and any one of the multiple disks can fail and your data is still safe.

 

[atticus18244fsa]

RAID is Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Interchangeable) Disks. Using multiple disks together instead of individually. There are many kinds, the point being greater space and/or redundancy.

RAID 0 = concatenating two disks together, e.g. two 1TB disks look like one 2TB disk.

RAID 1 = mirroring. Writes everything to two disks at the same time. One disk can fail and the other disk still has all your data.

RAID 3,4,5 = different types of "striping" or "interleaving" over 3 or more disks where tiny bits of your files are written on two different disks and any one of the multiple disks can fail and your data is still safe.

Thanks I've always wondered this as well. Is there any difference really between backing up your data as opposed to RAID 1 as opposed to speed/ease of use?

 

[iomegasux]

If your Ultramax's haven't failed yet, they will. Anyone doing research on these I would advise against Iomega completely. Get a Drobo or TurboNAS instead! This thread was probably posted by someone from Iomega, haha.

I've had 2 x 1.5tb ultramax pro's and they both ended up with a problem eventually, "click, pause, beep, click, pause, click, pause". I've hooked the actual drives up to my motherboard and they work...I blame it on the poorly designed enclosures. The drives also get scorching hot inside (go ahead and pull a drive out and try and leave your hand on it for more than a second), too hot to touch and that means a reduced life expectancy for hard drives! NOT GOOD!

two of the RMA'd drives Iomega sent were damaged during shipment due to Iomega's poor packaging, they were also REFURBISHED units! After returning the 2 damaged units I finally got corporate to send me a new boxed unit which has failed almost a year later with the same problem my previous failed ultramax experienced!

I am probably going to trash the enclosure and keep the drives for periodic backups, I can't believe I spent $549 for this thing originally...

I learned my lesson, never to buy Iomega products EVER again.

Here's visual proof that at one time I had 4 of these things in my possession, cool looking but overall pieces of junk!