OWC Enclosure Advice

[Pixelmage]

I am considering purchasing an OWC enclosure but worried about the one year warranty.

I will either get the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2KIT0GB/ and fill it with 2 x 2TB (RAID-1) http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MAU4S7H20T32/ for starters or a OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 1 x 2TB. I am planning on using Hitachi Deskstar 7200 RPM drives (E7K2000) with either set-up.

Am I taking a hugh risk buy not getting units that comes pre-loaded with the drives that have a three year warranty?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Am I taking a hugh risk buy not getting units that comes pre-loaded with the drives that have a three year warranty?"

No. In my opinion, it's much wiser to buy the enclosure _separately_ from the drive that goes into it.

Reasons:
- You can now buy your drive from anywhere. Some Seagates come with a FIVE-YEAR warranty (perhaps this has been discontinued).
- If either the drive or enclosure has problems, just "separate" them again, and send the problem component back. Swap out a good component for the defective one, and you can "keep right on going".
- You'll feel more confident about what's going on with the drive if you've "built it yourself". The assembly is easy and you get to see "the works".

If you don't need to physically carry the external drive around with you, and intend to use it primarily as a backup or "non-constantly-used" external drive, you might also consider a "SATA docking station". These are [mostly] USB-based, but there are also some firewire-based models as well. To see some samples, try this link:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0

OWC sells these, too.

Final note:
I'd prefer Seagates over Hitachis right now. Just my own preference.