OWC Mercury Elite External Enclosure

[zioxide]

So I'm in the market for a new hard drive for data storage. I'm looking at the OWC Mercury Elite series of enclosures, but I'm not sure what to get. I want firewire 800.

I want to put a 750GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA drive into the enclosure.

From what I can see, they only offer one single-bay enclosure that supports SATA: the Mercury Elite AL-Quad.

However, I don't really need the eSata interface.

The only other Mercury Elite drive that supports FW800 and SATA is the Elite AL-Pro dual bay enclosure. But right now I'm only going to have one drive. It would be nice to eventually have room for another drive without having to buy another case, but right now I don't need that much space. Also, if I get this case, I'd probably get a 500GB drive (almost half the price of the 750 and then add another 500GB in a couple of months.

Does anyone have experience with any one of these drives? Is it possible to run the dual-bay enclosure with only one drive in it?

Also, I have no idea what I'm going to do for backup for this data.

Right now I have a 250GB external plus my laptop internal and a small WD passport (for backing up critical files on the lappy internal). I want to get a new drive for data storage and then use the 250GB for backup for the lappy. But then I don't know what I should do for backup for the new drive. It's not critical data (mostly downloaded movies/tv episodes), so I might not even bother. I don't know.

 

[iW00t]

Yes, you can run it as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives)

 

[JHacker]

I have the dual enclosure, and a single enclosure and I absolutely love it. Originally I bought it to use as a RAID 1 setup but decided to use it as two separate drives because of Aperture's vault feature. If you set it up internally to mount as two separate drives, then having only one drive should definitely work. I have two Seagate 320gb 7200.10 drives and they work great.

I highly highly highly recommend it. Great company, too.

 

[zioxide]

I have the dual enclosure, and a single enclosure and I absolutely love it. Originally I bought it to use as a RAID 1 setup but decided to use it as two separate drives because of Aperture's vault feature. If you set it up internally to mount as two separate drives, then having only one drive should definitely work. I have two Seagate 320gb 7200.10 drives and they work great.

I highly highly highly recommend it. Great company, too.

Good to know. I think I'm going to go with the dual one. It seems stupid to buy a single one for only $10 less and then have to buy another one in like 6 months if I need to add another drive. If I get the dual, I'll be able to add another drive without having to pick up another case, saving me like $100 bucks (FW800 cases are expensive).

 

[MovieCutter]

I have the quad single enclosure, and two dual enclosures. They are awesome, and reliable, and robust, and they just look good...