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OWC Mercury Elite Pro or OWC Neptune?

N

ndividual

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2007
18
0
I'm looking to buy either of these two unless anyone recommends something better.

I do some graphic design work and have an extensive music and photo collection. I'm looking to back all that up regularly and most importantly need something reliable. I have been doing research for what seems like days now and can't really seem to find a drive that people recommend more than another. I've heard LaCie but then I've heard bad things about LaCie, I've heard OWC, Maxtor, Rocstor, Western Digital, so much to choose from and since this is all new to me I have no clue what to choose.
I would like something with at least 500gb and 16mb cache.

Any help, suggestions, positive or negative reviews on drives would be very much appreciated.

As always, you guys rock!

Thank you!!

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ME8FW7500G16/


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/NPFW7500GB/
 
I have the Neptune enclosure...works great. Bought a separate Seagate 7200.10 250 GB drive in order to get the full five-year drive warranty. Highly recommended.
 
I have the mercury elite pro and it works wonderfully, and is very pretty to look at it. And actually, will be selling it, if you're interested. (I used it in the interim when I had a laptop only, and had all my data on a drive from my old desktop.)
 
I suggest this Link. Then find one or two large drives to put in it. I bought two drives from seagate that had a 5 yr warranty, for piece of mind.

I really like OWC so you won't go wrong with the drives you suggested but you could save some money by building your own.

Nuc
 
Thank you guys for your advice so far! I've also heard/read a lot of suggestions about building my own, which I'm definitely interested in doing except that I'm still a newbie to the whole hard drive thing. Is it something for someone with more expertise in this area or does anyone have a guide/tutorial/etc on the best way to go about building a drive (what to buy, how to put it togeter, set it up, software, etc)?

I like OWC a lot and was going to buy my RAM from crucial but I think I might just buy it from OWC when I buy my external drive.

Thanks again!
 
It's easy. My wife did it by herself. Doing it yourself saves you about 30 bucks or so. I did the ministack from them. Nice people at OWC will help you with any questions, plus they have fast shipping. I went with the seagate 500gb one. Good luck.
 
It is really insanely easy, and the OWC enclosures (or at least mine) come with a little illustrated booklet that shows you how to do everything step by step.

Just buy a HD, buy an enclosure, then hook up to computer, and format.

I just bought a Samsung 500 GB drive, should arrive tomorrow. You could go with 750 GB if you really want a lot of space. Or you could get an enclosure for multiple drives.
 
Thank you for your advice, do you have a link to both a HD and enclosure you recommend? I'm worried I might order the wrong things since I'm still so new to this stuff. I would like at least 750gb, 16mb cache, other than that I'm not quite sure (c:

Thanks again, you've been very helpful.
 
This is the enclosure I have (and can sell if you want...as I no longer need one, but you may not need fw800 which makes it more expensive):

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW924AL1K/

This is the hard drive I just bought:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152052

I'm thinking though that you should maybe go for 2 x 500 GB. How much do you care about the looks of the enclosure? And how do you want to connect to it (usb 2.0, firewire 400/800, etc)? I'm pretty sure fw800 is the fastest.

If you wanted fw800 + 2 x 500 GB, you could get the enclosure below, with 2 of the samsung hard drives I posted above, so you'd have 1 terabyte for ~$350:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW924AL2K/
 
fairnymph said:
This is the enclosure I have (and can sell if you want...as I no longer need one, but you may not need fw800 which makes it more expensive):

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW924AL1K/

This is the hard drive I just bought:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152052

I'm thinking though that you should maybe go for 2 x 500 GB. How much do you care about the looks of the enclosure? And how do you want to connect to it (usb 2.0, firewire 400/800, etc)? I'm pretty sure fw800 is the fastest.

If you wanted fw800 + 2 x 500 GB, you could get the enclosure below, with 2 of the samsung hard drives I posted above, so you'd have 1 terabyte for ~$350:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW924AL2K/
Click to expand...

------
i like what you have suggested. may i ask why you buy the drive from newegg rather than owc? is it a price thing or quality? also will i able to connect two computers to this? i would like to get a new iMac when leopard comes out and this computer will be used for music only. should i put the OWC drive to the new computer and just get something like a western digital for the music only computer?

thanks again, you've been very helpful!
 
like what you have suggested. may i ask why you buy the drive from newegg rather than owc? is it a price thing or quality? also will i able to connect two computers to this? i would like to get a new iMac when leopard comes out and this computer will be used for music only. should i put the OWC drive to the new computer and just get something like a western digital for the music only computer?
Click to expand...
Newegg has the best prices for hard drives, IME. I also like that they have extensive reviews. OWC doesn't have the Samsung HD, and the reviews for Maxtor drives are not quite as good as for that particular Samsung, and also, they are $4 more per drive.

I don't think you can have two computers hooked up to the same external drive at the same time. You can of course, move the drive - eject/unmount it, then plug it into another computer, and power it up -- that's not a problem at all.

If you don't want to move one drive around, and want two computers to both have more HD space, then I would get 2 separate drives + enclosures. Though personally I wouldn't find moving around one drive too much trouble, and it will be cheaper that way, as it's nearly twice as much to buy 2 enclosures.

But why not just get a large (internal) drive for your imac when you get it? I don't know much about imacs so maybe this isn't practical or financially wise?
 
ndividual said:
very helpful, patient, and nice. this is what he recommended...

OWC Mirror Raid


Combo Storage


http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/MirrorRAID/


http://eshop.macsales.com/search/guardian



I kept asking about building one and he seemed to shy away from that and said the bundles are better deals 'cause of the software?
Click to expand...

I personally would say no to the RAID thing. If you really are paranoid about losing your data, then it's nice to have a backup, but I am myself too cheap. I'd rather have more space. If you look at the setup I suggested, you'd have 1 TB of space for $350 vs 500 GB with the RAID deal for $500.

The second link, assuming you are fine with that HD (I am not saying it is a bad one that OWC uses, but I like to pick one that has lots of reviews, just my preference), looks fine, if you want just 500GB of space. To build it yourself with a HD from newegg, would be ~$195, so you'd save about $40 by piecing it together. Plus you can then pick your HD, if you care about that.
 
They bundle several software packages depending on the ready-made solution that you buy which could cost you upto around $200 if you wanted them and were assembing it on your own.

See at the bottom:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/

If you choose the model/size carefully, you can see in some datasheets that they actually use Seagate 7100.10 which is a latest generation drive of maybe the best brand.

So not very interesting putting the thing together yourself.

If you don't care about RAID, go for the QUAD interface case, which costs only $10 more than the triple, so it's interesting future-proofing.
 
cube said:
So not very interesting putting the thing together yourself.
Click to expand...

As I said in an earlier post, putting it together separately gets you a five-year warranty on that Seagate drive, while buying the combo gets you a one-year warranty on the whole package. That's the crucial factor for me.

I'm fine with other software options available to me, so I don't need their apps. But to each his own...
 
WildCowboy said:
As I said in an earlier post, putting it together separately gets you a five-year warranty on that Seagate drive, while buying the combo gets you a one-year warranty on the whole package. That's the crucial factor for me.
Click to expand...
In a few years, that drive itself will cost very little. If the hard disk somehow fails, I don't think you'll care about buying another 500GB disk. It is the data that matters in a failed drive.
 
theBB said:
In a few years, that drive itself will cost very little. If the hard disk somehow fails, I don't think you'll care about buying another 500GB disk. It is the data that matters in a failed drive.
Click to expand...

Agreed...in fact, the cost of the shipping the failed drive back to them will probably be more than the cost of a new drive at that point. I guess what it comes down is that I don't care about the bundled programs, and it's cheaper to buy the enclosure and drive separately and spend the 30 seconds to put the two together. My data is "backed up" on the primary machine (Does that mean it's "fronted up?"), so I'm not all that concerned about that aspect of things. I guess I'm just cheap.
 
I have an OWC Mercury Elite and highly recommend it. Mine doesn't have the FireWire 800, though. The drive works well, it looks nice, and comes with some software and freeware. I got the Mercury Elite over the other because I wanted USB 2.0 as well in case I had to ever use it on a computer without FireWire. I don't do graphic work, so I don't know about that end of it, though. I hope that helps.
 
OWC and DMS are terrific. I refuse to buy from Crucial due to shady pricing practices.
 
I wish that MacRumors had an OWC affiliate link. I won't buy from Crucial anymore either.
 
Be very careful with OWC Neptunes

I recently changed four 500GB ATA drives from Ultra enclosures to OWC FW400 Neptune enclosures because the cheap fans in the Ultra enclosures were too loud. The four drives had been operating for over 1 year in the Ultra enclosures.

However, after two days in the new Neptune enclosures, all four drives developed fatal data errors and I lost the data in all four drives. Coincidence? All four drives? Not likely!

Putting the four drives back into Ultra enclosures allowed me to repartition and erase two drives, but the other two were irreparably damaged.

I worked with OWC Tech Support for several days trying to debug and recover but no joy. I'm still fighting with OWC for them to pay shipping on return of the drives.

And I had heard that OWC had superb support! I don't think so.
 
OWC Netune 1tb drive

I purchase an OWC Neptune drive because of reputation. I have never been able to use it because it disappears off the desktop and corrupts data. I won't boot and it totally useless. I sent it in twice for "repair" and it was replaced with new once. None of the drives worked. But not to slam OWC, is it possible that my Quicksilver machine running OS 10.4.11 is causing the problem? I have an older OWC drive (in clear plastic case) that has run flawlessly. I run every drive on Firewire and I have tried several cables including the one that came with the drive. Any suggestions?
 
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