OWC On-The-Go Arrived Today! (Faulty, or not enough power?)

[Eric.]

I ordered the triple interface, 320GB Hitachi 5400rpm drive late Saturday night and received it this morning. It would have been here yesterday if not for the new UPS driver...

I just wanted to say that the quality of the drive is excellent and that it looks great. I've had a few hiccups that I'm still trying to diagnose, but I think they were PC related. I'll be stressing it with some sustained writes to see if it happens anymore.

When I ordered, I had just caught the end of the Hitachi promotion, and this drive was eligible for a $30 rebate. I should have saved the PDF before it was over (the 21st) since it was nowhere to be found today. Fortunately, Larry has some good guys working on the chat support.

Attention, Larry - Give this guy a raise/gold star/pat on the back/promotion for knowing what he was doing and being helpful, unlike 90% of all other chats I've used.

Eric: Where can I find the rebate form for the Hitachi-based Mercury On-The-Go drives?

You are now speaking with Dave Jones of Customer Service 7AM-8PM CST.

Dave Jones: Hi Eric, what is the item number for the on the go?

Eric: OWCMS8U5320HB8

Dave Jones: Thanks! One moment, I will be right back

Eric: Alright.

Dave Jones: Thanks Eric - what was the date of your purchase?

Eric: July 19th.

Dave Jones: Oops - if the part number you provided is exactly what you purchased, there is a Samsung in there, not a Hitachi

Eric: Let me check...I just pasted that from the site. It is a hitachi drive in it...

Eric: I guess the stock online changes.

Eric: My invoice has: OWCMS8U5320HB8

Eric: Which is the same thing...

Eric: I can see the Hitachi label on the drive.

Eric: I can provide photo proof if necesary.

Eric: necessary*

Dave Jones: That won't be needed, but, if you can see the model number of the drive in the enclosure, that would help tremendously

Eric: Sure. It that the line that has "HDD" or "Model" before it?

Eric: HDD: 5k320-320
Model: HTS543232L9A30
0

Dave Jones: There we go! Thanks!

Eric: The OWC number did match on the rebate when I looked at it before, by the way.

Dave Jones: Is it alright if I send it to you via email? EMAIL ADDRESS

Eric: I just didn't save it. ;)

Eric: Yep.

Dave Jones: Fantastic - I will be sending the form as a PDF file, in about 5 minutes

Eric: Okay. Thanks a lot.

Dave Jones: No problem! happy to help! email coming shortly!

Your party has left this session.

The drive will be headed into a Montevina Macbook Pro and the stock drive will find itself trapped in the On-The-Go enclosure, purely for Time Machine. I'd definitely purchase from OWC again, whether this drive ends up having an issue or not.

 

[alphaod]

Nice...

You might want to edit out the email address.

 

[Eric.]

Nice...

You might want to edit out the email address.

Whoops!

I hadn't even thought of that. Thanks!

 

[merl1n]

Eric,

One thing you must do either before or after you install the drive is to reformat it and change the partition map to GUID. All drives coming from 3rd parties (even OWC) come pre-formatted with a Windows Partition Map (Master Boot Record). Even though the volume may be HFS+, that doesn't change the Partition mapping.

If you don't, there is a good chance that this new drive (even with a new OS) may not be bootable.

Just a word of warning.

 

[ebayhelp]

merlin you are a genuis

same crap happeend to me on my windows vista installtion

im never gonna install vista ever again


anyways i tried to boot with the leoprad disc to reinstall leopard all over again but then it wouldn't let me and tol dme to do apple guid partiotn table or w/e

so i did and fixed it yay! lol

 

[merl1n]

merlin you are a genuis

same crap happeend to me on my windows vista installtion

im never gonna install vista ever again


anyways i tried to boot with the leoprad disc to reinstall leopard all over again but then it wouldn't let me and tol dme to do apple guid partiotn table or w/e

so i did and fixed it yay! lol

I just saw your other thread about Vista/Windows. Now that you have your disk with the correct Partition Mapping, you may want to try the Vista installation again. I would suggest that you use FAT32 instead of NTFS though. The Mac can read/write to FAT32 but has the limitation of a 4GB transfer max. The Mac can only read NTFS. It can't write to it.

I think your problem before was the Partition mapping screw up. The EFI firmware must see GUID partition mapping on the drive to recognize bootable partitions, or it won't boot from the partition like Windows.

 

[Eric.]

Yeah, I think this is going to be RMA'd. During a write operation it locks up and sounds like the heads are parking repeatedly (rather loud, I don't think its a "click"). When that happens, the file transfer locks up and Vista says that there was an error with the I/O device. It won't stop making noise until it is power cycled. I'm not overlooking anything, am I?

Merl1n, actually this came unpartitioned from what I can tell. I had to go to Computer Management to create a partition. I did create a MBR and formatted it to NTFS for initial use on the PC to make sure it was good (it apparently isn't). Its currently using FAT32 courtesy of a GPartEd disc.

 

[cw2k7]

Yeah, I think this is going to be RMA'd. During a write operation it locks up and sounds like the heads are parking repeatedly (rather loud, I don't think its a "click"). When that happens, the file transfer locks up and Vista says that there was an error with the I/O device. It won't stop making noise until it is power cycled. I'm not overlooking anything, am I?

Are you using an external power supply for the drive or bus power ? I had an external laptop drive (not OWC) that would lock up and click loudly during writes when bus powered but would have no problems when mains powered. Have you tried a different connection or an external psu ?

My OWC On the Go (250GB western digital) doesn't suffer from this problem.

 

[Eric.]

Are you using an external power supply for the drive or bus power ? I had an external laptop drive (not OWC) that would lock up and click loudly during writes when bus powered but would have no problems when mains powered. Have you tried a different connection or an external psu ?

My OWC On the Go (250GB western digital) doesn't suffer from this problem.

I was wondering that myself. I'm using it just with the bus power. It was at first connected to the USB ports on my case. At the moment it is hooked up to one of the controllers on the I/O panel of the motherboard and is copying another 30GB of data successfully. I'm going to keep using it heavily and see where this goes. If its just power related I don't mind, since its going into a MBP before long anyway. The 200GB MBP drive (or whatever it may end up having) shouldn't be an issue in that case. Too bad I can't open the enclosure and have a friend test it out in a laptop without voiding the OWC warranty.

Thanks for letting me know that you've had that issue.

 

[merl1n]

I was wondering that myself. I'm using it just with the bus power. It was at first connected to the USB ports on my case. At the moment it is hooked up to one of the controllers on the I/O panel of the motherboard and is copying another 30GB of data successfully. I'm going to keep using it heavily and see where this goes. If its just power related I don't mind, since its going into a MBP before long anyway. The 200GB MBP drive (or whatever it may end up having) shouldn't be an issue in that case. Too bad I can't open the enclosure and have a friend test it out in a laptop without voiding the OWC warranty.

Thanks for letting me know that you've had that issue.

I have many OWC drives (On the Gos and Aluminum Elite series). If the drive is over 160GBs, it draws too much power from the USB bus on the Mac (I found this out from OWC tech many months ago). You would need the external power supply for that. That's why setting it up for GUID partitioning is a must. Then you can connect it to the firewire bus (it supplies more power) and boot from it without the external ps.

 

[Eric.]

I have many OWC drives (On the Gos and Aluminum Elite series). If the drive is over 160GBs, it draws too much power from the USB bus on the Mac (I found this out from OWC tech many months ago). You would need the external power supply for that. That's why setting it up for GUID partitioning is a must. Then you can connect it to the firewire bus (it supplies more power) and boot from it without the external ps.

The 320GB is going IN the Mac. The 200GB stock drive will go into this enclosure. Will the Macbook Pro power the 200GB drive fine without a power supply? It'll likely be hooked up to FW800.

 

[alphaod]

Will the Macbook Pro power the 200GB drive fine without a power supply? It'll likely be hooked up to FW800.

It works on USB, FW400, FW800.

 

[merl1n]

It works on USB, FW400, FW800.

It will work fine on either Firewire port, but you may have problems on the USB port without the optional power supply.

I ran into this with a 250GB OWC On-The-Go Sata Drive. It would not work without the ps on the USB port and this was verified by an OWC tech. It just draws a little too much power than the USB bus can handle.