External hard drive for iMac

[macstatic]

Suggestions as to which external hard drive (for backup purposes) or empty hard drive enclosure (so I can buy my own drive and install) to get for an iMac, which meets the following criteria:

- has Firewire 800 (or Firewire 800 and USB 2)
- stylish to look at (preferably matches the current iMac)
- has a good quality, reliable hard drive (no cheapo Maxtor drive or whatever)
- preferably is bus-powered (saves yet another wall-wart and power cable)

If it comes with a drive mechanism it should be around 400 to 500 GB.

 

[terriyaki]

I've got a couple OWC Mercury Elite Pro dual bay enclosures and I love em.

You can get them pre-installed with drives or order the enclosure kits and add your own hard drive(s) yourself. I went with the latter option. I have four 500s between the two of mine.

 

[LFC.SL]

terriyaki, how was the ordering experience and how long have you had the drives?

Am reading good things about OWC because they apparently use a better enclosure than most (I found out even hard drive enclosures are not made equal lol)... I am thinking of getting the OWC Mercury On the Go 500GB for the triple FW800, FW400 and USB 2.0 without the need for an AC

 

[terriyaki]

terriyaki, how was the ordering experience and how long have you had the drives?

Am reading good things about OWC because they apparently use a better enclosure than most (I found out even hard drive enclosures are not made equal lol)... I am thinking of getting the OWC Mercury On the Go 500GB for the triple FW800, FW400 and USB 2.0 without the need for an AC

OWC is great, I can't recommend them enough. I've had the first enclosure for about a year now and I got the second enclosure sometime in the late summer/early fall of last year.

I did have a problem with one of the power bricks, though. I think it was damaged during a power surge. After that it just would not feed either enclosure with enough sustained power for them to properly boot up on power up. I had to get a replacement power brick. I think it cost me like $20 or something. =\

I also have an On-The-Go 2.5" bus powered FW400/USB enclosure and I stuck my MacBook's stock drive in there. Also a good product.

 

[danny_w]

Of course you can have problems with any hard drive, but the only one that has given me any problems in the last 20 or so years has been a 320GB OWC Mercury Elite Pro single-bay that I bought for my son to take to college in 2005; it died last year, and OWC had only a very short warranty period as I recall. I haven't taken it apart to find out if it is the hard drive or the controller that went bad.

Additionally, my son was having other issues with it that caused me to trade him a Rosewill enclosure and Seagate hard drive combo. He was using it with an iMac G5 at school, and would clone to it and bring the disk home in the summers; I had a similar iMac G5 at home for him to use. It got to where it would not boot the iMac when he would come home with it, although it booted fine on his G5 at school. After trading he has not had any more issues. I continued to use the OWC on a Macbook (reformatted) until it died last eyar.

 

[kurosov]

I'm looking to get one of these in the next couple of months.



http://atlastsolutions.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=3&products_id=674

They also have some mac mini like enclosures available.

 

[macstatic]

Yes, the OWC enclosures are good (I have two Mercury Elite AL pro enclosures myself), but my wife wants a neater setup without those external power supplies, which is why I've looked into bus-powered Firewire 800 drives.

The G-tech mini drive seems to have everything she's looking for, but at a price (not sure which drive brand/models they use though -can't find any such info at their website).

Anything similar looking with bus-power available but without the high price tag?
Unfortunately G-tech don't sell empty enclosures.

Kurosov: that enclosure looks fantastic! Unfortunately it's much too big for my wife's needs, but might be something I can consider for later. Please let us know of your experiences when you receive it.

 

[TwoBytes]

one word

drobo