G-tech G-drive 1 tb hard drive questions

[jeremyblevins]

Hello everybody i was recently looking for a new computer to use for media as well as light computing. then one thing led to another mac mini > imac 21.5 > imac 27 > i7. This will be my first mac. i'm a sophmore in college and really wishing i would've bought a macbook pro instead of the dell studio xps 16 i have.
Anyways i have a few questions. First of all has anyone had any experience with the G-tech g-drive 1 tb? http://store.apple.com/us/product/TX118VC/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MTMzNzkyNzk
Also is everyone running their imacs wirelessly or with ethernet cables?
And i know this is a weird question but is the eyetv actually aluminum or just plastic cause it just says aluminum finish on their website which i think could just mean a paint to make it look aluminum. Thanks in advance guys.

 

[spinnerlys]

The thread title guy strikes again:

A more descriptive and precise thread title will help cater to the right audience and get you more responses.
To edit your thread title, just click on the

button on the bottom right of your original post and then click the "Go Advanced" button below your message.
Have you also taken a look at MRoogle, since that question may have been asked several times?


Example: not this time

Some answers:

Almost everyone is connecting their Macs to the internet (or intranet) either wirelessly or via ethernet cable.

The last time I touched an EyeTV adapter (there are several, differentiated by name), the eyeTV Hybrid, it was made of plastic, and looking at the official www.elgato.com page, the other products look like plastic too.

The G-technology drives are highly recommended for their stability in their chipset, the drive you linked to has a Hitachi HDD inside, for which recommendations vary.

 

[jeremyblevins]

well before i posted i checked both google and the macrumors search feature and didn't see any post that answered my question. and that's the question i asked about wireless is more people using wired or wireless internet on the new imacs. has anybody owned a g-tech g-drive 1 tb that can comment on their noise level and how bright the light on the drive is if it is annoying and what not.
i know drive failures are just a true fact so i know every drive fails eventually so i'm not too worried about that.

 

[spinnerlys]

well before i posted i checked both google and the macrumors search feature and didn't see any post that answered my question. and that's the question i asked about wireless is more people using wired or wireless internet on the new imacs. has anybody owned a g-tech g-drive 1 tb that can comment on their noise level and how bright the light on the drive is if it is annoying and what not.
i know drive failures are just a true fact so i know every drive fails eventually so i'm not too worried about that.

There is no officially released statistics that will answer your question about the wire/less connecting issue. You can make a poll if you like, I use my iMac wirelessly.

The noise level depends on the drive itself, since they can differ from enclosure to enclosure, you need to be more specific, which Hitachi (or Seagate or Western Digital) model you are looking at.

Also your thread title is still too generic to register knowledgeable people, as that title is used every once in a while.

 

[jeremyblevins]

better? and i fail to understand your question i'm talking about the g-drive i referred to in my first post.

 

[spinnerlys]

better? and i fail to understand your question i'm talking about the g-drive i referred to in my first post.

I didn't ask any question, but I assume you refer to my "being more specific" part.

A G-Drive is only an enclosure for HDDs, which should make no noise, unless it has a fan in it.

The actual HDD inside is from a HDD mass producer, in your linked case it is one from Hitachi (there are other vendors who also produce HDDs en masse), but Hitachi has several 1TB 7200rpm HDDs, so there is no sure way right now to know the exact model for that drive, and thus giving you a proper answer.

Have you looked for reviews on Amazon.com or other retailers who offer that G-Drive? Have you looked onto the G-Drive website?

Have you even looked at the 23 reviews offered on this site: http://store.apple.com/us/product/TX118VC/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MTMzNzkyNzk (it's the one you linked to in your original post)?

 

[jeremyblevins]

I'm trying my best to not interpret that remark as an insult to my intelligence. I thank you for your help in answering my question about eyetv. but i know that about hard drive enclosures. and yes i have read everywhere on the internet that i know of. Even an idiot can use the internet. And as you seem to be talking down to me then i'm sure you know the rules of statistics. Online reviews are never a proper means of collecting data of a product. very biased. Generally only people who are really pissed off or really happy, not the set it and forget it people. And anyways hard drive reviews are always failed after only 9 months which is common among a percentage of hard drives produced no matter if it's ssd or hdd both have the same failure rates. I just wanted to see if anyone actually owns one on this forum and could comment on the drive. anyone?

Sorry if i sounded rude spinnerlys i hoping i just misunderstood your tone, as is common in forums.

 

[spinnerlys]

I'm trying my best to not interpret that remark as an insult to my intelligence. I thank you for your help in answering my question about eyetv. but i know that about hard drive enclosures. and yes i have read everywhere on the internet that i know of. Even an idiot can use the internet. And as you seem to be talking down to me then i'm sure you know the rules of statistics. Online reviews are never a proper means of collecting data of a product. very biased. Generally only people who are really pissed off or really happy, not the set it and forget it people. And anyways hard drive reviews are always failed after only 9 months which is common among a percentage of hard drives produced no matter if it's ssd or hdd both have the same failure rates. I just wanted to see if anyone actually owns one on this forum and could comment on the drive. anyone?

Sorry if i sounded rude spinnerlys i hoping i just misunderstood your tone, as is common in forums.

You may be right, I might have talked down on you. Silly mood and I let it out in that post.
I just was confused about what you know and what you don't know, as that wasn't clear.

I quite don't understand your comment about "failed after only 9 months". Do you mean HDDs in general?

I have about 15 external drives and some extra HDDs (IDE mostly) lying around, I used many of them for more than 7 years. Only once did a HDD ever fail me, and that was because I let it fall. Ah, another got corrupted, but that was due to the OS.

At work I also have 10-20 external HDDs, and the only one that crapped out was a LaCie (of which I have 4 in my personal harem).

Or are you talking about the G-Drive?

Seems G-Drive is using the Hitachi HDD exclusively in their 1TB package.


And please re-think your comment about every idiot can use the internet. Sometimes threads get started which could have been answered by simple www search. It took those posters more time to register here, post a new thread, than to enter some words (often ones they use in succession) in a www search field.

 

[Sir Cecil]

G-Drives are worthless if you want to daisy-chain them. They all have to be switched on at all times for power to flow through the chain. This is unlike, say, LaCie D2 drives with which you can turn of a drive somewhere in the chain and current still flows to the end of the chain.
If you have something like an Apogee Duet at the end of the chain, if you switch off any G-Drive in the chain, you lose sound. And even if you leave the G-Tech powered, when it powers down a touch of the mouse will activate it, and cut sound to the audio interface. Awful.

 

[jeremyblevins]

i'm sorry i caused confusion
but yeah hard drives in general according to google's research in hard drives, they have a lot. haha . about 80% fail in the first 5 years. And the 9 months thing was referring to a review on apple's website.
I'm not too worried about hard drive failure cause stuff happens but i just wanna make sure there are no other major defects to the product line. and i'll can find useful information about are their g-raid's no the g-drive.

 

[Sir Cecil]

Seems G-Drive is using the Hitachi HDD exclusively in their 1TB package.

They have little choice, seeing as Hitachi owns them.

 

[jeremyblevins]

well since i'm a pc user firewire technology isn't too much in my know. But i don't have too many plans on attaching many devices to the same port since i'll unlikely need any more than the 5.1 the optical audio can put out. but how does the powering down effect the imac do you get the spinning beach ball every time it powers up?

 

[spinnerlys]

They have little choice, seeing as Hitachi owns them.

Thanks for that bit of information.

well since i'm a pc user firewire technology isn't too much in my know. But i don't have too many plans on attaching many devices to the same port since i'll unlikely need any more than the 5.1 the optical audio can put out. but how does the powering down effect the imac do you get the spinning beach ball every time it powers up?

PCs have Firewire too, something I made sure to have since the 90s.

Do you want to use a Firewire device for the 5.1 audio out? You have an optical audio out on any current Mac, which will deliver 5.1 sound.

The beach-balling might occur during open/save dialogs and spotlight searches, when the drive is spun down and it needs to be spun up again. That's one of the "down falls" of Mac OS X and external HDDs. But during powering HDDs down I haven't experienced much lag.

 

[jeremyblevins]

yeah my laptop has a firewire 400. just not to many windows devices use firewire atleast none that i have used. what other firewire device may i ever need use of?

 

[spinnerlys]

yeah my laptop has a firewire 400. just not to many windows devices use firewire atleast none that i have used. what other firewire device may i ever need use of?

DV/HDV cameras and Decks, external HDDs, audio interfaces (better than USB due to the continuos data rate Firewire can sustain compared to USB), Target Disk Mode, some others I can't think of right now.

But USB will suffice for most consumer and prosumer and work needs. Firewire is still a niche product under non-media professionals.

 

[jeremyblevins]

i must admit the only reason i'm considering the g-drive is because it's aluminum and i think it'll go with the imac i'm going to buy. Maybe it would be easier to just buy a mybook for cheaper i just hate plastic haha. and that dumbware i mean smartware they install on their drives

 

[spinnerlys]

i must admit the only reason i'm considering the g-drive is because it's aluminum and i think it'll go with the imac i'm going to buy. Maybe it would be easier to just buy a mybook for cheaper i just hate plastic haha. and that dumbware i mean smartware they install on their drives

That software coming with a WD HDD can be deleted.

Also I recommend the WD My Studio Edition, I have 12-13 at work, and none gave me crap, even after having hit the ground from 70-110cm height (but they were not spinning).

 

[jeremyblevins]

yeah i'd be willing to bay the extra 30 for the g-drive for the aluminum case but unless someone else chimes in that owns it i guess i might just have to go with the wd. Also another question do both the g-drive and the wd power down when not in use?

 

[spinnerlys]

yeah i'd be willing to bay the extra 30 for the g-drive for the aluminum case but unless someone else chimes in that owns it i guess i might just have to go with the wd. Also another question do both the g-drive and the wd power down when not in use?

Almost every HDD spins down when this setting is ... set.

 

[jeremyblevins]

arg i dislike you
just seeing pics of os x makes me want my imac so much haha j/k
but my dad just ordered a 21.5 from amazon so i'll get to look at his for another 3 or 4 weeks

 

[Trek2100]

Hello everybody i was recently looking for a new computer to use for media as well as light computing. then one thing led to another mac mini > imac 21.5 > imac 27 > i7. This will be my first mac. i'm a sophmore in college and really wishing i would've bought a macbook pro instead of the dell studio xps 16 i have.
Anyways i have a few questions. First of all has anyone had any experience with the G-tech g-drive 1 tb? http://store.apple.com/us/product/TX118VC/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MTMzNzkyNzk
Also is everyone running their imacs wirelessly or with ethernet cables?
And i know this is a weird question but is the eyetv actually aluminum or just plastic cause it just says aluminum finish on their website which i think could just mean a paint to make it look aluminum. Thanks in advance guys.

First, I have the G-Tech 1 TB drive you reference. I bought it at the Apple store. It works great and makes little noise, just a low hum. The blue light does not bother me. I use the drive for my time machine backups on my iMac i7 so it only gets turned on when I want to perform a backup. I have an OWC drive hooked up to my MBP for backups. It is also a good drive.

Second, I run my iMac wirelessly. When I first got it I used the ethernet cable not realizing that airport was on by default. I unplugged the cable and now everything is wireless. Whether you use the ethernet cable or go wireless is up to you. I performed a speed test and there is no difference. If you want to check your download and upload speeds go to www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and choose the closest city to your location.

 

[jeremyblevins]

thank you. you answered my wireless question perfectly. and i'm glad to hear someone who likes the drive and you seem to have the same setup i'll have.