Question about Voyager Q external HDD dock

[babemag160]

Hello,

I just got my new imac 3.06 - 21.5 with the upgraded graphics card. I installed Final Cut Studio and I'm looking at getting an external hard drive to use as a scratch disc. Has anyone used the Voyager Q “Quad Interface” FireWire 800/400/USB 2.0/eSATA hard drive dock? I think this is a great idea because I can swap out drives as I work on them. Any comments or reviews would be great.

 

[dernhelm]

Hello,

I just got my new imac 3.06 - 21.5 with the upgraded graphics card. I installed Final Cut Studio and I'm looking at getting an external hard drive to use as a scratch disc. Has anyone used the Voyager Q “Quad Interface” FireWire 800/400/USB 2.0/eSATA hard drive dock? I think this is a great idea because I can swap out drives as I work on them. Any comments or reviews would be great.

I can't speak for the Voyager specifically, although, since I'm in the market for a SATA+EIDE to USB interface, I stumbled across it recently in a search.

I can say that I've never had a problem with OWC or anything it markets. In general, they are an excellent company to work with.

For me, however, the idea of the Voyager Q doesn't really work. It isn't often I need blazing speed in a device that is meant to be temporary (since the hard drive is almost completely exposed, you wouldn't use this for more than a few hours worth of data recovery). More speed is always better, but I can get the equivalent with USB 2 only that supports both Sata and EIDE devices for about $10.

For video editors (who need scratch drives that they can swap in and out) this makes sense I suppose, I'm just not that guy.

 

[indg]

works great for me with fw800. i use it mostly for backing up my mbp.

 

[donga]

just got an OWC catalog in the mail yesterday and saw this. looks great and I wish I had seen this/this came out before i got the thermaltake. it's really nice to be able to swap HDs easily

 

[rickeames]

iMac + Voyager = fail

Well, either my voyager q dock is dying, or the drive I put in it is, but I have noticed after running for a while, when I try to reboot my iMac, it will just freeze up until I turn off the voyager dock. I'm not sure why or how to troubleshoot it at this point, but it's a little frustrating.

 

[fhall1]

I use mine connected via FW800. Usually have a 1TB drive in for Time Machine backups, but when upgrading to Snow Leopard, I popped out the TM drive and inserted a 640 GB drive I used to make a bootable clone of my existing Leopard setup using CCC (just in case the SL install went south). I've had the Q for about 6 months now and have had no issues with it. If it was about half the price, I'd get another.

 

[rickeames]

I use mine connected via FW800. Usually have a 1TB drive in for Time Machine backups, but when upgrading to Snow Leopard, I popped out the TM drive and inserted a 640 GB drive I used to make a bootable clone of my existing Leopard setup using CCC (just in case the SL install went south). I've had the Q for about 6 months now and have had no issues with it. If it was about half the price, I'd get another.

The one bummer people should know is that the second FW800 receives no power from the dock, so you can't chain it with something like a card reader and hope to get it powered. An odd decision in the design.