External Storage Solutions Help Needed

[wowzer]

What is the difference between the mercury elite and the maximus?

[OWC Larry]

Some answers to above and a comment...

Drobo is simple - but very comparatively slow and expensive as a solution IMHO.

Heat - drives do warm up under load - but in our solutions and under stress load for 24/7 - they still operate well within the MFR approved range. As long as drives are not over heating, there is no harm in a drive running up to it's max approved temp which shouldn't be near the case. Google did a huge study on impact of drive life from temperature and found that fewer drives failed when allowed to run warmer, but within rated spec vs. drives cooled to the lower end of the operational spec... and, not surprisingly, drives overheated failed more than both. All of our enclosures are chamber tested to insure that they keep drives within MFR spec temp ranges when used in within the temp ranges we specify (which are, pretty sure, the same range Apple specs for it's computer operating environments).

The Elite and the GMAX share a lot of the same design elements and chipsets. The GMAX has the additional hardware to support drive status display for the RAID-1 mode. The Elite can do RAID-1 as well, but is a feature we don't officially support since there is nothing to tell you if one of your RAID-1 Set drives has failed... The GMAX can be set to run in Raid-0 and SPAN modes in addition to RAID-1 Mirror, but the GMAX is primarily aimed as a RAID-1 plug and play and go solution - keep it simple and secure. The current GMAX and the Elite-AL Pro Dual Quad models both use the same Oxford936 chipset solutions and, again, main difference is the extra status display on the GMAX to fully support/communicate RAID 1 function and drive health.

[OWC Larry]

hitting the noise question some more... this is actual testing of the GMAX solution:

http://www.newertech.com/nwt_whisper_tes..._gmax.html

Recording studio quiet.

[Grant]

Regarding the Ivan postings, you all may find this VERY enlightening:

http://www.newertech.com/nwt_whisper_tes..._gmax.html

Bottom line, even under full Read/Write load and at a normal desktop working distance, GMAX makes about as much noise as a recording studio environment...so whisper quiet is a pretty fair assessment of it's noise level.

As one astute poster noted, two or more drives in an enclosure = must have a constant on fan.

And in multiple reviews by numerous industry noteable figures like Scott Kelby, Terry White, Judie Lipset, etc., they all agree GMAX is an outstanding product in all aspects.

I'd be a bit more concerned about the recommendation Ivan proposed...that other brand two bay unit only has a 2 AMP power supply. Can you say burned out pwr supply on regular basis or drives that fail to spin up ;-)

[volcs0]

OWC Larry wrote:
Some answers to above and a comment...

Drobo is simple - but very comparatively slow and expensive as a solution IMHO.

I was worried about this too. My Drobo is hooked up via USB2 (granted, it is real USB2 --- into my Hackintosh, not crippled MacPro USB2). I copied over 1.5Tb in less than 24 hours - I don't know if that is fast or not, but it seemed ok. Now, I have all my music, iPhoto library and home video on there, and I do not have any problems with lag or slow transfers. So, for my real-life applications, it seems to be doing fine. Yes, there is a premium to be paid for the convenience - but isn't that what being a mac owner is all about?

I've had other RAID systems in the past, this one just happens to be the most user-friendly one I've used so far.

[OWC Larry]

Not sure what makes a proprietary 4 drive drobo array more convenient than a hardware raid 1 GMax that is faster even on usb2 and also plug and play. With the gmax, you can actually pull a drive out of it and direct connect it to Sata bus or via other external enclosure fw, USB, etc and fully access data.... If drobo ever craps out, need special assistance to get that Data back as totally proprietary.

We sell drobo - and most buy cause want to mix drives at will (which reduces capacity calc when all drives not same capacity) and spend more than could have double the cap in two raid 1s or even go to a raid 5.

Whatever works and does what is desired - I just can't justify. Drobo is around 25mb/s at best on usb2 and not much faster on fw800 even. 1.5tb at best about 16 hours to trans... Gmax can do the same in about 3hrs

if taking advantage of easy drive swap for capacity growth and slow sustained trans not issue (more than fast enough for most audio, video playback - photo library, gen data -- way to slow for use as edit disc, etc) then it can be a decent solution. But plenty of better options if intent is to buy to x capacity without plan to increase and that are much faster too.

[wowzer]

Do I need to have 2 HD's or can I go with 1 HD and add a second one later? Also, when it says paired hard drives, does this mean that the drives have to identical?

[Grant]

You need two paired drives with the GMAX...and by paired we mean drives of the same size and from the same manuf. The same manuf brand is especially key as they all have different LBA (logical block addressing) routines and in order for ANY RAID array to work properly, the LBA must be consistent across all the drives.

The really sharp buyer gets a spare third drive at time of purchase so they have that matching drive just waiting if needed. Cheap insurance for that valued data.

Btw...the LBA numbers are printed right on HD labels.

Hope that helps!

OWC Grant
(and I like the Star Trek sig wowzer!)

[volcs0]

OWC Larry wrote:
Not sure what makes a proprietary 4 drive drobo array more convenient than a hardware raid 1 GMax that is faster even on usb2 and also plug and play. With the gmax, you can actually pull a drive out of it and direct connect it to Sata bus or via other external enclosure fw, USB, etc and fully access data.... If drobo ever craps out, need special assistance to get that Data back as totally proprietary.

We sell drobo - and most buy cause want to mix drives at will (which reduces capacity calc when all drives not same capacity) and spend more than could have double the cap in two raid 1s or even go to a raid 5.

Whatever works and does what is desired - I just can't justify. Drobo is around 25mb/s at best on usb2 and not much faster on fw800 even. 1.5tb at best about 16 hours to trans... Gmax can do the same in about 3hrs

if taking advantage of easy drive swap for capacity growth and slow sustained trans not issue (more than fast enough for most audio, video playback - photo library, gen data -- way to slow for use as edit disc, etc) then it can be a decent solution. But plenty of better options if intent is to buy to x capacity without plan to increase and that are much faster too.

As usual, thanks Larry. This makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the breakdown and the explanation.