Cheap Firewire-400 500GB Drive?

[mrlynn]

[quote Psurfer]Deal or no deal?
Anyone have that Maxtor? That's a scary couple of user reviews on Cnet:

Actually it's six out of six:

"1.3/10 Average user rating from 6 users"

/Mr Lynn

[Zoidberg]

Stick with OWC. Not cheap but I have seen (and had) headaches caused by cheaper drives.

FWIW, they do have a bargains page; http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/bargains/

[tahoedrew]

[quote Zoidberg]Stick with OWC. Not cheap but I have seen (and had) headaches caused by cheaper drives.

FWIW, they do have a bargains page; http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/bargains/
Not to rag on our sponsors, but their cases have issues just like every other company. I had a 5.25" OWC case that the FW ports burned out on after only about 1.5 years. Luckily it didn't damage my machine and I can still use the USB 2.0 port.

That said, I do still go to OWC first for enclosures, RAM and several other parts.

~A

[mrlynn]

OWC's Neptune 500 Firewire drive is not a bad deal: $147 + $6 shipping = $153. The ProSoft backup software is a bonus, as son will never be going to Leopard on the TiBook and is currently backing up essential files to a 4GB thumb drive.

Only one year warranty, also, but maybe that's not so unusual. Is that just for the enclosure, or for the drive, too?

They also have some enclosure + HD buys on the bargain page that might work out a little cheaper.

Might as well wait and see what Seagate says about the 750, though.

/Mr Lynn

[mrlynn]

Update on the Seagate 750 "re-certified" drive:

Dear Mr. Joiner,

Thank you for contacting Seagate Technology.

With regards to your concern, we would like to inform you that eCost.com is an Authorized retailer with Seagate so Refurbished units purchased will carry 6 months/90 days warranty (or remaining warranty of the original drive as refurbished units may be replacement drives) starting from the date of purchase based on the Invoice or the Receipt.

Please be informed that we will not be able to promise or guarantee you anything on the warranty of a hard drive as it depends solely upon the serial number of the product and the place of purchase.

Re-certified means certified factory repaired or refurbished units.

For further queries you could always e-mail us. We will be happy to assist you.

Regards,
Renee
Seagate Warranty Support

Hmm. . . .

/Mr Lynn

[BobC]

Maxtor's been a problem for me lately. Their OneTouch Plus external line, with FW & USB2, is set to sleep the drive after a certain small number of minutes. My SuperDuper clones keep failing due to not being able to connect to the drive. The minimal Mac utils they ship with it can't reset that sleep time. Their "solution" is to use a Win XP machine to set the sleep time to "never", then re-format for Mac. Sheesh. There are many posts in the Seagate support forums and across the web reporting this being a problem for people. I'd avoid their enclosures - the bare drives don't seem to have that issue.

[mrlynn]

[quote BobC]Maxtor's been a problem for me lately. . . . There are many posts in the Seagate support forums and across the web reporting this being a problem for people. I'd avoid their enclosures - the bare drives don't seem to have that issue.
So will Seagate external drives have the same problems as Maxtors?

/Mr Lynn (confused)

[Sam3]

I'm confused by Seagate's answer: "carry 6 months/90days warranty". Well which is it, 6 months or 3 months?

I try looking for cases that use Oxford chipsets as I've had some drive cases die on me which weren't Oxford-based.

I have the Neptune and it's a nice enclosure, I put my own 500 gig drive into it and gave my niece one with a 160 gig drive.

I never did get a response as to why the Neptune is so inexpensive compared to the other OWC cases, styling seems to be about the only difference. I don't ever see a need to use anything but the Neptune's (as long as the bare drives are IDE.)

[mrlynn]

[quote Sam3]I'm confused by Seagate's answer: "carry 6 months/90days warranty". Well which is it, 6 months or 3 months? . . .
Maybe parts/labor? Just guessing. Either way, not super great.

/Mr Lynn

[mrlynn]

Re OWC Neptune drives:

I called OWC.

Warranty from OWC: 1 year (enclosure and drive)

Warranty from Western Digital: 3 years (drive only)

Not bad. The Mercury Elite-Al units are warranteed by OWC for two years.

/Mr Lynn