It's important to note that all the single or multi-drive enclosures that come as "plug-and-play" devices were designed for the general consumer market, not media professionals. Despite the usage claims they weren't setup for massive data I/O on a regular basis nor to be able to remove/replace the drives inside. The high usage rates are one reason LaCie's and WD "MyBook" and "MediaBook" enclosures have had higher-than normal failure rates amongst pro video users.

What every media pro needs for archiving purposes is an enclosure with hot-swappable trays in whichever connectivity is easiest for your individual setup, whether it's USB, FW or eSATA.

Contrary to common knowledge there's no benefit in using eSATA for archiving to single-drive archives because the data rate isn't that much higher - if any - than FW800. You can save the additional cost of having to get an eSATA interface (EC34 card for a laptop or PCI-e card for a tower) and stick with a FW hot-swap enclosure that will simply plug-in to your FW ports already available.

The other thing to be aware of in the archiving world is *not* to get an enclosure that attempts to control or make it's own backup solution inside controlled by hardware; it's best to handle that operation either manually or with a software backup/archiving solution that's aligned to media-pro usage.

Thanks to everyone who replied. I ordered two 2TB G-Tech G-Drives today (single 2TB drive in a quad enclosure).

Mitchell: despite my proclivity toward using LaCie drives, MANY of my clients (as a freelance editor) and colleagues/contemporaries use them with fantastic results. I don't think you have gone wrong at all.

Question for you Nick, are you using MyBook or MyBook Studios? That may well be the difference.

I have 6 of the WD MyBook drives in various sizes. Two of them are firewire 800 and the others firewire 400. No problems with any of them.

I'm sure that they are not the BEST solution and am not really recommending them. But they are reasonably priced and widely available at local big box stores. When I want a hard drive I usually want it NOW, so I settle for whatever I can find locally at a decent price.

I have used the MyPassport FW 800 WD (and other WDs) and I´m very happy with them.
I´m foremost a cameraman and don´t edit that much though. I have used the portable FW800 WD quite a bit for location editing though

I have been very happy with G-tech drives (though both of mine spin down, which is annoying sometimes). What about Glyph drives for externals? At one time at least, they were big in the audio recording world.

Just the MyBook. Maybe there's a difference in batches - maybe they changed the electronics?