nice FW+USB+SATA drive enclosure

[Scott Auerbach]

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

Scott,

Be Warned:

"CoolDrives.com" is not a reputable dealer. They have multiple unresolved complaints against them at the BBB, they have no direct contact phone number (they even state on their website "no phone communication") and they have poor and in some cases aggressively nasty and argumentative customer service. Basically, they're a rip-off con-artist shop who sometimes actually delivers what they sell but most often lies to it's customers and has less than honorable business tactics. Godzilla would squash them - if he had time.

Thanks for the uh-oh.
Anyone want to comment on Granite's enclosures? Anyone? Beuller?

[Robert Lane]

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

I'm using those exact enclosures from Mac Gurus for my original clip storage/archiving/project backup solution. My working files live in (2) of the Burly 5-bay enclosures for a 5-TB RAID-0 array on my G5 with the Sonnet E4P card.

I spent 2 weeks researching all the SATA enclosure manufacturers with info from Bare-Feats to AMUG and my own direct communications with the companies; Mac Gurus is by far the best made products, the best live-person helpful customer service and, the best supported devices.

Outside of Mac Guru's I'd trust either Sonnet, Addonics (assembly required) or Wiebetec - the latter being high quality but very, very overpriced.

Unfortunately I have to recant what was I said here. I ordered and have been furiously testing (2) of the MacGuru's Burly 5-bay SATA PM enclosures. I wish I could say that the experience has been good but unfortunately it hasn't. Here's what's been wrong:

(all testing has been done with the Sonnet E4P firmware 2.0 in my Quad-core G5, OS 10.4.6)

- None of the cases shipped with instructions or even setup guides, just a case, power and data cables. If you dont' know what you're doing you'll be left in the dark. Hardly what I'd call 100% thinking.
- One of my cases didn't ship fully assembled; it was missing a SATA data cable.
- Using the KONA System tester, the best READ rate I could get out of 1 of the bays in a RAID 0 setup (5 drives in the case) was 90mb/s. This is horrible and is just barely better than a single internal drive. It should be at least 225 mb/s for 5 drives based on BARE-FEATS and AMUG tests with similar PM enclosures.
- I'm using the WD5000YS drives (500gb, 16mb cache enterprise version); when the Burly bay is powered on not all the drives will mount. It takes several re-boots with the Burly bay turned on before all drives will mount.
- If you remove the LCD trays and reinsert them they don't connect internally reliably. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. Even with lots of jiggling and shimming the drive trays it still doesn't connect 100% of the time.
- Since my enclosures were shipped without drives, MacGurus admitted that they did not test the bays before shipping. Seems that most if not all of these issues would have been caught had they tested them.

MacGurus wants to blame the WD drives as the point of failure, but based on the testing we've done so far that just doesn't hold up. 12 drives can't all be bad.

I'm returning the Burly bays and will try this same PM setup with a different manufacturer, most likely the Datoptic or Sonnet.

MacGurus is adamant that I'm the only customer with these type of problems (again, pointing to the fact that I'm using WD drives instead of Hitachi or Seagate) but at the same time there are zero reviews of these bays by AMUG, BARE-FEATS or even other customers who can back up their claims.

At this time I cannot recommend MacGurus; the lack of proper setup, instructions, testing and quality control all leads to 70% thinking - just like Focus Enhancements. Rick and Brian are both very helpful, nice guys but unfortunately the product just doesn't iive up to the hype, not even close.

Stay tuned...

[Leonard Levy]

I don't have personal experience with Granite Digital, but they have been heartily recommended to me by the founder of San Francisco Final Cut Pro Users group & author of "Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro" Kevin Monahan. i think he swears by them.
They seem pretty together and make an awesome firewire cable.