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Recommend the Orb Drive?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Denville, NJ.
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I was about to purchase the QPS FireWire CD-RW for backing up my B&W G3 when I took a gander at the slamming it took on this Forum. I still want a CD-RW, but for back up I'm thinking about Castlewood's Orb 2.2GB drive, probably in FireWire. Anybody using one?
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"There is no spoon."
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Nov 1999
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I've been using the SCSI version for about a year now. It is fast (2 MB/s) and is great for backing up large projects (especially ones that are over 600 MB and wouldn't fit on a CD). It is fast enough to run programs off of too. I used to keep my Virtual PC disk images on one before I got my G4. Overall I have been very happy with it.
I had one problem at the beginning of August where the drive stopped reading my disks. It wouldn't read any of them. Customer support was very nice, I sent the drive back and they replaced it quickly. The new drive they sent me seems to be more sturdy than the old one and it has been working fine since. I'm pretty sure my problem was just a fluke, and I can't complain about the customer service, so I do recommend getting an Orb drive. I don't have any experience with the firewire versions though.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2000
Location: northeast PA
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Originally posted by ussfolsom:
I've been using the SCSI version for about a year now. It is fast (2 MB/s)
Really, only 2MB/sec? They advertize 12MB/s at their web site. Do you ever see the higher speeds or is that just advertizing bs......joe
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Nov 1999
Status:
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I don't have a fancy SCSI card installed, just the basic Adaptec 2906 and I have an old scanner connected to the chain too. I'm not sure if those things slow it down or not. I get 2 MB/s sustained writes and maybe a little faster reads, but certainly not 12 MB/s. I'll disconnect my scanner tonight and do a few tests.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Nov 1999
Status:
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I did some tests with just the Orb drive connected to the SCSI port. I used a 64.2 MB stuffit file and copied between an IBM 75GXP 45GB 7200 RPM drive and an Orb disk.
Write: 2.14 MB/s (30 seconds total)
Read: 5.84 MB/s (11 seconds total)
Pretty good read speed and the write speed was about what I expected.
I guess 12 MB/s is marketing bs, unless of course someone mistakenly multiplied the average read and write speeds together  Maybe different versions are faster (FireWire, IDE etc).
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: switzerland
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My friend's ORB is well over 10 MB/s over SCSI (Adaptec 2930 PCI)... just wanted to let you know
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Nov 1999
Status:
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I guess it is my PCI SCSI card. Does your friends Orb write at 10 MB/s? I would think that my drive wouldn't be limited to only 2 MB/s writes by the PCI SCSI card. I can see it being limited at 6 MB/s reads, but the writing speed baffles me.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 1999
Status:
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Transferring to the peripherals forum... and I go with the CD-RW for sure... Orb seems a bit like overkill if you have CD-R.
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