Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Scoo · Jul 24, 2002, 09:17 PM

I'm thinking about getting a <a href="http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/index.htm" target="_blank">Granite Digital</a> FireVue hot swappable drive. It has removable bays that hold standard IDE drives. It's $260 for the enclosure and bay, you supply your own drive. Any one have any experience with this company? Are the products any good? The service?

CRASH HARDDRIVE · Jul 25, 2002, 12:00 AM

Granite Digital is repected company, but be warned, they are WAY overpriced on certain items. For an example of just how much so, witness what they charge for a 120 GB IBM hard drive- $359 (!!?!!!!??!)

Try $133. That's one of the biggest markups I've ever witnessed! Up there with Apple itself!

Likewise 60GB for $179? Try $70.

These look like prices to me that are for the benefit of corporate IT people with a 'spend it or lose it' budget who don't care about price, and infact want to spend more money.

Whatever you do, don't buy your hard drives from them.

As for hotswapable Firewire cases- are you planning on buying a bunch of extra trays and you need to swap out drives often after filling them with content? Otherwise, I cannot fathom any 'consumer' use for an external device with a removeable drive tray, and if you don't **really** have a use for the drive tray, $260 is way too much for a Firewire external case.

Wagnerite · Jul 25, 2002, 12:38 AM

I too was thinking about getting it. However, at 260 dollars it's not worth it, unless you are using more than 3 drives.

look at it this way. if you're using 3 drives, you'll need two extra caddy (30 bucks a piece) which means you will spend 320 dollars for 3 drives. you can get a fw enclosure for around 60-110 dollars a piece for single drive. and if you need three, you'll spend 330 tops. and you can have all three drives spinning simultaneously.

but if you're using 4 drives or more, that means 260 plus three caddys (90 bucks) which comes to 350 for four drives. but you can't have more than one drive on at a time.

if you're using 7 or 8, then it would be worth it. I'd buy the thing if it was 130 bucks. that way, i'll have two drives for 160 bucks, then it's worth my while.

the best way is still get a box and slap a permanent hd in it (cost = HD plus 100 bucks for enclosure). if it's gonna cost more than 80 or 90 bucks plus the drive then it's not worth it. unless you really have a need for something like the fire vue

Scoo · Jul 25, 2002, 11:31 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE:
Granite Digital is repected company, but be warned, they are WAY overpriced on certain items. For an example of just how much so, witness what they charge for a 120 GB IBM hard drive- $359 (!!?!!!!??!)

Try $133. That's one of the biggest markups I've ever witnessed! Up there with Apple itself!

Likewise 60GB for $179? Try $70.

These look like prices to me that are for the benefit of corporate IT people with a 'spend it or lose it' budget who don't care about price, and infact want to spend more money.

Whatever you do, don't buy your hard drives from them.

As for hotswapable Firewire cases- are you planning on buying a bunch of extra trays and you need to swap out drives often after filling them with content? Otherwise, I cannot fathom any 'consumer' use for an external device with a removeable drive tray, and if you don't **really** have a use for the drive tray, $260 is way too much for a Firewire external case.<hr /></blockquote>My plan is to have a good back-up system for an internal 100 GB drive on my Mac. Want two archives for redundency.

I will not be getting the actual drives from Granite Digital, agree that they are totally over priced, but the the enclosure and tray seem very competitively priced vs. tape back up. Most of the tape back up systems seem to start at $500-$700, plus the media is totally flimsy, slow and low capacity. Jaz is a total rip off. I also like taht the drives can be removed from the bays when bigger/cheaper IDEs become available.

$290 for enclosure and two bays.
$200-$300 for two 7200 rpm drives depending on size.

$550 to $600 for 160 to 200 GB fast back up seems pretty reasonable to me, but I certainly would be interested in other ideas or companies if you have any suggestions.

Timo · Jul 25, 2002, 11:46 AM

I've got a regular GD FW enclosure which I popped my own drive into. When it wasn't 100% clear to me what to do a quick call to their tech support had a guy walking me through it.

I visited their booth at MacWorld and liked the look of the hot-swappables. The key protect thing works well, too. My own FW enclosure is pretty ugly, but it does the job with two fans and that Oxford 911 board which is now much more common but wasn't when I got mine.

GD is also good about posting firmware updates to the bridge boards, as required.

The only thing that's changed is that they used to ship formatting software (Anubis) with the enclosures, but now they don't bundle it anymore.