Anyone here using the G-Drive by G-Technologies?

There's an Australian distributor, but said distributor sells them at almost twice the price of importing them direct from the US. And I'm wondering what the situation is with power conversion and the American power plug.

If anyone knows of another Australian store selling them (at reasonable prices) and with Australian adapters please post here as they're the external drive I want for Time Machine.

The Icecube Generation II External Enclosures I'm selling are utterly silent and stay as cool as porcelain. PM if interwested

Alot of Talkers have PMed about Icecube and Clearlight enclosures and HD prices, and I realize most of you guys are getting put off by those prices.

Note: the prices you see include GST, Registered Post, 3 / 5 year Warranties, and Handling.

Yes, one can by externals for cheaper, yet they do not carry the same warranties, GST inc, Postage & Handling, or quality of:

• Clearlights
• DaisyCutters
• Mvistos
• Mini G2s
• Impacts
• Icecube G2s
• MantaRays
• SATA Xpress
• Taurus
• SOHO Tanks

etc

Nor does a Toshiba HD compare with:

• Seagate
• Western Digital
• Hitachi

- which carry 3 - 5 year warranties.

and I don't wanna sell stuff that's going to go tits up in under a year to anyone, cause I just couldn't single handedly deal with the returns on cheap non-Oxford Chipset enclosures and crap Drives.

If you want "cheap", buy Vibes - or else wait a bit, as Mini G2s and Impacts will come down in price - (also down in warranty as the trade off), and the HDs will automatically be Toshibas built into the enclosures with a 2 year warranty - the whole external drive sold as one combo unit.

cheers guys,

cw

Question for ClockWork:

Are you selling any of these drives - when I visit your website I'm only able to get RAM prices?

Question for ClockWork and others:

What is the chipset in the Icecube G2s? The following sites list the Firewire 400/800/USB2.0 drive case as having:
Streetwise - Oxford 924
ePowerMac - ALI M5621
ByMacOnline - ALI M5621

Add to that the fact each of the above websites lists different chipsets again depending on whether USB 2.0, Firewire 400 or Firewire 800 is included.

In the Icecube II series, there are seven kinds of enclosures, for holding a maximum drive size of 750GB.

• Icecube Generation II USB 2.0: Chipset: Bridge Chipset: ALI M5621
  Port Configurations: USB 2.0 (USB 1.1)
  
  
• Icecube Generation II FireWire 400: Chipset: Bridge Chipset: Oxford 911
  Port Configurations: (x2) FireWire 400
  
  
• Icecube Generation II FireWire 400 USB 2.0: Chipset: Bridge Chipset: Oxford 911/Myson 8188
  Port Configurations: (x2) FireWire 400 / (x1) USB 2.0
  
  
• Icecube Generation II FireWire 800 / FireWire 400: Chipset: Bridge Chipset: Oxford 911
  Port Configurations: (x2) FireWire 800 / (x1) FireWire 400
  
  
• Icecube Generation II FireWire 800 / 400 / USB2.0: Chipset: Bridge Chipset: ALI M5621
  Port Configurations: (x2) FW 800 / (x1) FW 400 / (x1) USB 2.0
  
  
• Icecube Generation II LAN USB2.0: Chipset: Bridge Chipset: Genesy 811 and LAN
  Port Configurations: LAN (10/100base-TX Auto MDI/MDI-X, 1 Port (RJ-45) / USB 2.0 (USB 1.1)
  
  
• Icecube Generation II Super S Combo: Chipset: Bridge Chipset: Oxford 924 DSB
  Port Configurations: (x1) eSATA / (x2) FireWire 800 / (x1) FireWire 400 / (x1) USB 2.0

and then there are 4 more, with the same specs as the: Icecube Generation II Super S Combo - that look a little fatter, and can hold: 320GB or 500GB or 750GB or 1TB.

cheers,

cw

Thanks. Were you referring to the IceCube Generation II drives, when you mentioned a fan?

Because I thought these ones were quite because they didn't have a fan -- probably because the enclosure is metal, and the power brick was external.

That's correct. Aluminum with internal metal chassis for optimized heat dissapation.
It has a casing that looks just like the Mac Pro - or a PowerMac G5 Tower enclosures - thick aluminium mesh with thousands of holes all round.

cheers,

cw

Clockwork, though your advice is appreciated, please keep sales solicitations out of the forum. Thanks. I suggest a link to your shop in your signature instead.

i have ordered a 500Gb Lacie D2 HD from FrequentBytes and will pick it up when i get down to sydney for the launch party.

I had two LaCies die within 6 months in the last year. One was a 160GB Rugged (the rubber orange pocket sized job) - and the other was a 500GB LaCie D2.

They both carked under the very same circumstances, and I've no idea why:

I was backing up the contents of machines that needed to be repaired. I'd plug in the FireWire cable, and the LaCies wouldn't mount - but they'd definately spin up inside - then had a look at the machine's System Profiler, under FireWire - to see: No information found. - which naturally meant... dead FireWire Ports.

So, I plugged in via USB, and in both cases, it took around a minute for the LaCies to mount, and then I could copy the data slow but okay.

Then, after those jobs, I plugged in both LaCies and neither the FireWire nor the USBs worked on my functional machines - and... there was no spin up from within the LaCies. Thus unable to transfer the backed up information to my machine and then to discs.

These were on two separate jobs, months apart from each other.

Yeah... go figure...

It was after the second event and under the same circumstances, that I utterly ceased my trust in LaCie.

PS: Should anyone know why this happened, I'd love to know the answer . . .

cheers,

cw

This is a VERY good question and I'm wondering the very same thing. Even a fanless external drive is still quite noisy just from spinning at 7200RPM. My best mate has one of the Ice Cube Pleiades external drives and while fanless and gorgeous in design you can still hear the drive spinning so he turns it on only when needed.

As Time Machine does constant incremental backups almost hourly you would almost certainly have to leave the drive on 24/7, something putting me off from going down this path.

Anyone care to comment on above?

Well - my own Icecube Generation II FireWire 400, is perfectly quiet - in regards that there's always noise around me.

But if I were sitting in an utterly silent and noise-proof box, I'd then be able to hear it spinning... though right now, it's under my desk - quiet as a mouse in suspended animation... with only a small blue light emanating from the front.

This thread is getting way to confusing... I've tried reading through most of it but i still can't get a feel for what i really need.

The cheapest external hdd solution - From what i read, enclosures, coupled with a reliable chipset and a regular 3.5" drive is the cheapest option so i guess i would opt for this. Then again, is this a more complicated solution? Any suggestions?

Cheers

Well - you can choose to buy the whole external drive - enclosure and hard drive, all in one - as one option - like the LaCie D2 - yet the problem with this (through my eyes personally) is that although it has an Oxford Chipset, they can still whack any old hard drive they like inside it - and when you buy it, the warranty is 1 Year and covers the whole thing: both the Enclosure and the Hard Drive.

Purchase the Enclosure and the Hard Drive separately, and you'll get separate warranties on both, with the added bonus of selecting the brand of hard drive you want to put into the enclosure - and naturally - some of us might opt for a Seagate or a Western Digital, over a Toshiba.

As to the nub of your question, the Enclosure comes with the Chipset built into it. You just need to make certain it's the Chipset you trust most. Oxford 911, Oxford 924 etc. The enclosure should also come with a good visual Instruction Manual.

You then purchase the hard drive separately, open the Enclosure (visual Instruction Manual and phillips head screw driver) - connect the communications cable and the power cable in the Enclosure to the back of the Hard Drive, and reassemble it - the way the Enclosure's visual Instruction Manual shows you.

In the case of the Icecube Generation II series, that Enclosure has a 2 Year Warranty, and a good Seagate Hard Drive comes with a 5 Year Warranty, yet the price for both parts are not too far off the price of a LaCie d2 - thus what you're really paying for, is the length of the warranty - and to my way of thinking, a longer warranty is what makes the decision.

The Oxford Chipset only really applies to FireWire 400, so Enclosures that don't have FW 400, don't have an Oxford Chipset - and a lot of Enclosure manufacturers removed FireWire 800, because many consumers were mixing them up with FireWire 400 and accidently jamming the wrong plug into the wrong port.

The externals that I have are Icecubes with Seagates inside, but only FireWire 400 + USB 2.0, as that's all i personally have any need for.

Does any of this makes sense, or is it more dribble?

cw

Fantastic. Thanks clockwork