I finally got around to upgrading my MacBook Pro’s 200 GB hard drive. I could go on and on about how annoying it was to have to go to an authorized service center to get the upgrade since my generation of MBP does not have a user-upgradeable hard drive, but since Julie does not provide a “whine and moan” category, I’ll save you the diatribe.

I wanted to get an enclosure for the drive, and was hoping to get a FW 800 enclosure. There are not a lot of them out there, and they are pricier than simple USB or even USB FW400 enclosures. I settled on the OWC Mercury On-The-Go Drive Enclosure because some of the reviews of the other contestants indicated that it did not always work on USB power alone. And, yeah, I also thought it looked nice. I like the see-through case.

The enclosure comes in three styles:

• USB ($24.99)
• USB/FW400 ($47.99)
• USB/FW800 ($72.99)

I purchased the USB/FW800 drive for 2.5″ SATA hard drives.

The drive included:

• Enclosure
• End Piece
• Board
• USB cable
• FW 800 Cable
• Carry Case
• Silicone Feet
• Assembly guide

The assembly manual clearly explains the assembly of the enclosure. There were only a few steps that did not jibe with what I received, but nothing that was difficult to follow.

I was surprised that the enclosure came with a power switch, the ports are laid out nicely:

Once I completed the installation, I tried out the drive with the Firewire cable. Everything worked great. When I hooked up with USB I had issues. The drive would show up, then dismount, then mount again. I sent an e-mail to their support and while I waited for a reply, did some research on my own. Turns out it is a known issue with MacBook Pro USB ports being under-powered. I have heard differing opinions. The one that reflects best on the MacBook Pro is that Apple follows the USB spec to the letter, and most enclosures want a little more juice than the spec calls for. Regardless, the effect is that USB does not work well on the MBP. It works fine on my wife’s MacBook (turns out the design of the MB allows one port to “steal” juice from the other, while the MBP isolates the two ports).

It actually is not a huge issue for me. I got the FW 800 interface to use it, and it powers the drive fine. If I needed to use it on the MBP as a USB drive, OWC sells an adapter for 7.99. I did not have a FW 800 – FW 400 cable to test FW on the MacBook, but I assume it would work fine.

UPDATE:
I want to make it clear that I am very satisfied with this enclosure. I purchased it so that I could use the FW-800 interface on my MacBook Pro. I was surprised that my MBP did not have enough power to power the enclosure while connected via USB, but had no issues with the FW power. Furthermore, the USB works great on my MacBook (where I NEED to use the USB interface), so the issue is obviously related to the power of my MBP USB port. I re-tested the USB interface on my MBP with a powered USB hub and it worked fine.

My only point in bringing up the USB issue is to make you aware of the issue. Since you are paying extra money for the FW interface, I don’t see it as a big deal with this drive. There are a lot of factors that determine if a USB can power a drive, this includes the power provided by the USB port, the power used by the interface in the enclosure and the power required by the drive itself. In addition to the AC Adapter they sell for the drive, you can also purchase a Y-Adapter for $3.99 that uses 2 USB ports to interface and power the drive if your computer does not provide enough power.

Filed in categories: Laptops and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Firewire, Storage, USB

OWC Mercury On-The-Go Drive Enclosure Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm.

Bloated, but in a good way Western Digital’s My Book Studio Edition, My Book Mac Edition, My Book Home Edition and My Book Essential Edition models are all now available in 2 TB capacities. They aren’t using two 1 TB drives, they are using one 2 TB drive. Wowza. That’s a lot of bytes!

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear

Tagged: Firewire, Hard Drive, Spotlight Gadgets, USB

WD’s My Book External Drive Family Is Feeling Bloated originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 26, 2009 at 4:35 pm.

Mac users looking for additional disk storage for their laptops and desktops can now check out Seagate’s FreeAgent Desk and Go drives specifically for the Mac. These external hard drives have been preformatted using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, include Firewire ports and match the brushed aluminum style of Macbooks and iMacs. Let’s check them out a little closer…

For about the last six months, I’ve been using a Hammer Storage morespace external USB hard drive as my main backup drive for my iMac. It has been doing an admiral job, but it isn’t too stylish looking… Not that style is a necessary requirement for an external hard drive. But hey, it can’t hurt right?

FreeAgent|Desk Hardware Specifications

Performance:
USB 2.0: up to 480 Mb/s
FireWire 400: up to 400 Mb/s
FireWire 800: up to 800 Mb/s
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM

Product Dimensions:
7.28″ in H x 1.48″ in W x 5.98″ in L (185.0mm x 37.5mm x 152mm)
Weight: 2.20 lb (1.0 kg)

Package Contents

FreeAgent|Desk hard drive
AC adapter
USB cable
Firewire 800 cable
Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cable
Quick Start Guide

Available in 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB versions, the FreeAgent|Desk for the Mac is a slick looking drive. It has a brushed aluminum shell around a White wedge shaped plastic body and non-skid stand.

There are two Firewire 800 connections on the back panel of the drive, along with mini USB and power connections. At the very bottom is a Kensington lock slot.

To use this drive, you just plug in the included AC adapter and then depending on your availability of Firewire 800, 400 or USB ports on your computer, choose the appropriate cable to connect them. Thankfully, cables have been included for each type of connection.

When the drive is powered on, the Seagate logo on the front lights up, as well as some cool effect lighting under the drive, that shines down on the desk stand. When the drive is reading and writing, the logo will fade in and out.

Click thumbnail to see full size image

I was sent the 1TB version of this drive to review and out of the box, it has 930GB available. Don’t you all hate that 1TB isn’t really 1TB when it comes to hard drives? 70GB of this drive is missing because hard drive manufacturers count 1GB and 1TB differently than your computer’s operating system does. Grrrr… At least there’s no back up software or other ‘junk’ loaded on this drive – which is just the way I like it.

So you just plug it in and it’s ready to go. I did all my testing with the FreeAgent Desk drive plugged into a Firewire 800 slot on my iMac. I unplugged the Hammer drive so I could get a good idea of how much sound the FreeAgent generates. I have to say that the Seagate’s fan is a noticeably louder than the Hammer, but the drive reading and writing noise isn’t very noticeable at all. I have also noted that this drive does generates more heat than the Hammer drive. It’s definitely warm to the touch even when not being accessed.

For those of you that like to see some disk copy speed results, here goes:

Copying a 1GB file from my Mac to the FreeAgent|Desk using a Firewire 800 connection took 21 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from the FreeAgent|Desk to the Mac using a Firewire 800 connection took 25 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from my Mac to the FreeAgent|Desk using a Firewire 400 connection took 34 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from the FreeAgent|Desk to the Mac using a Firewire 400 connection took 31 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from my Mac to the FreeAgent|Desk using a USB connection took 40 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from the FreeAgent|Desk to the Mac using a USB connection took 32 seconds

Wow, gotta love that Firewire 800 speed!

Having used this drive for a few weeks as my back up drive, I haven’t noticed any problems with it being inaccessible, having errors, lag, or any other issues. The only issue for me is the fan noise – and I’m just being super picky because I prefer as little noise as possible in my office here at Gadgeteer HQ.

Now let’s look at the FreeAgent Go drive…

FreeAgent|Go Hardware Specifications

Performance:
USB 2.0: up to 480 Mb/s
FireWire 400: up to 400 Mb/s
FireWire 800: up to 800 Mb/s
Rotational Speed: 5400 RPM

Product Dimensions:
0.69″ in H x 3.15″ in W x 5.40″ in L (17.5mm x 80mm x 137.18mm)
Weight: 7.76 oz (0.22 kg)

Dock Dimensions:
1.125″ in H x 3.3125″ in W x 2.375″ in L (28.58mm x 84.14mm x 60.33mm)
Weight: 6.35 oz (0.18kg)

Package Contents

FreeAgent|Go hard drive
Dock
Slip case
Firewire 800 cable
Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cable
USB cable
USB power cable
Quick Start Guide

Like the Desk drive, the Go has a brushed aluminum top shell, with a rubberized White plastic body. The Seagate logo is embossed on the top and small perforations along the bottom edge, are backlit to show power and read / write status. I would say that this drive is a bit on the large size for portable drives these days. The thickness is ok, but it’s longer than most USB drives that I’ve reviewed lately (example: the Western Digital Passport drive that you can use with the WD TV HD Media Player).

The back edge has a power port, a Firewire 800 port and mini USB port. Cables are included for USB, Firewire 800 and Firewire 400 connections to your computer. If you require a USB connection, you’ll need to use two USB ports on your computer. One for power and one for data. Firewire users only have to use the one connection. For my tests, I used Firewire 800.

One of my favorite features about this drive is the included docking cradle. It has the same White plastic and aluminum style that the drive has, so it looks nice sitting next to your iMac or Macbook.

The only ‘bad’ thing about the dock is that it has a hardwired Firewire 800 cable built into it. So, if you don’t happen to have a Mac with a Firewire port (quite likely these days since Macbooks don’t have them anymore…), you won’t be able to use this nifty dock. I think Seagate should have allowed you to plug in the cable of your choice into the dock… My iMac has a Firewire 800 port, so connecting the dock was not an issue for me. It’s really nice to be able to just unplug the drive, slide it into the included slip case and be on your merry way. The case even has an elastic pocket that you can use to carry the included USB cables.

The Go has a starburst of LEDs along the bottom edge that glows White when the drive is powered up. These LEDs throb on and off when the drive is reading and writing data.

Click thumbnail to see full size image

I was sent the 320GB version of this drive and out of the box, it has 297GB of available space. Like the FreeAgent Desk version, the drive contains no junk software. Just plug it in and it’s ready to go.

While the larger Desk drive might have been a bit noisy, the Go is virtually silent. Even when I put my ear up against the drive, I could barely hear any thing, which is exactly the way I like it

During the time that I’ve been using this drive, I’ve not had any problems reading or writing files. It just works. For those of you that like to see some disk copy speed results, here goes:

Copying a 1GB file from my Mac to the FreeAgent|Go using a Firewire 800 connection took 24 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from the FreeAgent|Go to the Mac using a Firewire 800 connection took 23 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from my Mac to the FreeAgent|Go using a Firewire 400 connection took 34 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from the FreeAgent|Go to the Mac using a Firewire 400 connection took 31 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from my Mac to the FreeAgent|Go using a USB connection took 59 seconds
Copying a 1GB file from the FreeAgent|Go to the Mac using a USB connection took 55 seconds

Just like the Desk drive, there is an obvious difference in speed for the 3 connection types. I’ll take the Firewire 800 thank you very much.

If you’re in the market for a desk or portable external drive for your Mac, the Seagate FreeAgent Desk and Go, should fit right in. They are plug and play, don’t come preloaded with a lot of gunk that you will end up deleting anyway, and also have three connection types for optimal read / write speed. They look pretty darn snazzy too.  The only thing I would change about them would be to make the Desk drive as quiet as the Go drive. Or make the Go available in a 1TB version.

Seagate FreeAgent Go Drive for Mac Pricing: $159.99 USD for 250GB and $189.99 USD for 320GB<br>

Seagate FreeAgent Desk-Drive for Mac Pricing: $169.99 USD for 500GB, $269.99 USD for 1TB and $349.99 USD for 1.5TB

Pros:
Style matches aluminum Macs
Cables for Firewire 800, 400 and USB are included
No extra software installed
Firewire 800 and 400 compatible
Go drive comes with a slip case
Go drive is very quiet

Cons:
Desk drive’s fan is not as quiet as I’d like
Desk drive gets a bit warm

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear, Laptops and Gear

Tagged: Firewire, Hard Drive, USB

Seagate FreeAgent Desk and Go Hard Drives for Mac Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 15, 2008 at 8:00 pm.