[MacDV] Re: WD Firewire drives/Aftermarket FW drive cases

[Gregg Gorrie]

on 3/22/04 3:00 PM, Jeff Fay at jeff.fay at uaf.edu wrote:

> I had 3 different WD Firewire drives (all pre-Oxford 911). All three had
> the Firewire bridge die just after the drives came out of warranty. When
> I called WD to see if they could do anything for me (like sell me a new
> bridge cheap or replace what certainly appeared to me to be faulty
> equipment) I was told that my only option was to "buy a new drive".
> 
> The drives connected to the bridge were all fine. They all continue to
> work as internal drives in various computers. The problem was in the
> firewire enclosure and the bridge it contained.
> 
> I've since bought WeibeTech enclosures (DesktopGB and DuoDock(?)) and
> they seem to work quite well.
> 
> After my experience with their tech support, needless to say, I DIDN'T
> buy another WD firewire drive.
> 
> my $.02.
> 
> Jeff

I purchased an OWC Mercury Elite FW drive about a year and 3 months ago. I
had to send the drive back twice because of a faulty FW bridge (the drive
was fine as could be seen by the USB port). A few weeks after the warranty
period, this third case died on me  - not gonna go there! Flaky FW bridges.

So I took the 80GB IBM drive out and installed it in a cheap generic case,
which coincidentally looks exactly like a WeibeTech enclosure (it's probably
manufactured by the same company). So far so good - two months and counting
...  ;). I purchased the 5 1/4" case w/fan so I could also use the case for
a Pioneer DVD burner. This keeps the hard drive significantly cooler than
the OWC case, although it is more cumbersome.
-- 
Gregg