Any Good or Bad input on G-Force Drive???

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Good Morning:
Does anyone have any expereince with this drive, or company. http://www.buy.com/prod/fantom-2tb-g...212502310.html
Just checking in before i purchase, pending anyone's review.
Thks Don

[Roger Clark]

It looks like a great price for 2 terabytes. However, my view is if it is such a great price, I would be wary (in general on any manufacturer) as they might be using cheap parts to get that low price. Do you want to risk your data? But then 3 TB drives are coming out soon and we should see the 1.5 and 2 terabyte drives drop in price, so this might be the indication of that. So I would check other models and if others are in the same ballpark price, then ok, but if 20%, 30% or more, I would be wary. The projected trend of disk drive capacities is 12 terabytes by 2012. The recession may temper that a little.

Roger

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Thks Roger, so reading your commments, . What would you rec'd for storage,in other words what units seem to be dependable. Seems that leaving these units on is a no-no... Thks gang!
Don

[Kerry Perkins]

Don, I believe that it is a Hitachi Deskstar inside. G-Force drives have been widely used by the music production industry, especially with Mac Pro computers. Note that the housing is designed to look just like Mac Pro products. I have not used these drives myself, but they have a good reputation, as do Hitachi drives in general. Prices are falling and this is not always an indication of poor quality. At this price I would buy two and put them in a RAID configuration. I replaced the Western Digital drive in my iMac after it failed with a Hitachi 1TB and I have had no issues so far...

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Thks Kerry, i'm a newbie to all of this technology, so may i ask.. what is "RAID" configuration>
Don

[Roger Clark]

I agree with Don. If it has a Hitachi drive in it, they have had a good reputation.

Unfortunately, there are no public reports of reliability of disk drives (at least not that I can find). I have seen reports that each manufacturer seems to have good models and not so good models. The trick is finding out which are the poor models.

Roger

[Jeff Donald]

G-Drives have long been a standard in the digital video editing field. They have a stellar reputation of producing first rate products and are known for excellent customer service as well. I highly recommend any of their products. I do not now or at anytime in the past worked for G-Drive.

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Guys, i appreciate your input, i think i'm going to order one, just need to figure out "Raid config"
Thks don
I'll report back

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Don,

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. It basically means that two or more drives can be set up to appear to the computer as a single volume. The most often used modes are RAID 0, where the drives are "striped" to distribute the data across multple drives (this is done for speed, usually for video editing and such), and RAID 1 which mirrors the two drives with the same data. There are other modes but these are the most commonly used in a personal computer system. I have a 2TB RAID in a box (Western Digital MyBook), which is two 1TB drives mirrored. If one of the drives fails, the system still has all your data and can recreate the RAID when the bad drive is replaced. It is an easy way to have a backup without thinking about it. In the case of the 2TB drive you referenced, it is a single drive, hence my suggestion to get two and make a RAID from them. Hope this helps.