1TB External eSATA/USB unit @ $150

‘Ya know, having to buy computer stuff for work means you end up buying a lot more stuff for yourself. But based on the previous 2 days happenings, I think I have a pretty good excuse. Besides, $150/TB of external HDD goodness seems like a good deal, but what do I know? I don’t follow this stuff regularly.

If you want to look at this puppy yourself, it’s here, for as long as the link remains valid.

It’s basically a Velocity Elite HDD caddy w. a Seagate 1TB Barracuda HDD. Nice, in that if you decide you need an internal drive more badly than an external, just plug it into a SATA cable and away you go. Even so, with the eSATA connection, there is really no performance reason to put it inside the case as the speed is 3Gbps, assuming your system can pump that rate out. Unfortunately, I don’t have a spare SATA port, so I’m stuck with USB 2.0. No, I am NOT going to open my case and drag out the current 500MB SATA drive and use it externally. After the last 2 days, I don’t want to touch that case again until I get a new one.

Putting together the drive + case is straight forward, other than the LED connection, which the manual didn’t specify which way it should go in. It might not matter, but how do I know that?

I wouldn’t recommend this for your grandmother’s picture drive, unless you’re going to set it up for her, and you know how to set up a HDD from scratch. The instructions refer you the section on setting up a HDD, but there IS no such section in the pdf file. Guess they didn’t get around to writing that part. It’s not rocket science if you’ve done this before, but you have been warned: If you don’t know what you are doing you can wipe out your current hard drive(s). RTFM, with a vengeance.

I’ve got mine currently doing a full format (15% done in 30min) So I can’t tell you yet how well the drive works. I do have one complaint so far – having a big-ass “Velocity” logo as the activity light is a bit too bling-bling for me, especially for upstairs where I’m going to set up the 2nd one of these for my Mac mini. I don’t need “Velocity” burned into my eyeballs while I am watching a movie from this thing, as much as the Marketing roids might find that idea attractive. It looks nice otherwise, being brushed black with a chrome accent. I’ll just have to hide the stupid flashing logo for the media center.

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6 Responses to 1TB External eSATA/USB unit @ $150

  1. Trever says:

    We have a disk array with 16 Seagate 1TB drives in it. RAID6, which can survive double disk failure without data loss. We lost 4 drives, the rest are wobbly.

    The above event, yes like an oil and gas field event… major kablooey, gave me a 30hr plus day, doing emergency triage and data recovery to another system.

    Check your model# and serial# on Seagate’s site.

    More info here

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/16/barracuda_failure_plague/

  2. Trever says:

    Now that our data is mostly online again, I have commenced heavy drinking. Bought a 24 case of pilsner urquell. yum!

  3. Zarquil says:

    Awesome!! Looks like it’s time to start asking Mr. Bug some questions before he sobers up!!

    1 TB.

    Bah. I’d only have to back it up anyways.

  4. ralph says:

    Fortunately, my drives are a different batch. I did a quick Google for it and found no issues with it to date.

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