Glyph vs OWC vs other?

cloudsplitter · Post by **cloudsplitter** » Thu May 10, 2012 6:03 pm

Update:just got my drive back from glyph. It mounted once now it won't mount at all and is making some electric screeching noise through my speakers when I turn it on and won't let my Mac even boot. And this was the drive glyph said was 'working perfectly'. So , it worked once. Gee, thanks glyph.

cowtothesky · Post by **cowtothesky** » Thu May 10, 2012 9:23 pm

I'm using an OWC for Time machine and Glyph for virtual instrument libraries. Both are working great! The Glyph goes to sleep every now and then which is annoying, but the OWC might do that and I just don't notice it. I need to start backing up online though.

twistedtom · Post by **twistedtom** » Thu May 10, 2012 11:29 pm

I have 4 drives in my Mac pro but just ordered an external drive to use as a backup. I got one that you can hot swap drives from OWC.I have used OWC alot and had good service with them.

frankf · Post by **frankf** » Fri May 11, 2012 8:57 am

Not sure what OWC means when they say "hot swap", but I always eject all volumes and power them off before swapping. Nasty things can happen if you don't. If I mistakenly do this, I always run disk warrior for the piece of mind that the directory is in good shape.

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twistedtom · Post by **twistedtom** » Sat May 12, 2012 9:05 am

That may be a good idea Frank.

ghobish · Post by **ghobish** » Thu May 24, 2012 3:37 pm

oldecuriosity wrote:Thanks for the quick replies . . .

My guess is that you pay a bit extra for Glyph because of their customer service (which is seems more than fair); however, if OWC is a bit cheaper and equally reliable . . . .

My MBP does have the express slot (probably the last model to have one), so I may explore that option with the understanding that when I upgrade machines in the near future, I can switch the drive over to FW800.

If anyone has any other thoughts or considerations that I need to know, please send them along. Thanks again!

If you have the infrastructure to support it, consider a gigabit Ethernet NAS drive. About 30% better speed than even eSATA. If you normally have your computer hooked up to 100MB enet router, add a 1000MB enet switch to the chain. I'm using 1000MB enet across my studio and have never looked back.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Thu May 24, 2012 5:44 pm

>just make sure you are getting a 7200 rpm drive (i don't think glyph offers lower),<

Actually, Glyph does so double check. 5900 rpm drives are fine for back up.

I do not trust eSATA for live recording. If the cable gets moved - sometimes barely touched - during a session, everything stops - very bad since it is not hot-swapable, i.e. you have to re-boot.

For mixing, sound libraries, storage, post production etc, eSATA rocks at 8x the speed of FW-400.

There has been a big problem of late with external usb/FW drives going to sleep and not waking up, no matter the settings. Sometimes it is a bad power supply in the housing, other times it is a flakey hard drive (Seagate particularly). How much of this is OS 10.6 and 10.7, I don't know.

I would expect Glyph to be imune from these issues - for what they charge and the market that they support, especially. My Glyph SCSI HD and CD burner from 1998 were still working like a champ the day I gave them away - even tough my G4 still has a SCSI-U2W card in a PCI slot.

I have had issues with NewPower housings from OWC going bad. It was just after the one year warranty expired but, still, it is disappointing to see those useless boat anchors on my shelf after I paid good money for them. I have no experience with the OWC's house brand drive housings.

Michael Canavan · Post by **Michael Canavan** » Thu May 24, 2012 7:28 pm

ghobish wrote: If you have the infrastructure to support it, consider a gigabit Ethernet NAS drive. About 30% better speed than even eSATA.

Out of curiosity how is that even possible? eSATA is 1500mb to 3000mb, compared to 800mb for FW800, and 1000mb for Gigibit ethernet.
In real life tests they should perform roughly neck and neck with a 7200rpm drive. eSATA only barely outperforms FW800 on my system which has a 1500mb bus limit. (older 17" macbook pro)

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Fri May 25, 2012 9:31 am

Michael Canavan wrote:
ghobish wrote: If you have the infrastructure to support it, consider a gigabit Ethernet NAS drive. About 30% better speed than even eSATA.
Out of curiosity how is that even possible? eSATA is 1500mb to 3000mb, compared to 800mb for FW800, and 1000mb for Gigibit ethernet.
In real life tests they should perform roughly neck and neck with a 7200rpm drive. eSATA only barely outperforms FW800 on my system which has a 1500mb bus limit. (older 17" macbook pro)

I have run many tests - back when my NewPower housing worked properly as it has ports for usb, FW-400, FW-800 and eSATA.

Transferring 500MB blocks of files back and forth from me 2010 iMac, I found that I never got the full rated speed - no surprise there. However, the transfer speeds relative to each other, were as advertised. eSATA was about 8x faster than FW-400, 6.5x faster than usb-2, a little under 4x faster than FW-800. My machine has a 3G buss rate and I was using a WD Caviar Black in my external.

Theoretically, in your machine, eSATA cannot be even 2x faster and that is limited by your PCI bus speed. Even if full rated, you are not likely to notice much of a difference unless you do what I did and do a timed transfer of a huge block of data.

In real world applications, I notice some difference but not much unless I am doing a complete backup and/or restore. Then I make sure that I use eSATA as it shaves hours from a Time Machine restore - did two last weekend and accidentally did the first via usb - took 10 hours while I did it again via eSATA and took less than two.

Many times, I have transferred large files to my wife's 2011 iMac over Gigibit ethernet using CAT 6 cable through a Gigibit switch. It is a about the same a FW-800 sneakernet but I have never timed it. If it is 30% faster than eSATA on some machines, that would indicate a major problem that I do not experience on mine.

ghobish · Post by **ghobish** » Fri May 25, 2012 11:34 am

Michael Canavan wrote:
ghobish wrote: If you have the infrastructure to support it, consider a gigabit Ethernet NAS drive. About 30% better speed than even eSATA.

Out of curiosity how is that even possible? eSATA is 1500mb to 3000mb, compared to 800mb for FW800, and 1000mb for Gigibit ethernet.
In real life tests they should perform roughly neck and neck with a 7200rpm drive. eSATA only barely outperforms FW800 on my system which has a 1500mb bus limit. (older 17" macbook pro)

I might have misspoken regarding eSATA, I did the tests quite a while ago. However, my statement regarding FW800 stands. I found that GB eNet performs closer to it's max potential in the real world than FW800 does.

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