NewerTech miniStack v3 External Drive enclosure

gearboy · Post by **gearboy** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 11:58 am

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20 ... WU2ESMSV3/

Is anyone using one of these? I need to pick up a new future-proof FW400/800/eSATA enclosure and I like this footprint. Wondering pros/cons regarding this one, or any other reasonably priced enclosure that any of you can recommend.

Remember, it needs to be a FW400/800/eSATA enclosure.

thanks!

Jeff

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:27 pm

I've been using one since September 2007, and it's the second best drive I've ever owned, and close enough in quality/quietness to the Glyph enclosures for it to be a no-brainer due to the price difference. I would rate it higher than EZQuest (another top brand for media work) in terms of robustness and quietness, as well as overall performance.

They use different drives in each size, based on ratings at OneEgg (AFAICT). Although when I checked their site the other day, I could no longer find where they post which drive is used in each configuration.

I have a 750 GB model which uses a Seagate Barricuda later rev with the Oxford 923(?) chipset for the multi-interface bridging. I need to get a 1 TB drive desperately but must wait a week as I've hit the maximum allowed number of payments on my credit card for this cycle (a weird concept, really -- why would they want to block a payment?). I'm hoping its price comes down even more in that time; it's been $430 for a couple of months at least. Last I checked, it used the Hitachi top-end drive.

The one and only caveat you need to be aware of is that the powered hub concept is false; at best, the only power you'll receive is on the connector type that matches the one hooked to your computer. I guess this makes sense technically, but I don't know a lot about how the various computer device interfaces of today (vs. the old days, when I did it for a living) get their data and phantom power back and forth.

I connect via FW400 (my only option for now), and am not thrilled that I can't plug in my dongles or my card readers and thus have to add more wear and tear on all of the above by constantly swapping them out on the USB ports of my G4 iMac. I can't remember whether I was able to get a properly powered feed to my RME Fireface 800 via FW400 or not; I think the ministack V3 may be internally set to FW800 if either firewire port is used to connect to the main computer.

gearboy · Post by **gearboy** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:05 pm

I was planning on simply purchasing the empty case version as I am going to add a 750GB drive internally to the G5 and take the 36GB drive that's currently in there and move it to the NewerTech miniStack. Glad that it gets your approval.

I just want something with eSATA so that it's future-proof. I also like the footprint a lot. This thing will stream samples through my new FW800 PCI card as well as serve as a backup drive for audio projects that are on the G5.

Jeff