[PKfanSteph]

Has anyone used these external hard drives?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack/

I was thinking of the 250Gb FW v2.

I am looking for something to back up my 100Gb MBPro with a decent amount of space leftover to backup/compile my huge CD-R collection (from my 2Gb HD days when I had to store EVERYTHING on CD-R), but I have a maximum of $200. I'm not mechanically enclined, so the easier to set up, the better. I was also looking at this but have read mixed reviews of WD drives.

Has anyone used the ministack, or have another suggestion?

[zippy]

Old dead thread, Arise, I command thee.....

So the original question is exactly the same question I was about to ask. The original poster never got a response, however.

Since I am pre-disposed to allow people second chances I am extending to you all a chance to redeem yourselves.


Now answer the damn question.



I am familiar with the preference of many on here to just buy an internal drive and an external enclosure and let them mate. However, I want a decent quality case - not some $15 piece of junk. Most of the nicer enclosures I find - those that include USB/FW400/FW800 and are relatively nice looking with good cooling design - are in the $40+ range. Getting one of those plus a decent drive may still be a bit cheaper, but the ministack also acts as a USB and FW hub. And I could use that too.

As an added bonus for experimenting, the ministack has an eSATA port which I'd like to try to hook to my DVR to see if I can externally expand my storage. If so, I'll get another drive for that purpose - though it would only need eSATA and not USB + FW.

Essentially, I think I'm sold on this little unit unless someone here has personal experience that would call it into question.

[kretara]

I use one, but it is a bit older (~ 2 years -- no esata) than the one you are looking at.

I have had no problems with it in that time.

I also have a few other OWC firewire enclosures and they are all pretty nice.

[Kickaha]

I'm interested in mini-centric solutions, preferably FW800, so thanks for reanimating this thread. I have four OWC FW400 enclosures that (unfortunately) have two flaws for my intended use of the mini as a media server:

1) Loud fans. Not *TOO* bad, but not great. I'll have to plug them in and let them run while I'm watching TV and see if the whine annoys me.

2) BRIGHT FSCKING BLUE LEDS. Holy crap, I cannot tell you how bright these things are. They are actually painful to look at in a dark room. I put electrical tape over them, but of *course* the enclosures are clear plastic, so the light just leaks out all around. They may have to go behind a little barrier of some sort, unless I feel brave with a soldering iron to replace the LEDs with something a little... dimmer.

[kretara]

Kick, my OWC enclosures (but not the MiniStack) have the same issue. I replaced the fans and disconnected the LED's.
Annoying as hell.

But, I have 2 4 bay (non-OWC) enclosures that were even louder even with quiet fans installed.

My MiniStack is pretty quiet if I don't have the Mini on top of it. If the Mini sits on top then the MiniStack's fan is on much more often.

Be sure to NOT put anything on top of your Mini. I did that once for about 3 hours (while encoding a video) and the top of the Mini was almost too hot to touch.

[Kickaha]

I'll need to look into rockin' cutting-edge LED technology, of course, but... I assume (almost certainly wrongly) that LEDs of that size are all going to be 5V, yes? So I could go grab a low-intensity LED and replace the blazing blue ball?

And thanks for the advice on not stacking mini on-or-under the miniStack. (Which kind of makes the name ironic.)

[zippy]

There are some other mini-centric drives out there. Lacie has one that I know of. The real advantage in the ministack from my view is the extra USB and FW ports. The 5 USB ports on the new mini may alleviate the need for extra USB ports, but I don't think you can ever have too many.

The only thing I wish was different on the ministack is the casing. I wish it were made of aluminum instead of plastic. Then again, that might drive the price out of reality.


As for the stacking issues, it is unfortunate that you can't go stack-wild with these kinds of things. It sounds like it's OK to put the mini on top of the ministack - though it might drive the noise up slightly. I think if I was ever able to do a mini + external drives scenario, I'd just have to get creative and make a nice rack. I envision an all metal construction - flat metal shelves about 7"x7" welded to two support columns at the back corners. Paint it black, or silver (or just use aluminum and leave it alone).

[kretara]

yeah, you can stack a Mini on top of the MiniStack, it just causes the fan to come on a bit more.

I have my MiniStack 6" behind my Mini while both are sitting on top of a 4 bay enclosure.

[zippy]

Here's another quick question that's a bit off topic, but relevant because this is what I'm planning on getting the drive for. Backup.

Is it kosher to get a 1TB drive, partition it into 2 drives and use 1 for TimeMachine and the other for SuperDuper? That way, I'd have the quick lost file recovery feature of TimeMachine and the catastrophic recovery (hopefully still bootable) feature of SuperDuper.

I realize that if this single 1TB drive goes down, I lose both backups... but then I can just get a new drive to replace it. It's not likely that both the external and the internal drive on the Mac would die at the same moment, so the only thing I'd lose are the deleted files that TimeMachine was saving for me.

I'll have to do something else for off-site safety, but I can probably do that with DVDs. I can archive my photos, docs and music that I have right now, and then do incrementals on occasion. Which brings up another question: Can SuperDuper do incremental backups of selected folders either directly to DVD, or to a folder that can then be dumped to DVD? nevermind: found answer on the web = no

[kretara]

To my knowledge, what you are looking to do is possible (I've never used time machine so????).
I would not recommend it, but you can do it.