Four Bay Drive Unit Buying Advice needed

[Jack D.]

Any of you guys ever buy/own one of these http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8798722213&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1 ?

I'm thinking of putting all my loose and extra drives in this one firewire enclosure and I was wondering if you had any other recommendations. This one uses one Oxford 911 chipset/board to drive 2 bays (as opposed to 1 each) and I thought I read somewhere that this might be a negative issue. Also, I'm not doing video or anything that requires all drives to be reading/writing at once so speed is not really an issue here. It's pretty much going to be a big music server. Thanks!

[mattkime]

it can be cheaper just to put your drives into individual enclosures. yes, it can be a pain to have two drives to a chipset as one bad drive can disrupt the connection for both.

its a matter of preference. i prefer individual enclosures.

[volcs0]

I've had a few of these cases (they were dual ones). They are OK - one lasted a year, the other lasted 2 years. The power supply ended up going in both. The drives were OK.

I finally invested in this:

http://store.yahoo.com/cooldrives/qudrmifi80dr.html

It was $199 when I got it about six months ago.

So far, it has worked well, though I had problems with the firewire 800 on my first gen G5. I never bothered to troubleshoot - I just use the Firewire 400, and I've had no troubles.

[Guitarman]

why don't you get a removeable drive enclosure and a bunch of $6 sleds for the extra drives. You can get a 2 bay enclosure.

[jdc]

i bet those fans are loud