G5 Firewire Drives ...
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 8:51 PM
I’ve seen a whole bunch of firewire hard drive enclosures recently that mimic or match the sleek aluminum look of the Apple Powermac G5. The majority of them are simple external enclosures in which you supply the drive although some manufacturers sell them as ready-to-go units. In all cases, the drives are made of brushed aluminum like the G5, and convieniently cool the drives inside with better airflow than most plastic firewire enclosures.
The first is the Pleiades from MacPower Tytech, a Tawainese manufacturer of many cool external cases including one of the first to match the form factor for the Mac Mini, the M9. The Pleides is sold rebranded through Rosewill in a variety of configurations including Firewire 400 and 800 or both. The Pleides has a newer bigger brother called the Pleaides Taurus, that allows you to host two SATA II hard drives. You supply the hard drives in either case.
OWC has a family of similar looking drives called the Mercury Elite Firewire including their slightly larger G5-inspired RAID drive, which they dub the Mercury Elite Pro Raid. I’m not sure if these are unique to OWC or if they’re also MacPower units but OWC has a known relationshop with Macpower since they sell the aforementioned M9 Mac mini enclosure as the MiniStack2. OWC only sells these with the drive preinstalled but the drives come with EMC’s Retrospect backup software and Speedtools. Looking at the rear of both the Pleides and the Mercury Elite, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that perhaps Macpower is involved with the Mercury Elite and that OWC simply has a different external cover on it.
There’s another simple g5-enclosure not related to the Pleiades enclosure mentioned above called the Dual-G and is sold by a company coincidently called Macpower in Florida but is not affiliated with the other Macpower. Confusing, I know.
The next is a family of drives from G-Raid, which is slightly better looking than the previously mentioned drives (and a bit more expensive too) and tends to blend the style cues of the G5 with a traditional form factor. They seem to have been customed designed by G-Technology and look very sharp atop a Powermac G5 case. Unfortunately, these enclosures are not available seperately and ship only with a drive preinstalled.
The latest addition to this market is the MiniG family from TransIntl, which looks most like a G5 (a shrunken G5 case) and includes the G5 handles and power button. These drives come in one, two and four drive models and in SATA and Firewire so you have a lot of choice. You can buy the enclosure alone or buy them supplied with drives but either way these good looks come at a price.
Which would you pick?
Update: Rosewill has discontinued their sale of the Macpower Pleiades. We’ll keep you updated if any more information is available.
I’ve seen a whole bunch of firewire hard drive enclosures recently that mimic or match the sleek aluminum look of the Apple Powermac G5. The majority of them are simple external enclosures in which you supply the drive although some manufacturers sell them as ready-to-go units. In all cases, the drives are made of brushed aluminum like the G5, and convieniently cool the drives inside with better airflow than most plastic firewire enclosures.
The first is the Pleiades from MacPower Tytech, a Tawainese manufacturer of many cool external cases including one of the first to match the form factor for the Mac Mini, the M9. The Pleides is sold rebranded through Rosewill in a variety of configurations including Firewire 400 and 800 or both. The Pleides has a newer bigger brother called the Pleaides Taurus, that allows you to host two SATA II hard drives. You supply the hard drives in either case.
OWC has a family of similar looking drives called the Mercury Elite Firewire including their slightly larger G5-inspired RAID drive, which they dub the Mercury Elite Pro Raid. I’m not sure if these are unique to OWC or if they’re also MacPower units but OWC has a known relationshop with Macpower since they sell the aforementioned M9 Mac mini enclosure as the MiniStack2. OWC only sells these with the drive preinstalled but the drives come with EMC’s Retrospect backup software and Speedtools. Looking at the rear of both the Pleides and the Mercury Elite, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that perhaps Macpower is involved with the Mercury Elite and that OWC simply has a different external cover on it.
There’s another simple g5-enclosure not related to the Pleiades enclosure mentioned above called the Dual-G and is sold by a company coincidently called Macpower in Florida but is not affiliated with the other Macpower. Confusing, I know.
The next is a family of drives from G-Raid, which is slightly better looking than the previously mentioned drives (and a bit more expensive too) and tends to blend the style cues of the G5 with a traditional form factor. They seem to have been customed designed by G-Technology and look very sharp atop a Powermac G5 case. Unfortunately, these enclosures are not available seperately and ship only with a drive preinstalled.
The latest addition to this market is the MiniG family from TransIntl, which looks most like a G5 (a shrunken G5 case) and includes the G5 handles and power button. These drives come in one, two and four drive models and in SATA and Firewire so you have a lot of choice. You can buy the enclosure alone or buy them supplied with drives but either way these good looks come at a price.
Which would you pick?
Update: Rosewill has discontinued their sale of the Macpower Pleiades. We’ll keep you updated if any more information is available.
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