Anyone else have chronic G-RAID problems?

R

Red Guitar

Member
Well I've just about lost allegiance to this brand. I'm now on my 3rd return of a G-RAID drive due to a noisy (grinding sound) fan. And two of them are for the same drive, about 6 months apart. On the most recent go-round, I pleaded with support to please cross-ship me a drive so I don't have to buy yet ANOTHER drive to copy all the data before I wipe the faulty drive and ship it. We're just a small production house and can't afford the time & cost. I was told the only way they would consider a cross-ship is if I started by filling out their support form. Did that, and no dice. All I got was a form letter telling me to ship my drive.

I would think after buying 3 drives, and 3 returns, well what can I say? Every editor, shooter, director, etc. I know in this business is over-delivering on service and quality to survive in this economy. I would expect the same from hardware manufacturers. Any recommendations for a well-performing drive would be greatly appreciated!
 
I've never seen any evidence that premium-priced "name brand" drive enclosures are worth the extra $$. I most frequently use raw drives and plug-in docking stations. No fans!
 
Red Guitar said:
Thanks for the advice. Are fans not required because most of the drive is not enclosed?
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Most of the drive sticks up into the ambient air. Stays cooler than in any case.

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eSATA and USB2. $38 at my neighborhood shop.
 
Just to balance things out here a little: I have found G-technology drives to be some of the best on the market. Fast, reliable and rock solid. I have ten of their drives. Everything from USB powered mini's, to Firewire and E-SATA g-raids to E-SATA g-speed es drives and have not had a single problem. I recommend them to everyone I know.

Jim
 
Jim Carswell said:
Just to balance things out here a little: I have found G-technology drives to be some of the best on the market. Fast, reliable and rock solid. I have ten of their drives. Everything from USB powered mini's, to Firewire and E-SATA g-raids to E-SATA g-speed es drives and have not had a single problem. I recommend them to everyone I know.

Jim
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I'm glad you're not going through what we are. Three G-RAID drives, three major problems, two of them with the same drive, not a happy camper here. A Google search shows many others experiencing bad fans/grinding noises with them.
 
I have returned my G-RAID drive twice already - and it's died again. I am EXTREMELY frustrated, and feel that their service department has simply placated me, and not done a thing to actually fix the drive - or, if it isn't repairable - provide a new drive. There's no point in using a drive if it's going to fail so readily. Very, very bad service and public relations. I have contacted the company I bought the drive from to see if they are getting similar complaints, and if they have any leverage to help me out.
 
domg said:
I have returned my G-RAID drive twice already - and it's died again. I am EXTREMELY frustrated, and feel that their service department has simply placated me, and not done a thing to actually fix the drive - or, if it isn't repairable - provide a new drive. There's no point in using a drive if it's going to fail so readily. Very, very bad service and public relations. I have contacted the company I bought the drive from to see if they are getting similar complaints, and if they have any leverage to help me out.
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Sorry to hear you're having a similar experience. I finally broke my expensive G-Raid addiction by moving backup storage to Amazon S3, and editing from LaCie drives, which cost less and have never failed on me.
 
I dont see how "stack drives" compare to G-raid's since they aren't RAID and have no data redundancy. I use that setup for storing data I dont care to lose - using stacks of 80gb sata drives I find in the trash.. I also see no point in stand alone expensive raid 0/1 externals. They are great for field work, but for the office, one can build up multi terrabyte raid-5 arrays for less money which are faster and easier to maintain. I myself havent dealt with G-raids - for that price, I'd go with Glyph drives.
 
I also just had to recover and reformat my 4tb g-raid...I turned on my mac and it said the drive needed to be formatted!!! Needless to say My weekend was shot. Then again my cheap Iomega works flawess for over 2 years.. All HD's WILL fail ... the only question is when. And for me it is always at the 11th hour of a deadline.
 
Something to always remember is that a self contained external drive product is made of four primary items, hard shell enclosure, hard drive from one of the big 4 brands (Seagate, Hitachi, WD, Samsung), the bridge components which connect the hard drive to the external cable connection of your choice and the power supply with/without fan. More often than not, when someone says my XYZ external product failed, the drive is fine (or multiple drives), what failed is probably the bridge component or power supply. I've had 4 Lacie D2 externals fail, out of warranty, take them apart and drop the bare drive in a dock or an empty external box such as those from OWC and the drives keep working.

All you are buying when getting Lacie or G-raid is a self contained product with OEM drives inside which honestly may not be given the same manufacturing quality as buying bare drives from the same drive makers.

Sure anything can fail, but do yourself a favor and buy bare internal SATA drives with 3-5 year warranties. Buy quality enclosures from OWC or the likes who truly stand behind their products and simply put together what you need.

I think hype and cool looks is what draws buyers to G-Raid and Lacie and not necessarily the best of components, all at a premium.

For anyone who wants the easiest raid 1 or 0 setup, just buy two drive docks and 2 bare drives and go with it. Use Apple Disk Utility or the likes to setup the raids and get to work. When those are full pull them, store them and put 2 new drives in the docks. Nothing more simple. The next choice would be The OWC or NewerTech Guardian 2 drive raids. Reliable, simple, travel fine if needed.

I am amassing more data now than I actually need to have access to at any moment. So a 4TB or 6TB dual drive raid does well. Fill it and unplug, get another. There will never be a single setup, raid box, enclosure that will be the end all be all. They all will get filled and then the larger size drives will be a must. I have 8 eSata ports on my Mac Pro and they're all in use, so I'm ready to move things offline.

I personally think the Newertech Guardian 4TB raid from OWC is the best bang for the buck. The 6TB version is overpriced for now, until the Hitachi 3TB bare drives come down a little in price EDIT: which has come down a little, almost in line per TB price to 4TB raid.
 
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photonashville is spot on, i never trust data to any single drive, let alone a drive that i haven't researched the reviews for. buy the shell, fill it with a well reviewed hard drive.

my current workhorse has been treating me very very well, for around $500(on sale) a Raid10 4tb space (8tb total drives)

this box
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...22001&cm_re=mediasonci-_-16-322-001-_-Product

and 4 of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2245&cm_re=2tb_samsung-_-22-152-245-_-Product

pushes average 130-150mb/sec on esata. silent and cool

most important thing in an external raid box is for it to have hardware raid built in. or else if your computer goes nutz you won't be able to just plug it into another system.
 
Chris Santucci said:
I have 3 OWC drives for editing and they are the shiz.
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Chris, which models do you have? I've been strongly considering these for the field and in the office. I've been an OWC customer for ages and I've always felt that I'd be able to trust their products.

Going back to the subject, we had at least 300 G-Raids at my old company. We had backups of backups. Also a terrablock. But I'd say off the top of my head about 5% of the drives would fail and it was always their internal cards, power supply and such. They had a new model out which I remember being completely plagued with issues. They were wonderful with customer service, I'd call, mail it in but it would at times take up to a month to get back. I think once or twice we got replacement drives but one drive was out for at least a month and we had to purchase a new one in time for a client handoff. On the phone it always seemed to be a very small operation with only a few people working. I'm not sure if that's true but I've always been given that impression. Overall I haven't been phased, personally I could search for any drive and I'll come across millions of comments about them failing. I guess most people don't have a reason to review a drive unless it gives them one. So I've personally thought I'll stick with what I know. Also, I know that disconnecting these improperly could damage the already sensitive components in them. Once they start clicking and not mounting in the first attempt or so, I'll become paranoid and switch drives then run tests. I really want a tape based system for myself.
 
I used this in the past:
http://www.buy.com/prod/sans-digita...ta/q/sellerid/20821718/loc/101/219365998.html
Its an external raid but you can pick what drives you want in it.

A 4 drive graid cost 1300 bucks. You would need 2 to get any real speed. (ok 150-200 mb/sec is ok for most people, BUT NOT ME)

The link I posted cost around 300 for the enclosure. WD 1 tb Caviar blacks cost 90 bucks (720 for 8). That ends up costing 1020. That's less then the graid and has twice the drives. If you spend 90 extra bucks you can buy spare encase any drive ever fails. Only uses 2 sata ports and can sustain over 300MB/s transfer in raid 10.(faster in raid 5 for reading)

Personaly I needed cash about 6 months ago and sold mine. i switched to a 6 disk internal.

As fr graid...i dont like the idea of having to ship back the whole thing if one drive fails.
 
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