Dan writes, "I have ST, TNG, DS9, and Vgrblech on DVD; loaners from a friend. Haven't started going thru them yet. Recently finished with BSG and caught up with SG*U, with a sidetrack of Weeds and Tudors)."
I've got ALL the Trek you mentioned -- mine, mine, MINE, not loaners! :-D Friend gave me BSG too, plus Firefly, and most recently, Babylon 5 in its entirety. Still need to watch B5. "You mean it doesn't even mount? When plugged in, does it show up in System Profiler at all? Does Disk Utility see it?" It mounted SOMETIMES, and once it mounted, who knew whether it was going to function, or hang up eiher Disk Utility or the whole Mac. Disk Utility and System Profile saw it SOMETIMES. That's the key word -- SOMETIMES, and was equally applicable to whether I had it plugged in Firewire or USB, and even which Mac I tried it with (originally the Quicksilver and iBook, but also a B&W and the Mini -- all these Macs running various flavors of Tiger, and once the B&W booted in OS 9!). Sorry, but I can NOT rely upon any drive (much less a supposed primary backup!) that mounts only SOMETIMES, which hangs up the whole system and forces me to hard reboot on half the occasions it DOES mount, and I'm speaking of it in the past tense because I got rid of the freakin' thing. "Sorry to hear that. OWC has a very good reputation normally. :\" They did for me too (er, well, short of my BF's iBook battery issue anyway), until I bought that damn Mercury Elite Pro. And because of the way they handled it, not only am I never going to buy anything else from them again, I won't be having anything good to say about them to anyone, anywhere. The third and last time I sent the thing back, telling them I thought the unit was mostly likely a dud and beyond repairs, I asked them to please send me a BRAND NEW ONE that works, or to please refund my money. They did neither -- they sent me the same unit back with supposed internal replacements, and it was still busted. Oh and turns out we (my BF and I) went Googling and found out OWC's "customer service" IS really this iffy. When the products work and the buyers are happy right away, then yeah, OWC is wonderful. That's how it was for me until I bought the Mercury Elite Pro, and how it happens to be most of the time for people who buy stuff from OWC -- and when a lot of buyers say they get good stuff at decent prices from a seller, of course the seller's gonna get a good rep. I didn't buy often but what I did buy from them always WORKED, and I was happy, so they were cool by me too, and that's why I went to their site when I was looking to buy a bigger/better external drive for my backups. But we also saw a number of OWC customers who, like me, had bought things that didn't work, and their experiences were similar to mine. > >Also the high speed internet (Verizon DSL) is not playing nice with > >my ethernet network "Details please, preferably in a new thread." Yup, think I'll do just that and stick with the OWC drive here, especially since Irrational John had comments and questions. The subject is moot since I'm rid of the thing and don't plan to buy another one, but maybe the speculating could be interesting: "OWC has a number of different flavors of their "Mercury Elite Pro". Did you get the "FireWire 400+ USB 2.0" or the "FireWire 800/400 + USB2 + eSATA (aka Quad Interface)"?" I bought this one: "FireWire 400+ USB 2.0" Here's a picture of it: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/eliteclassic "I'm assuming you bought an enclosure that had the 500 GB hard drive already installed, correct?" Yes. "Neither USB nor Firewire "work" for you? After three replacements? Have you tried using the enclosure on another system? (Borrow some time on friend's perhaps?) Do you have (or could borrow) another enclosure so you could test if that works on the system you're having problems with?" Right. Neither USB nor Firewire worked reliably, and yes, after three "replacements." I have four Macs here with working USB and Firewire ports, functional cables and all of them got used in testing. These Macs are: G4 Quicksilver 867 running Tiger 10.4.11 (this is my main Mac) G4 1.5 GHz Mini running Tiger 10.4.2 (ON PURPOSE! *NOT* UPDATING!) G3/800 iBook running Tiger 10.4.9 (no NEED to update) G3/450 B&W running Tiger 10.4.3 can dual boot into 9.2.2. This is a spare machine which just hangs around in my living room in case of emergencies and using it for the OWC drive was the first real use it actually got, but it's a working, running Mac. ALL these Macs, AS THEY ARE, meet the system requirements listed for the OWC Mercury Elite Pro. 1. There are no other nearby systems I could try -- my BF and I are in a LDR (I'm in NJ, he's in NH) and I don't know anyone else who has Macs. I did give him the Mercury Elite Pro but he said he wants to try it on one of his Linux boxes (although he does have a dual 1GHz Quicksilver and a G3/800 iBook) -- when he gets a chance, anyway. It could be weeks or months before he even has time to take it out of the box. 2. No, I don't have another enclosure I could try -- my present external backup -- yes, the one I was hoping to "move up from" when I bought the OWC one -- is in an ancient LaCie enclosure my BF gave me in Aug 2007, whose FW ports died circa Feb 2009 and now only works USB, and whose bridge will only "see" drive which is 128 GB or smaller. Besides, if I were to have removed the 500 GB HD out of the Mercury Elite Pro enclosure, that would have voided the warranty and THEN if OWC had refused to replace the thing or refund my money, it would have been MY fault! I realize, I don't care about that NOW, and my boyfriend (who has the mechanical ability I totally lack, and would have done it for me if I'd asked him to while he was here) might very well just do that when he gets to messing around with it at his house. In any event, the LaCie, knock on wood, ALWAYS WORKS even if it's slow as molasses since the FW died on it, and by THIS time, after a few months fighting with OWC, approaching climb-the-walls-desperate for a bigger drive to put in it. But the LaCie, I've hooked it up to and used it successfully with the Quicksilver, the iBook and the Mini. In fact it was so good I wasn't going to throw it out if the Mercury Elite Pro had worked out for me: I was just going to retire it and keep it in a drawer "just in case." ~Yersinia. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
