OWC reveals 500GB Mercury On-The-Go portable HDD
By Darren Murph 
posted Apr 18th 2008 9:49AM
posted Apr 18th 2008 9:49AM
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Ouch.. Thats steep pricing... But what do I care.. I invented the Internet.
How long I've been waiting for this... those horrid Rugged drives from LaCie just aren't doing it for me.
Oh but wait... their website shows an image of the "triple 800/400 USB interface" without any FW 400 port. Apparently you need a conversion cable that they supply with it.
http://eshop.macsales.com/images/otg/otg_triple_550.jpg
Yes, they come with a FW800-FW400 cable. These cables are impossible to find in any store, as are any flavor of FW800 (outside the apple store), but if for some weird reason you need a longer one or lose this one, you can find longer ones at monoprice, or obviously get another at OWC.
it works great...I have 2 MOTG drives.
It doesnt help that the picture shows the device upside down. I have this exact same enclosure...that's the bottom. Notice the little rubber feet in each corner.
Also check out their Asbestos In-The-Wall line of home products.
that thing is ugly! cant they do any better than that?
I don't really know why, but that's a shot of the bottom of the case. I have this exact enclosure at home. Note the four feet bumps in each corner. The top of the drive is just a clear curved acrylic enclosure revealing the drive inside, but it is marginally more attractive than a shot of the heatsink.
You can see the actual enclosure here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
fugly.
Looks like it was made to go with the first gen iMacs.
Does it come in Blueberry?
Crazy ugly, but Yay! for Firewire800. Hopefully it'll spur more manufacturers to bring out portable hardrives with a genuinely fast connector.
Also, how those acrylic enclosure react with heat? My alu 2.5" enclosures become quite hot with heavy SATA capacity drive.
I don't understand the purpose of this product...How is this a new product if OWC also makes the exact same SATA enclosure sans HD? And why would you not just buy the enclosure and SATA drive separately and save some money? Maybe I'm missing the point...
Not everyone likes to roll their own hard drives. Sometimes you just need to buy something that works right out of the box. Our company has bought over two dozen of these drives in the past few years for portable video use with FCP systems; there's no way I would have wanted to sit there and hand assemble/format all those.
OWC supports their products well, and they're very generous with the extra goodies. Each drive comes with a leather carrying pouch, AC adapter (which you won't need but nice to have), software, and a plethora of cables (FW 800 or 400, 800>400 adapter, USB). And personally, I don't care what they look like so long as they WORK.
JK
Does the "On-the-go" product name imply that it is not just USB, but USB-OTG? It'd be nice to see some actual "On The Go" drives out there (meaning the USB protocol, not some product name).
Of course, I'd really like to see a drive that has internal battery; bluetooth FTP; wifi for nfs/afp/cifs; USB client for mass-storage-mode, config and charging; and an RJ-45 (also for nfs/afp/cifs).
Ok, maybe not afp. But otherwise, yeah, that.
The one thing that kinda sucks for this is that it requires more power than what USB offers, so for USB use, you need the power adapter. It would've been nice if they had given the option of using two USB ports from the computer side (for additional power).
Untrue. I have the same enclosure with a Seagate 250GB drive. It runs fine with USB without power on both my PC and my MacBook Pro.
@JohnK
If we were talking about rolling your own NAS or similar I would agree. But all that is required to put the thing together is you slide the hard drive into the enclosure. For those two dozen drives your company has bought you could have saved somewhere around $1500. And the total time to assemble all 24 units would be 36 minutes..assuming 3 minutes per unit, which is generous.
But, yeah, I agree with you on OWC products. Overall they are exceptional.
check that math!
also, i'm assuming this is a 2.5 inch drive, right? if so, wouldn't people be interested in the weight and dimensions of a mobile drive? the writer shouldn't assume too much about what we (average readers) know.
I've actually had a pretty bad experience with OWC drives, much noisier than same size same speed drives from other manufacturers. Also, the drive keeps constantly starting up for no reason even though I am not accessing it. Now that may just be a mac thing, but it is annoying as hell...
Well, hmmm......expensive, ugly.
I'd rather go for the Buffalo 500GB MiniStation.
A lot cheaper, and the whole line is known to be really good.