G-Tech external drive failure?

[Stephen A. George]

I'm putting the finishing touches on a project that I've been editing for a month now and I'm applying a Nattress "film look" to the footage when my G-tech, G-Raid 1000 decides to dismount. I get a "media offline" warning from FCP. (not the first time this has happened)
I shut everything down, do a restart and my "capture scratch folder" and "render file folder" go missing on the G-tech.

I do a disk repair. No luck. I'm going out to buy Disk Warrior and see if that fixes the drive.

Has anyone had this kind of problem with this drive? It has a 2 year warranty so that's not a problem. I just need to find the captured files. The drive shows that it's still full (400GB) used but the folders are gone.

I guess I could re-import everything, but that's 15 hours of footage.

Help!

[Dave Perry]

Stephen,

Disc Warrior will probably fix the problem. It sounds like the volume structure info on the G-Tech got corrupted somehow, which seems pretty easy to do. We have 3 500 gb G-Tech G-raids and I can't stand them. They are aqlways having problems mounting if any little thing goes wrong or if you have to do a cold reboot.

We recently bought a LaCie 500gb raid and it works flawlessly.

[Ethan Cooper]

Originally Posted by Dave Perry

Stephen,

It sounds like the volume structure info on the G-Tech got corrupted somehow, which seems pretty easy to do. We have 3 500 gb G-Tech G-raids and I can't stand them. They are aqlways having problems mounting if any little thing goes wrong or if you have to do a cold reboot.

We recently bought a LaCie 500gb raid and it works flawlessly.

My experience with LaCie and G-Tech has been the exact opposite. About 1.5 years ago we lost an entire project when our 320gb (FW 800 raid) LaCie died. We then switched to a 800gb G-Raid and it has worked flawlessly for a year now. The G-Raid is always hooked up, always on, and hasn't had a single problem.
We've also had good luck with fw 800 raid enclosures from FireWire Depot.
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product_...oducts_id/1066
The enclosures cost around $120 each and depending on where you buy the drives from, you can have yourself a pretty inexpensive drive that is every bit as fast as either the LaCie or G-Raid. (I've checked out the speeds using BlackMagic's Disk Speed tool)
Just remember, when using these raided drives that you're playing with fire because hard drives do fail and will fail no matter what enclosure they're in. After our LaCie died I learned to keep only media and render files in the externals. All project files get saved to the internal drive and periodically backed up to CD's.

Back to your problem. When our drive went bad on us, we tried everything to get the data back, but it seems that a drive just went bad and we were unable to retrieve anything useful from it, not even with Disk Warrior. Hope your situation comes out better.

[Stephen A. George]

I started with Lacie drives then switched to G-Tech when Lacie was getting all the bad press.
Thankfully all the project files are intact on the internal drive.

Tech support contacted me Friday and said they would try to retrieve my files or send a replacement drive. I'll send the drive in tomorrow to see if they can rebuild the directory. Disc Warrior didn't correct the problem so this seems to be my only choice.

I'm happy to see an effort on G-tech's part to try and rebuild the files. Most manufactures would just send a replacement and be done with it.

[Craig Terott]

I thought I was the only one until I saw this thread.

I had a problem with my G-DRIVE mini. Had a bunch of files on it - then out of the blue it wouldn't mount to any computer. Sent it back to G-Tech and they sent me a replacement drive with all my files restored. I was happy about that... but then after approx 2 weeks with the new replacement drive it happened again! At that point I was very cautious about backups so there was no data lost. They offered to replace it again and I declined and got a refund.

Although G-Tech customer service was good. I'm too scared to buy another G-Tech drive.

[Khashyar Darvich]

It's interesting to read about the issues with G-Tech drives. In a couple of other threads, some forum members swear by the G-Raid drives.

I am actually needing 1 TB of external storage, and was planning on buying a 1 TB G-Raid.

Are there truly consistent problems with G-Raid drives?

If so, which other large external hard drives are recommended? I have also heard about issues with Lacie drives, and want to stay away from them.

As I understand, G-Raid uses Hitachi drives in them.

Khashyar

[Dave Perry]

Khashyar,

I guess it depends on to whom you speak. All I can give is my own personal experience. I don't know what manufacturer's drives are used in the LaCies or any other tech specs, but my experience favors the LaCies and for me personally, that's what I'll purchase in the future.

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thanks, Dave.

So, you had very bad experiences with all 3 of your G-Tech 500 Raid drives.

Do you think that there might have been some kind of compatibility issue or driver conflict? What comnputer were you using?

I am going to purchase a G5 Quad... I wonder if anyone has used the G-Tech drives with the new Mac Dual Core machines?

Khashyar

[Dave Perry]

Khashyar,

I use Macs. Nice thing about them is that you just plug in the drive and it mounts. No drivers to install.

I've had problems with one of the three G-Raids at work on a dual proc G5. But the 500gb LaCie raid we have, has never given us trouble. I use a LaCie D2 120 gb firwire drive at home on my Mac Mini and have never had a problem with it.

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hi David,

Perhaps I will also consider a Lacie RAID drive instead.

I wish there was some kind of community poll or statistics about the reliability of each of the drives.

Khashyar

[Ash Greyson]

LaCie's lower cost external RAIDs have had a terrible failure rate. Unless you are going with a full on RAID5 Fiber Raid, you will always have some issues but LaCie certainly has more... WAY more than the G series. I had 4 or 5 LaCie drives die and upon researching it on the net, found it to be all too common. I currently have a MiniG external RAID and a G-Tech raid, both performing flawlessly.

Dont trust just a couple people's experience... check out the user reviews online... pretty eye opening.

For Lacie external:

http://reviews.cnet.com/LaCie_d2_Har...2.html?tag=nav

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...&s=electronics


The lack of reviews of the G-Tech units should speak loudly, when your gear works you dont go on the net to vent or warn people.



ash =o)

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thanks very much, Ash.

I probably am going to buy a G-Raid drive, since I have heard a few others compliment their performance and reliability.

They have a 2 year warranty, if I am not mistaken, and well as the advantage of a cooling fan (which should help extend their reliability and life).

Khashyar

[Andrew Khalil]

I just got and installed a G-raid 500 today and I've been capturing on it all day. So far it has been great, couldn't ask for more - it was a breeze to install, appears well built and it fan cooled.
Further down my desk, I have a LaCie 400gb FireWire800 D2 drive and it has been working great for over a year now.
The only reason I didn't get another LaCie is because I'll be editing far from home this summer in a non-air conditioned room, so I'm thinking the fan in teh G-raid would be a good advantage there.