Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: Ellis Vener on August 14, 2012, 03:51:15 pm

Title: Backing up: The OWC Voyager Q hard drive dock, a quick review
Post by: Ellis Vener on August 14, 2012, 03:51:15 pm
Voyager Q hard drive dock from OWC: quick review

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/Voyager/Hard_Drive_Dock

Pretty slick and easy to use. After powering it up and it connecting to your computer you turn it off, drop a bare SATA drive ( 2.5 or 3.5 inch) into the slot on top. Then power it back up, format the drive and then start backing up. I making my first set of back ups presently, and will then make a duplicate set for off site storage. I went with the Voyager Q as it has USB 3.0, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and eSATA connections. Cables for all connectors are included in the package.

I have several redundant bare SATA HDDs sitting around so I didn't have to purchase any for this purpose. I am backing up about 4TB of data so I'll be using 3x 1.5TB Western Digital Green Drives.

There is not much else to say about it. If it works it works.
Title: Re: Backing up: The OWC Voyager Q hard drive dock, a quick review
Post by: studio347 on August 14, 2012, 10:38:03 pm
I have an older version of Voyager Q. I like it very much.
One weakness though... after around 20 or 30 minutes, the HD becomes very hot. Recently, I got a small USB-powered fan and it solved the problem!
It's not a simple-clean setup with a small fan, but it's kind of fun!

One more thing for the old version, the firewire & USB 2 connection of older Voyager Q, doesn't work with 3TB HD. The eSata works with 3 TB HD.
...make sure that the newer one works with 3TB HD + firewire.
Title: Re: Backing up: The OWC Voyager Q hard drive dock, a quick review
Post by: Kirk Gittings on August 14, 2012, 11:12:41 pm
I've been using them for years-a slightly earlier version. They work pretty well. I use them with Carbon Copy Cloner on Macs and Casper on my PCs. Only draw back on the eSATA-if you don't have portmultiplier capability on your eSATA PC cards you can't hot swap (without rebooting or scanning for hardware changes)-otherwise the USBs are all hot swapable.
Title: Re: Backing up: The OWC Voyager Q hard drive dock, a quick review
Post by: francois on August 15, 2012, 06:18:13 am
I have a couple of them, the older version and they work wonderfully well. It's true that the docked HDs become very hot, especially during long cloning session but I never bothered to cool them.