Newer Technology Voyager Q Quad-Interface Drive Dock for 2.5" & 3.5" SATA Drives

I just received my Newer Technology Voyager q. The price was higher then I wanted to pay but all in all I think it's a decent value considering all the cables included and forward compatibility with USB3.0. I plugged it in using firewire 800. I made sure to follow the printed instructions exactly as I was leery of the product since others have reviewed it poorly. I inserted the drive then turned the power on just as the instructions stated and proceeded to back up my iPhoto library - 72.75 GB. I watched Activity monitor as it started to copy and for the first 20 seconds or so I thought the drive was going to have to go back as it's transfer rates were in the single digits. But by the time I was able to google "slow firewire 800 mac" I saw the transfer rates jump up to between ~50 and 73 MB/sec. I'm very pleased with this as the theoretical maximum for fire wire 800 (800Mb/Sec) is 100MB/Sec and of course I expect some data management overhead and also I'm not in a lab environment so I'm sure the conditions are not the same as when the standard's max. was ascertained. At the end of the file transfer, perhaps the last 20 seconds, the transfer rate fell to below 10MB/Sec just like when it first started.My configuration: Late 2009 iMac with 2.6 ghz quad core i5. I have upgraded the internal HDD to a WD caviar black 2TB w/64MB cache assembled 23 Feb 2011. The drive I'm backing up to is a 1TB WD green power 32MB cache assembled 14 Jan 2008.Total time for 72.75GB transfer on my setup was ~22 minutes. If I did my math right that's just over 33 MB/Sec or about 1/3 faster then I had been able to achieve with USB2.0. I didn't calculate down to the second but I think I'm +/- less then 5%.When browsing the drive there seems to be an aggressive power management scheme in place as if I wait more then a minute to click on something the drive spins down - this could be due to the green drive I'm using but I'm not sure.EDIT:I decided to do a slightly more through review and test a second HDD. I have an old WD Raptor 10,000 RPM drive from 5 Dec 2004. It's only a 74GB drive So I decided to try a smaller clutch of files - this time 1.18GB of music. It took 17 seconds to transfer - an average of 69.4 MB/Sec. IMO that's very good.Now to see how well it holds up over time.EDIT again, 10/2012:I have a Mac Book Air now with USB 3.0. USB 3.0 does not work with this device, the supplied cable, and the Mac. I think this is a pretty serious short coming since there is no native USB 2.0 port. Using an old USB 2.0 hub I was able to get the interface to work and I have found on the official apple forum there are a number of people with this issue on the MBAir. If you have a MBAir and intend to use the USB 3.0 port this device will not work as USB 3.0, but it will work as firewire or USB2.0. I've left the rating at 5 stars because I believe the problem is with MAC. The device otherwise works as described. I've had it for a year now and had used it on my iMac as a regular HDD, left it on all the time. The power savings mode worked perfectly and it was a good device to use for keeping my Aperture and iTunes library on.

Since unpacking and plugging in, drive and sled have worked great. However, I can't daisy chain my bus powered firewire 800 Compact Flash card reader on it. It also doesn't seem to want to show up when I place it last in line after the CF Card reader.So has worked great as the removable sled it is. (though drive seems to run a bit hot - can't blame the sled for that) just inconvenient that I can't use it in a FW daisy chain that is typically a plus feature for FW technology.

I purchased 2 of these to move files from my MacBook or my MacBook Pro to external hard drives or to move files from one external HD to another one.Both NewerTech Voyager Q's have the same problems:1. They never mount to my computers via Firewire and the HDs are not recognized by my computers. I have tried both the cables that came with these units and with quality cables I subsequently purchased myself. The results are the same: when they do spin-up, they never mount via Firewire. When they spin-up but never mount, they stop spinning while the power is still on.2. The USB cables mount sporadically: some times they do not mount and other times the connection drops during file transfer. Thus the units work very intermittent. File transfer - a simply action - thus takes a long time if at all.Newer Tech's service has been as bad as the Voyager Q's:- Their latest email says "customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance." I 1st contacted their service over a month ago and to this day they to this day haven't done a thing to provide the warranty.- Their info says that one must include the RMA # when return anything. That's funny: the email they sent me says "RMA Number: " and then NOTHING - they haven't given me a #.- They have only offered to do anything about 1 of the 2 docks. Both are within the 1-year warranties, but action - if doing nothing is considered to be action - has been for only 1 of the 2 docks...I have read a number of other reports of the same problems from other people on the internet. I wish I had followed these warnings...Amazon & J&R's (seller on Amazon) service has been excellent. I also like using Amazon's website. Good prices with good service wins my vote!MY ADVICE: AVOID BUYING VOYAGER Q.