Anyone looked at / tried out the Stardom Safe Capsule as an external drive? I like the Raid 1 feature and the design appears to fit nicely under the ATV. Price isnʻt too bad either with the $20 rebate.
After posting the above, I finally decided to order the Stardom Safe Capsule and two Hitachi HD31000 drives ( retail pak - never ship OEM drives unless you know and trust the shippers well. ). So far itʻs been great… Iʻve got a local RAID1 box for movies and it fits with the Apple decor. Even though the manual doesnʻt mention PC or Apple TV use, it was a simple setup. ( Fat32 is a waste of space but I wanted WinXP compatiblity for other uses. ) I set up on the ATV as a secondary drive and have been watching for a week now with no glitches.
The only downsides Iʻve found so far: Though the fan is pretty quiet and thermally controlled, it makes a slight whir. Sort of like a laptop fan. Not noticeable when thereʻs a movie running but since I live in a small space, I usually turn everything off when Iʻm not actively watching…( Not such a bad thing to do anyway…) Iʻm exploring other cooling options.
I originally ordered WD Caviar Black drives ( yes, overkill but I like the dual support spindle concept ). After a bit of reading while I waited for FEDEX, I found that WD drives are no longer RAID capable unless you buy the RAID Edition for an additional $50 each. Nice of them to mod the firmware so TLER isnʻt user controlled anymore. I cancelled the order. I wonʻt be back to buy WD anytime soon.
A lot of reviews later, I ordered two Hitachi HD31000 ( Deskstar 7K1000 in a retail box ). Not as green as Caviar Green, not as fast as Caviar Black but no issues with RAID either. $79 for the Stardom box, $84 each for the drives…