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Fantom GreenDrive 1TB USB 2.0/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive with 2 Year Warranty GD1000EU Box of Horrors – mg! – Northern California
This is my long story, a journal of pain …

Not to be confused with the GDP1000EU, GDII1000EU, GF1000EU or the upcoming Fantom GD1000Q, I purchased the GD1000EU from another e-merchant with the help of a gift certificate. With my experience, there is little surprise of the many variants.

Background: I needed quick, portable storage expansion for my Mac Pro of 500MB internal HDD. Video editing was gobbling up space faster than I anticipated. For the price, eSata, and whatever research of the Fantom, I took the risk.

First sign of trouble after 3 days
At the time, I was running Tiger O/S. I had no problems moving countless video clips to the GreenDrive. Then came an abrupt power failure. Restarting the Mac, the finder window recognized the drive (by displaying the icon), but would not access the drive. Selecting the drive via Finder would crash and auto-start Finder. The disk utility was of little help with similar symptoms. I switched from eSata to USB. Nothing. I moved the drive to a PC machine. Explorer did not recognize it. Deeper diagnostics revealed it knew a drive was there but would not assign a drive letter.

Asking help from Support
I thought I had enough clues to share with their support department. I would later prove myself wrong. Their suggestion, buy Disk Warrior – a 0 software utility. That was it. I’m on my own.

Too proud
I did not want to spend an extra 0 after spending 0 on a drive + eSata card and cable. And I wanted my data. Though the information exists on miniDV, I prematurely deleted the originals from the internal HDD (doh!). My Unix skills (untouched in years) kicked it. I used Terminal to manually snake my way to the Mounted volumes. There it was! The directory … the files … everything. I could get everything!

But it gets harder
My first step, a giant recursive copy of the parent directory. Then came … the reboot of the Mac! What happened? I try again … REBOOT! Maybe there was too much data. I copy smaller sub directories. REBOOT. I start copy one file at a time (well, this sucks). In short, I discovered the hard way that there were random files (not based on type or size) that would reboot the box if I try to cp or mv from the Fantom to the Mac. I tried both eSata and USB. Same, miserable results.

Confidence in Tiger is shaken
The O/S knew about the drive and contents. I could not understand why a Terminal command would reboot a product known for its stability. Why would Terminal see it but not Tiger? Perplexed. So I research … did third party products exist to replace Finder? It wasn’t easy (for me), but I did find a free trial from a Russian-esque site. I download, I install … I try.

Success without Tiger’s Finder
Wow! Though crummy-looking UI, this app (forgot the name) was easy to use. And in minutes, I had restored all my data back to the Mac’s HDD.

Throwing good money after bad
Now what? I had a useless brushed metal brick at home. Maybe this Disk Warrior could do miracles it brags about? After cursing for 30 minutes, I went to the DW site and downloaded the app after giving them my credit card info.

Drive restored!
I can say DW did it’s thing. It fixed broken directories, restored, the data and my drive was back to day one. Maybe, I was unlucky. With 0 insurance, I can get past my troubles.

Troubles come: Kernel Panic!
I took me a couple days to get the pattern. It had nothing to do with accessing files or having a web browser up, just having the Fantom mounted. It was kernel panic. It can come anytime. The Mac can be up overnight or go down in 5 minutes. The green screen of death, something I had never seen before the Curse of the Fantom.

Disk Warrior again
Another side effect of kernel panic is the return of “see Fantom, but can’t touch” problem. Back to square one. But I had DW. I run it again of what will be a routine.

Time to dump the Tiger
Certainly the unreliability of the Fantom is not questioned. But what could it possibly do to make an O/S crash? Maybe there were other problems fixed in (Snow) Leopard? I take the risk and spend *more* money to make this crummy drive work.

Going with Snow Leopard
The kernel panic still occurs, but not nearly as often with Snow Leopard. It is stable enough to archive files to, but never to leave powered/mounted. I can say, after restarting the Mac after panic, Finder does recognize and accesses the drive, something not done with Tiger.

Conclusions: I spent *another* 0 on an internal HDD 1TB. (read my Amazon review). So easy! Should have done that in the first place. This 0 external drive cost me over 0+.

As for Disk Warrior, as expensive as it is it gets its 5-stars.

Micronet: GD1000EU G-Force GreenDrive line of external USB and eSATA disk drives feature the latest advances in power saving technology and ROHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) compliant materials and process. The G-Force Green Drive gives the consumer the ability to minimize his or her carbon footprint without sacrificing performance. Fantom Drives GreenDrive USB 2.0 Hard Drives are a power conscious step forward to provide maximum capacity and performance while reducing power consumption by up to 40%. The G-Force GreenDrive USB 2.0 Hard Drive family feature sturdy aluminum casing to provide maximum durability, fanless design for silent operation, and could be placed horizontally or stand vertically to allow maximum deskspace. Fantom Drives GreenDrives yield average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over competitors’ drives while maintaining solid performance. That power savings equates to reducing CO2 emission by up to 60 kilograms per drive per year – the equivalent of taking your car off the road for 14 days each year, and saving up to per year in electricity costs depending on the power-on-hours.
Fantom GreenDrive 1TB USB 2.0/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive with 2 Year Warranty GD1000EU

• eSATA to eSATA Cable
• 3FT Shielded External Esata Cable M/m
• 6FT Shielded External Esata Cable M/m
• SIIG CB-SA0111-S1 3.3-Feet Serial ATA External Cable
• Tripp Lite P952-003 eSATA to SATA Signal Cable, 7P-M/7P-M – 3ft