Real World Use
As I mentioned above, the Disk Jockey is very simplistic in design. The problem is that it is so simple that its hard to use. The only methods of feedback on the unit is a single LED light and a buzzer. Thus, monitoring progress on a disk copy or disk verification means you have to sit there and watch the LED blink, then consult the manual for what the different lengths of on-off pattern mean. Also, when there is an error of some kind, the unit starts beeping from its built-in buzzer. You have to listen to the length of the beeps and the number of them to determine anything. And even then, its hard to remember if a beep pattern means a problem with the Jockey (i.e. missing or incompatible disk) or a problem with the disk itself. In my opinion, the feedback the unit gives back (or lack thereof) is one of the largest drawbacks of the Disk Jockey.
A separate, but related, issue is that you are tied to the manual to figure anything out. There is a little chart imprinted on the side of the device which tells you what the different modes are, but other than that you need to consult the manual at almost all times to get the unit to do anything or know what its noises could mean. After using it for a while, you will begin to remember, but trying to make it work the first few times can be frustrating. It just won’t work, and you pour over the manual to try to figure out why.
Physically, the unit wasn’t that difficult to use, but some of the included hardware was too short. The included USB and Firewire cables are too short for real-world use, in my opinion. They should be at least twice as long. The IDE ribbon cables, too, were a bit short. The Molex connectors were very tight to get in and out of the drive power connectors. I was able to get them out, but it took some effort to do without pulling the wires out of the connector.
I heard there is a revision of the unit coming out some time soon (we are using the first incarnation), and I think ease of use and feedback are the two biggest areas to improve upon. If they could, at least, have a digital display on the unit which gave numerical error codes, that’d be great. It would at least give a little more clue to what’s going on.
Conclusion
I’ve done some pit-picking on the Disk Jockey here, but this is a first generation product, so some drawbacks are expected. All in all, the Jockey is a very nice and convenient tool for disk management. It is very solidly built. As of the time of this writing, the product is selling for $329, which is a bit stiff in my estimation. That price would keep a guy like me from buying it, I must say. The product would probably see more play in the enthusiast market, IT departments, or PC technicians. PC technicians, in particular, would benefit from such a product as it can be a real time-saver. Despite the heavier price tag, I think it might very well be worth it for people in that line of work.
There are many different modes of operation to the Jockey, but in my opinion, the most useful is Mode 0, Standard Mode. It can be very convenient to be able to quickly hook up a spare hard drive to your computer in a hot-swappable fashion. You can’t boot from it, but you can still use it for easy backups to separate drives. After all, redundancy is the key to real backup. Also, if you are having problems with the disk inside one computer, you can easily pop the case off and plug that drive into a clean-working PC (using the Jockey), and use the clean PC to perform any operations to the problematic disk, whether they are virus scans, spyware cleaning, etc. I can think of multiple uses.
Pros
- Simple design
- Works on both USB2 (backward-compatible with 1.1) and Firewire (IEEE 1394a)
- Very fast data throughput
- Makes many disk operations much simpler to perform
Cons
- Lack of adequate feedback due to only one indicator LED and a buzzer.
- Connectors hard to remove (particularly the Molex connectors)
- Included cables too short.
- Expensive
Manufacturer: Diskology
More Info: www.diskology.com
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