Any of you who have read my blog posts about woes with hard drives know I now take data handling, storage and back-up very seriously. However, the chink in my storage armour has been a reliable portable solution. That is, until now.

The OWC On-The-Go Pro

I have been using the OWC On-The-Go Pro (OTGP) for about 4 weeks and in that time it has proven it's self to be a very useful little drive. It has also turned heads on more than one occasion. 

The OTGP is not the just the drive, it is a flexible portable storage system. Let me explain. You can buy the case (the plastic bit) with a drive included. I have the 1TB OWC Mercury Extreme SSD inside this OTGP  but as you can see in the chart below, you can buy the OTGP are a 0GB empty drive case. Now if already have a number of 2.5" SSD or rotational drives this could be the answer for you. It's worth noting that even if you buy an OTGP with a drive installed you can swap this out for another at a later date. Drives are user changeable with a small Philips screwdriver and the new drives can be from any manufacturer, not just OWC.

The case comes with 2 connectivity options. You can have USB 3.0 which includes backward compatibility with USB 2.0 (this is the model I have) or you can have the USB option with two Firewire 800 ports. 

The front or back depending on how you look at it also houses the on/off switch and a port for the optional power supply unit, however, the OTGP is fully bus-powered so as yet I have not needed to use this.

Now, I totally agree that hard-drives are not the single most interesting thing in the studio, but in today's modern studio they are one of, if now the most important.  I can promise you this, I will not be trusting any of my data to lessers drives anymore. 

In Use

The OWC OTGP is fast and quiet I have been able to record 32 channels of 96KHz, 24-bit audio while playing back 1080p ProRes video files with no issues what so ever. What else can I say? It makes no audible sound in operation and the built-in heat-sink keeps the drive cool. The cool blue LED on the front tells me when the drive is working. Then when it is time to move to the next place of work the drive and the cable fit snugly into the included case. 

Testing

In an effort to be just a little scientific I decided to run the Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test on the OTGP. You can see my results below but to summarise, it's not a big surprise that I have been having no issues with audio and video playback this is a good result for a USB 3.0 connected drive.

Conclusion

In essence, this is a hard drive in a box. And yes, in this case, the box is clear so you can see a bit more. But when you touch and feel this thing it feels solid and well made. The cables plug in solidly and I at least feel confident that they will not fall out if the drive is touched or knocked by accident (which does happen).  If you are looking for a solid, flexible portable storage solution then you should take a look at the OWC On-The-Go Pro range. 

You find out more about the On-The-Go Pro range from the OWC webstore.