Customer Reviews

AcomData PureDrive 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive PDHD1000UFSE

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

i boght the 1T drive and it failed the first day. I even tried to reformating it and nothing could get it to work. I sent and e-mail on their website two times for tech support and no reply. I count this as an expensive lesson to stick to a tried and true known brands and bought a working beautiful 1T drive from Apple. More $ but no headache and hours of frustration of dealing with a nonfunctioning product.

I bought two of these hoping to use them for a RAID. As I was copying data over to the raid after setting it up I experienced write errors, first on one of them, then on the second. I decided to break apart the raid and reformat them hoping that would solve the problem. The second one hung during the reformat, and after that it was totally unusable. I tried copying data back to the first one and it was terribly slow. A folder that took 1 minute and 24 seconds to copy to my internal drive took 6 minutes and 35 seconds to copy to the Acomdata drive. At that point I knew I was going to return both drives. So I tried zeroing out the drive. Apple's Disk Utility program estimated it would take 5 hours to do this. After five hours it wasn't even half way through the process, and after 7 hours I went to bed leaving it running. This morning I checked it and the process failed due to a drive error. Based on my experience with these two and the previous reviewer who had much the same experience, I would highly recommend staying away from this manufacturer. I also will be going back to a known supplier.

The drive took four months to fail sitting on my desk, but it did. Fortunately I had everything backed up. As several of the other negative reviews have mentioned, ACOMDATA's tech support should be timed with a calendar. E-mail and phone go unanswered. I haven't tried semaphore yet, but I'm wondering. I'm truly glad for the folks who've gotten good drives; but if you should choose to purchase one of these, understand that there will be little to no help from the company should you get a bad one.

If I had it to do over again, I'd do something else.

I own 2 1 tb and 2 750gig Acomdatas in these styles and enclosures, and 2 320gigs in the older ones with the bright blue button. None of them have failed. Of course, I use them for backup, meaning I dont run them constantly as my main drive. If I edit projects from them, I move them to my computer to work on them. I did have a bit of an issue with formatting on a couple, as they were preformatted for PC, but once I figured it out, it's been smooth. The new one in particular is very silent and the firewire is worth the extra bucks for the higher speed, especially if you actually planning on using that space to back up video and large audio projects.

I've done a lot of research, and the Acomdata exts include some of the highest rated SamSung drives. There was an issue with the .11 drives in 2007 to 2008, but that time has apparently passed. Other external manufacturers are also rife with claims of failure, many with higher rates of failure than this one. Its difficult information to get objectively, but don'r run your externals into the ground and that will help.

I have bought many of these drives - probably 20 or so over the last 18 months, mostly the USB/eSATA variant but some Firewire as well. I don't understand the highly negative reviews. As I see it this is as good as most any major alternative whilst being compact and easily stacked. Under sometimes very intensive usage I have had only one actual failure which was for a substantial fall whilst operating which I would not have expected any drive to survive. I simply opened up the case with that failed drive and reused it with a new OEM disk. These kinds of add-on drive are now a generic product, purchased on price primarily and style to some extent. This particular drive is in my experience perfectly reliable and when the price dips from time to time (as it does) I buy more. My primary concern with it is the lack of a 2Tb version and ideally Firewire 800. The Firewire version is slightly longer than the USB/eSATA version but stacks with it fine. I see no particular problems with this product in my fairly extensive experience of it and of its competition.

I bought 2 of these and I should have bought four so I can run a 2TB raid. I will eventually get 2 more. I couldn't find a better deal on a 1TB portable drive that gave you Firewire and USB 2 options. Lets not forget eSata. So these were great!