Customer Reviews

Apricorn EZ-Bus DT Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Drive Case ( EZ-BUS-DT-KIT )

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This product excels for several reasons - the design and build quality are high, the included software is excellent and really delivers, and the company goes the extra mile in technical support.

Buying an external drive like this without the drive is an excellent way of handling a hard drive upgrade for your computer (put the new drive in the external drive case, clone your old drive over, and switch the old and the new). The included software is specifically designed to make this fast and easy. Even if you just want an external drive for backups, a kit is the way to go since you'll save money, and can select a high performance IDE drive to install. Most preassembled externals come with a fairly low end, slower drives of whatever capacity you're buying. And if the drive fails, or you want a larger one, it's very easy to pop the cover and change the drive out.

As to the tech support, I bought this unit as an easy way of upgrading my primary internal drive to a larger one. In the process of cloning my old drive over to the new one, I discovered that my old drive had read errors and was actually in the process of failing. When I called Apricorn tech support, they were extremely helpful - they pointed me towards diagnostic software than helped me come up with a work around that allowed me to save all of my data and still make migrate everything over without having to reinstall XP and all of my software. They did this even though my problem actually had nothing to do with their product. The software also lets you make compressed image backups that your can mount as logical drives and retrieve individual files or directories from - a very handy backup solution, and much faster than a file level backup.

Companies like this deserve your business and will actually help you solve problems.

I had to send one of these back because the jumper setting for the hard drive as set forth in the manual did not work on my computer, nor was this subject touched in several discussions with customer service.
Although the manual says the drive should be set to master, Windows XP would not load the drivers for this enclosure unless I set the drive to cable select.
No explanation for this has been given me.

In my opinion, this product represents the pinnacle of external single storage technology. Other manufacturers designs seem like afterthoughts when compared to this device. I had ordered the USB model but, due to a since-resolved advertising error, was shipped the SATA version. I couldn't be happier, and bought the USB model in addition.

A few examples are in order: take the Adaptec aluminum USB enclosures (by the way, I have nothing but good things to say about Adaptec I/O cards), with their narrow base plate and rear-mounted power switch. These fan-less contraptions are a pain to use, and are quite hot to the touch during operation as your harddrive bakes inside them. The external case is unstable within its mounting foot, and so flops around. Even worse are the essentially same Adaptec-like copycat designs using a plastic rather than aluminum case. These are nothing more than drive ovens as the plastic acts as an insulator whereas at least the real Adaptec case's aluminum can act as a heat sink. Then there are the Maxtor USB cases with no power switch whatsoever. External drive cases without a power switch or a power switch thats hard to reach is especially a recipe for disaster in a multi-boot multi-operating system environment; someone booting to Windows XP from Linux may see the external drive as available space and, without thinking twice about it, assimilate it into the Windows environment. Bye bye, several months of Linux system backups.

The EZ-Bus family of single external drive cases offers an alternative to these other systems and resolves their many shortcomings. With its stable base, front-mounted power switch, integral fan unit, and stylish looks its the perfect external drive solution for the most discriminating processing environments.

As for that SATA box, I purchased a SATA-I interface card for my system just to accomodate it, along with a SATA drive. The combo has never once given me a problem, and its running on a dual boot Windows XP Pro SP2 and Windows 2000 Advanced Server machine. No problem either platform. Absolutely a 5-star peripheral.

After a failed attempt with a Western Digital portable, I really did my homework on external hard drives. Putting together my own external hard drive seemed the most appropriate and cost effective way to address my ever growing mp3, video and picture collection. After hours of google searches and product reviews, I decided on this case along with a 320 GB Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive. The install took about 10 minutes and I was good to go. After 4 weeks, it is half full and has worked flawlessly. Being plug and play compatible is a huge bonus too. Do not be afraid to put this together yourself, it is slightly more difficult than changing a light bulb or tire on you car. There are plenty of sites online to get you started. More bang for the buck definitely applies here. As an aside, I needed to contact Apricorn tech support a few times for some simple questions. The call was answered quickly and professionally within minutes. Another huge bonus for anyone who has dealt with the tech support nightmare.
Add to cart!!

Got this cause hard drive on Dell computer was starting to make clackity-clackity noises - which is sign of "soon to die" for hard drive. Bought internal hard drive from Seagate, popped it into this in seconds flat, hooked it up, cloned the main dying hard drive. Took about an hour and a half for 230 GB drive.

Soon as I got done cloning, the main drive coughed its last breath. Whew!!! So, popped out the dead main drive, popped in the new drive and didn't miss a beat, nor byte, nor anything.

What a lifesaver!!! The software was terrific - cloning was a piece of cake.

I have been using this enclosure for a week now. I have a continuous stream of data coming from the web that I store in the Seagate hard drive enclosed in this console. It has an aluminium body, excellent chipset, and a fan. Two particular things that this console is missing are:
> firewire connection
> Efficient and useful backup software.

Other than this, buy this enclosure and rest be assured about its performance. This thing rocks!!!!

Received the drive in a timely manner with new Amazon Prime. Purchased PATA drive to go inside (Western Digital 250 Gb). Setup of hardware and drive was very easy. Instructions proviced by Apricorn were very good. Enclosure+Drive is very quiet and fast. Software enclosed w/ Apricorn enclosure for imaging, cloning, backing up, and encrypting is very easy to use. I would recommend this enclosure to anyone looking for one. The version with firewire may be better for some if the greater availability of USB is not important.

In November of 2007, the manufacturer of this product (Apricorn) discovered that, due to poor quality control procedure, some units which were currently in the hands of resellers (such as Amazon) were defective and were therefore inevitably headed back to them for disposition, with resulting pain to both the customer and the reseller. But instead of quickly taking appropriate action, which was to recall all outstanding units from its resellers and screening out those defective units _before_ they were sold to customers, Apricorn decided to conceal this serious problem from its resellers by a cover-up "solution" which discontinued this particular model under pretext, leaving its resellers holding the bag for innocently selling out the remaining "discontinued" units, some of which surely possessed a known type of defect.

In other words, as a substitute for propriety, Apricorn was willing to let some (random) customers buy _defective_ units from innocent resellers, and then be forced to go through an evasive, deceptive, and onerous return procedure. The unit which I bought through Amazon, _three months after Apricorn knew that it had a serious problem_, suffered from this particular defect. After I returned it promptly to Apricorn (they paid for the return shipping and promised to send me a new, properly working unit), they promptly sent the _same_ unit back to me, without explanation. It still did not work; hence it was neither repaired nor replaced, as promised in the warranty. Without explaining to me how this could have happened, they offered to refund my money after a second return. They justified this failure to honor their warranty, claiming that they no longer supported a discontinued product. Discontinued without _ever_ working properly!

It is inconceivable to me that one would want to buy a product from Apricorn, a company which has exhibited such a failure to deal in good faith with its customers--unethical conduct, lack of integrity, and utter contempt for the customer.

First of all, the 3 stars has nothing to do with the quality of the product, it is all about the lack of quality of the description and documentation. If the drive that you intend to put in here is SATA, DO NOT buy this! This model is ONLY for the old style PATA interface drives. Nowhere in Amazon's description does it say that. If you have a SATA drive (as opposed to a SATA interface, which is how the case plugs into the computer), you need model DTS. Unfortunately I needed this quickly due to a backup failure, so I returned this and bought another brand at Fry's. There is a handy chart on the back of the box that tells you which model you need, but unfortunately you have to buy the case to see it...
Good Luck!

Well, this is a fine product, has a wonderful fan for the HDD. However, the instructions provided do not explain how to put the HDD inside the case, so it took some hard thinking. For anyone else who buys one: open the case, take the 4 small rubber blue plugs off the sides, adjust the jumpers on the HD, plug the HD into the IDE and power cables inside the case. place the HD inside the case label up. replace the side of the case and THEN put in the four screws from the sides and cover the holes up with the rubber blue plugs. don't screw in the screws until you close the case. There you go.