Customer Reviews

Castlewood Systems ORB2SE09 2.2GB External SCSI PC Removable Media Drive

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

 

 

I bought one of these a year or so ago, and 1 of the 3 discs I bought didn't work right out of the box. The drive itself lasted about 3 months before it broke completely. I've been calling orb constantly ever since trying to get them to replace the drive (under its warranty), and have finally resorted to writing them letting them know I'm contacting my lawyer. Luckily, I had a friend who had an orb drive of his own, so I was able to get my data off of the discs that did work.

Don't be fooled like I was by these people.

I've been using a SCSI Orb on both PC and Mac, and have spoken to a PC USB Orb user. The USB on Win98 seems to be the worst, causing problems with Windows Explorer and crashes, and SCSI on Win98 couldn't reformat a disk using Castlewood's software. (FDISK worked, God only knows why...) SCSI on Mac is only usable now that 3rd parties have come out with drivers for Orb, and Castlewood has licensed a good tools program.

Microsoft takes a lot of flak for Windows being buggy, but the biggest source of problems is badly written drivers. This time it's not Bill's fault.

My first SCSI Orb was actually a USB connected unit that I chose to use in its SCSI connection for speed. (The USB Orb is just a SCSI with a special cable attachment.) It lasted more than a year. Apparently, I was lucky. When it misbehaved, finally, it flashed the amber light continuously. I could hear the motor turning on for an interval, and then turning off. After some time, the disk ejected. I never got that green light that indicated the drive was ready. The Orb was essentially dead.

Since I was outside my warranty period, I purchased another; this time a straight SCSI unit. It exhibited the same difficulty as my last drive, but this time right out of the box. I tried a number of disks, including a brand new one and nothing helped. I sent the unit back and three weeks later -- received its replacement. Imagine my chagrin when I found this new one exhibiting the very same difficulty? Is it possible I received two faulty drives? Was it possible I was doing something wrong, (after successfully doing it right with my first unit for better than a year)? Or was there some design and/or quality control difficulty with the SCSI unit itself?

Attempts to contact Castlewood by phone were all in vain. I even sent an extensive explanation of my difficulties via E-mail; but to date, there has been no answer. I recently asked the vendor for my money back. I simply gave up.

In the meantime, I have 130.00 dollars worth of Orb disks that are totally useless -- to say nothing of the backup material thereon.

I often wondered why Castlewood did not swamp Iomega in their sales, since with the former, one got so much more for the money. Now I know. I still my have SCSI connected Zip drive after four years. It works just fine.

The Orb is, apparently, poor quality merchandise. It is a great idea, but it simply doesn't measure up in practical terms. Further, I find now that both the product and the company -- with reference to its customer support -- leave much to be desired.

I used this drive for 5 years and it only broke on me once. ORB technology is much faster, and way superior to the lame slow CD-R, and DVD-R formats. ORB disks are as fast as hard drives, and are really quite nice. Unfortunately since CastleWood went out of business, and my new Mac lacks a SCSI port, I am having to sell this drive. I am skeptical whether the USB drive works in OSX Tiger, and even if it did 2.2GB is way too small to backup my 30GB hard drive.

If CastleWood would make disks 30GB a piece, then I think they might still be in business. But frankly 2.2GB is dinky by todays standards.

So thumbs up on the drive, and speed. But thumbs down on the size of the disks, and availability of the media, as ebay is practicially the only way to buy disks, for those that continue to use ORB drives.

The Castlewood ORB external SCSI drive was a solution to my need for an easily replaceable boot disk. I boot a dual PIII to WIN98SE, Linux 6.1 and 7.0, Solaris 7, WIN2000, and WinXP. Each on a seperate ORB disk. I have had the ORB for over 1 year and it has worked very well. I had to do some tweeking with Linux 6.1 and Solaris. All others installed with no problems. Because this system is used for development, I don't demand high activity rates from the OS. (C/C++ Libs are on SCSI fixed HDs. The only complaint I have is the availability of media at less than MSRP.

I bought the Orb drive as an inexpensive and portable way to store video files. I have had it about a month and have had a good experience! The only negative so far is that for playing-back video, it is faster to play it off of the hard-drive than the Orb, which is no big deal. Definitely worth it. I have several Orb disks now and do not know what I would have done without it! A+++

I bought the original aqua-blue version of the Orb Drive about 15 months ago. I got the USB version, and I recomend this one for a very important reason: The USB version is actualy the SCSI external drive with a USB - to - SCSI adapter. Meaning, you can use it BOTH ways as a SCSI or USB.

With Win98, I average around 1.4 MB per second transfer. I have yet to try the SCSI interface, but it's probably six times has fast. (I'm basing this on the fact the old legacy SCSI interface is itself six times as fast as USB.)

in Windows ME, I average about 1.2 MB per second. With Windows 2000, I get about 1.9 MB per second. The nice thing about Windows2000 is it automaticaly detects the orb drive at OS installation time. I never once had to install the driver. (Although you do have to manualy install the driver for Win98, but it's easy and painless.)

I HIGHLY recomend this drive to anyone.

I have been using the external SCSI ORB drive since April. I have found it to be reliable and reasonable high performance. Occasionally a disk does not load correctly the first time but a re-insertion solves the problem. I use mine through an Adaptec PC-Card and it has survived traveling in a laptop bag. I plan to buy a Cardbus SCSI card to improve performance.

I highly recommend this product.