Customer Reviews

Castlewood Systems ORB2UE01 2.2 GB External USB Removable Media Drive

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a great drive. I just bought it and I'm already loving it.

The installation was a breeze, literally plugged it in and my computer recognized it and installed the right drivers. ... I bought a SCSI cable for home which increases the speed even more (the USB port can't handle the 12.2 MB/s that the drive can put out).

If you are running out of hard drive space or need to move big files around a lot, this is the drive for you. It is far superior to Zip or Jaz and the disks cost a lot less. At 2.2 GB ... your only cheaper alternative is tape which is going to be much, much slower.

Just got the Orb USB for my laptop and its great. Immediate 2.2 gigs of space and its removable. For anyone who needs extra drive space for backing up or whatever, this is a great deal. I play my movies off the thing and its just like a hard drive. No skipping or anything. I plan to use it to store all of my MP3's and video media that I have. So far I havn't had any problems with it. I'm quite happy with my new Orb. Its a far better deal than Zip drives. Much more storage at a cheaper price. Its a deal and a half.

I have been for several weeks a very proud owner of Orb (Castlewood Systems) external drive USB with a room for back up of an amount 2.2GB! I mean, I can really now back up items on the same disk that would have required several 100MB disks or even 250MB disks, not to even mention timy 3-1/2 squirts. And the beauty of it? You don't need a SCSI connection or parallel connection - it's a very convenient USB connection. Having more USB goodies, I have it connected to multi USB hub. Count the bytes & you'll discover how cheap it is in dollars per bytes to have Orb 2.2 GB. Well, I cannot praise it enough but I have to congratulate Castlewood Systems! That company surely made my day in a big way! Carl Hodek

I first bought this drive in the Internal IDE form, The drive worked fine for about a week then the Diskette became unreadable, I ended up formatting the disk and trying again only to get the same results each time. Then I thought well maybe if I got the Removable USB drive it will work ok... I don't think that it has Broken or lost data but, I could only get it to work on my machine in Windows 2000. I tried it on the other computer in our house which had 98 and it did not work, Therefore I decided to try it with WinME, It had the same results as 98 even with the "98" Drivers for it. I called castelwood and they said "its your motherboard that is incompatible with this device" so I bought a brand new TekRam mb. I had the exact same problems! I also tried downloading the VIA drivers, but that didn't help. I do NOT recommend this product to anyone with a VIA Chipset motherboard with a K6 Processor. This Product is great if you have an Athlon, Pentium but, does not get detected in 98,ME with a K6/Via. Though this Product is cheap, it is very unreliable and may cost your some valuable data when you least expect it.

I own about 3 Orb drives now, and find them very useful. I have both the USB and SCSI ones, and I find them, for the most part, equally fast. Sometimes the USB one gets slow, but then I disconnect it and reconnect it and it works fine. I use them on a daily basis to synchronize ALL my work files (about 1.2 gigs) using Laplink, then I take the small Orb disk home and work from the Orb disk while at home. It sure beats carrying around an 8 pound laptop every day. I run it on Windows NT, Win98 and Win ME computers. It is certainly much cheaper than ... Jaz 2GB disks, and since a rewriteable DVD costs about ..., it is fairly comparable in price to them as well (although some RW-DVDs can hold 5+ GB). One important catch: NEVER use the eject button on the front of the drive to eject the disk as it can corrupt the data--always eject the disk using the right mouse click-->eject option.

I don't know what everyone is complaining about below. I haven't had one problem. I emailed their customer service dept when I first bought mine with an install question and they responded back quickly with good information. I admit, I tend to be more tech savvy than most people, but it's as easy to install as a Zip drive-in fact easier now that I think about it. Orb is a great alternative to the tedious process of switching zip disks during a long backup.

(Please note that I'm using a SCSI connection, so USB may differ.) This is the most unreliable, aggravating piece of junk it's ever been my displeasure to use. One star is not negative enough. Simply put, data written to the disks became irretrievable after about one day. The drive appears to cause serious damage to it's own disks. A cd is supplied, with software for disk repair, optimization, and recovery. The software was unable to repair a disk that I'd written information to the day before. Recover the files? The software couldn't find the files on the disk, but suggested that at the "next level" the files could be recovered. You have to buy that next level. Another disk was rendered completely useless, beyond even the reach of the useless disk repair software. It was impossible to insert the disk into the drive without it's ejecting fifteen seconds later. I've tried two different Orb drives, and three different Orb disks. All useless. Forget about getting any support from Castlewood. I'd rather get slapped in the face repeatedly for an hour than go through this irritation again. I've lost time, money, and a great deal of data. It sounds like a very good price to storage ratio, and it's worked out for some people. But, do you want to cross your fingers and hope your lucky?

I read the reviews, which said that this was a great product. Bought one. After several weeks, it stopped working and I lost my data. I called them. I had to ship it back first then they sent a replacement. I paid the return-shipping fee. After one week the replacement did not work either. I lost more data. They refuse to do anything about it. Letters have gone unanswered -- telephone calls are answered by people who say they have no authority to make decisions. I complained to the Ziff-Davis computer magazine, which recommended it. No answer from them either. It does not pay to sue these folks. Buy at your own risk. Caveat emptor!

It works as advertised! No gripes, the software installs painlessly. The drive, running through an external usb hub, runs like a dream.

I've had my Orb for more than a year, and admit I don't use it heavily. I've got the external SCSI2 version and a beige Mac g3/300MHz running OS 9.2 (for the sake of comparison).

It was easy to install, easy to use, seems quite reliable. Fast enough random file access to keep me very happy. Vast improvement over backup with ZIP disks, which was starting to get silly for even 4GB partial backups.

Tough to find the disks, I have to agree there with other reviewers. I ordered a bunch when I bought the drive, and re-use them. Have been looking to buy a new batch, and had to look a little harder than I thought. At first, they seemed to have disappeared from the face of the Earth, and I was ... that such a good product might have vanished... But I found a few places that carry them, though they aren't heavily advertised, as they were when they first came out.

Only problem I've had is a little annoyance with the drive refusing to read the disk. I sometimes have to reinsert the disk a few times, or even restart the computer & drive before I get the disk recognized. I don't know if that's the fault of the disk, the driver, or the drive itself, but that seems to be the most common complaint around. However, it's just an intermittant problem for me, and I've been able to work around it without difficulty. Then again, I don't need to make large daily backups (monthly, at most). I suppose if I did, that problem would be more irksome.

So beware- if you want to rely on this drive heavily, be cautious, it could be problematic. Whatever QC manufacturing problems they seem to be having haven't been surmounted yet. But if you just like the convenience of large, cheap, reusable storage, like I do, this is a far better alternative to a Jaz drive.