Customer Reviews

HP Personal Media Drive 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive AU183AA HD2000

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

 

 

I have been an HP customer for years and have never had any problems. That is why I usually do not do any research on their items before I buy them - but that was a mistake with this product. If I had searched I would have found that numerous individuals (including people on HPs own product forums!) are having the same problem: the drive works fine for a few weeks - then the cooling fan screams. The noise indicates that the fan blades are fighting friction and sticking. In time, the motor driving the fan will fail. The drive then will overheat and become a nice paperweight.

HPs solution to this problem is to ship the drive back to them (at your expense) so they can repair it. Unfortunately too many people have done this and either got the same drive back with no work done on it at all, or they had to fight the so-called customer service folks to get a replacement drive shipped out. My own contact with customer service started out this way but I cut them off and told them I wanted a refund. We'll see where that goes.

Is this unreasonable? No. A company that knowingly makes a defective product and sells it to their customers is not a company I want to do business with. This problem has been reported for at least a year. The troubleshooters have already stated that the cooling fan is defective. But the company continues to ship the product. There is no excuse for this. As far as their offer to repair it, I hardly see how they can be trusted to do so. After all, if they can repair this problem why didn't they do this before it left the factory?

The customer service itself is a disaster. They have off-shored it to some location overseas - the staff do not understand English and they a responding from a prepared script rather than actually understanding the problem to begin with. It is incredible that they start by recommending the drive be reformatted or checking the cables when it is obvious that the problem has nothing to do with either: it is the cooling fan. Reformatting the hard drive is pointless.

Some other posts have mentioned that the problem eventually goes away and it might not cause the hard drive to fail. I admit that is possible - but the noise is really terrific. They also suggest running the drive outside of the computer rather than in the drive bay. It makes no difference. Unplugging and replugging the drive does nothing - it will work fine until the cooling fan has to kick in and then it's over.
If I am lucky enough to get my money back it will be my last HP purchase. For those considering buying this item, you're taking a real chance. It might work - it might not.

It's a shame because aside from this problem the product is a very good product. It is simple to use and works in any computer that has a USB 2.0 port. But that's like saying a car is safe to drive provided you leave it in park. Useless.

In summary, if you are into gambling and taking chances, go ahead and buy this item. Maybe you'll be one of the few that has no problems. I don't think it is worth the price and hassle to find out.

First of all I'm an electronics engineer so forgive the tech speak. Yes I had two of these with screaming fans. The fans are AD0205DX-K50 20x20x6mm with Hypro bearings. They have one ball bearing and one sleeve bearing; not my favorite. Why HP can't pop a few more dollars for all ball bearings I don't know; it may be a size thing. 2 bb's might be too big for the package. But anyway you can peel the sides off if you're a technie, disassemble the interface module and either replace or re-seat the fan. It's possible that the problem is caused by assembly rather than parts. I pulled mine apart to get the part number of the fan to replace it. A direct replacement costs about $12 in small quantities. A ball-bearing replacement (if you can find one) should be a few dollars more. I couldn't find a replacement easily so I just put the whole thing back together and it hasn't peeped since (but it works). As I said may be an assembly thing.
Interface is plug-and-play, the best kind. You don't have to do anything except choose how to open the drive. If you have only media files Windows will offer to play or show them.
It's not flawless; which it should be since it's HP and they know better. So four stars instead of five. Except for the fan thing I'd give it five stars.

After receiving this product from HP direct, after one week of use the fan started making a loud whining noise. I contacted customer support to find out that they will send me a box, which I have to send my unit back in at my expense. They will not replace the unit, but told me they will repair it, this may take over two weeks. So my brand new drive will now cost me additional shipping charges, plus the time to be without the drive. So since I purchased on 1/15/10, looks like maybe I'll be able to use it on 3/1/10. Maybe I just got a lemon, but this warrantee is unbelievable. Any other store would have just replaced the drive considering I have it just about two weeks. Thanks for the great customer care HP.

Bought my HP quad core back in 2008 for $700 delivered. Have bought a couple pocket drives for everyday use (swap back and forth between slot in quad-core and velcroed to my notebook) and the personal media drive for backups thru acronis and clonezilla. I use the pocket drives as workhorses and the personal media drive for backups and large casually used audio/video content. The personal media drives require power if you use them as standalone USB drives and the pocket drives do not require standalone power. However, when I use them with my quad-core, I can just slide them in the slots on the pc chassis with no hassle. That is VERY convenient (no wall warts, no wires, no hunting for slots on the power strip). I've been using them for about 2 years and have no complaints, but since they are usb (not sata), they are slower. I think they are ideal for HP desktop users that have the pocket drive and personal media drive slots and can be used as standalone usb 2.0 drives with any computer. I have not yet experienced problems with the fan, but I might just be lucky so far.

Update after 2 months:

Unfortunately, I have to drop the rating of this product to 1 star. After some initial excitement, the disk started behaving weird - the system stopped seeing the USB device, then recognized it again, then stopped again... intermittently and infinitely, connecting and disconnecting it every few seconds. I tried rebooting, adjusting the contacts, connecting it via external power supply and USB cable - all to no avail.
The disk is non-usable now (I can occasionally access it for a few minutes but that's all), and I already lost lots of valuable data.
Too bad, and I don't even know what I can do with it now.

==== Original review ====

Wow, this drive was a very pleasant surprise. I need lots of storage to keep stuff like virtual machines and media files, and I have 8 different external drives and worked with dozen more, of many different brands. This drive so far seems the best of everything I dealt with. Very sturdy box, robust construction, ventilated, extremely easy to use if you have HP Pavilion PC with a special slot for personal media drive - just slide it in, and in a few seconds you have new drive with 2 TB of storage in your explorer window. No drivers needed (to be more precise, Windows already has necessary drivers to recognize and connect the drive).
After several hours of usage the drive still remained cool - thanks to internal ventilation and well designed case of brushed aluminum. This is so much better than the weird design of Seagate FreeAgent drives that have separately attached controller card placed in a poorly made plastic case used as a "stand" for the drive, with no ventilation so that it burns like fire after 5 minutes - and burns itself pretty often.
For the computers without personal media drive slot (or for portability), the drive comes with a power supply and a standard USB cable. No surprises here.
Overall, very well made, high quality product. Thanks HP!

I have lost a lot of data using the HP personal media drive. I would suggest buying a Western Digital Caviar Black drive and a media enclosure. Create your own personal media drive. If you have the HP case that takes the personal media drive, I feel bad for you. This drive will fail and take your data with it. The HP support will be of no help to you. If your data is vital, and I am sure that it is vital, then imagine the cost of taking it to a recovery specialist. Look for another option.

You can see my review on the 1TB drive.

Save your money.

Good Luck

It seems to depend on where the drive was made-the ones that come from China are okay-no noise on the ones i have but the one made in Thailand is the one that buzzes and it has a different part number-hd 10000x the ones that doesn't make any noise has an s at the end of the 10000 number if this helps at all. I am going to take mine noisy one apart and try to reseat the fan as suggested in one of the posts on here.

I would normally give a product like this a 1 star because of the fan starts spinning too fast at relatively mild temperatures. But, since HP stopped making very cool multimedia cases with the "trick" consealed front-loading hotswappable disk compartment (that can accommodate these disks). The value for these disks went way up; along with HP's original Media Center cases that can hide these disks in a front loading compartment. I was lucky enough to buy their irreplaceable Pavilian series grand-piano high-gloss black cases back in 2006 (quad core Intel, first-ever Blu-ray ROM for PCs, 4GB of RAM). I'm still a happy camper. I just bought my second 2TB version today as a backup.

I don't typically write reviews. However, after my experience with TWO different HP Personal Media Drives with loud fan noise, I've had enough and feel that I have to join the chorus of complaints against them.

The first HP Personal Media Drive howled after one week. I sent it in for a replacement. When I called to follow up, they explained that it was being repaired not replaced. Nothing was done! The same drive was returned with the same problem.

I thought that was a fluke and bought the new 2TB HP Personal Media Drive. I've had the drive two weeks and not only does the fan make intermittent noises, but Windows displays a warning that the drive needs to be formatted prior to use!!

This is all on an unaltered HP Pavilion Media Center m8120n PC.

It would be nice if this item was available for international shipping. Amazon will internationally ship the 1tb personal media drive!