I've often wondered how many people review things on amazon when they first buy them. Had I done so, i'd have posted only the good, and would have forgotten by the time it got really bad.
The good:
When I first purchased 2 of these, my first run to a customer went fantastically well. I copied the files via windows explorer to the drive, which showed up in My Computer under windows, as you'd expect, and presto, no problems.
The bad:
- Sometimes the drive won't turn off by the power button on the front. Sometimes it will. It's like my 2 year old child. It's got an unreasonable and emotionally uncontrollable reaction to what you do.
- Customer support is crazy. Crazy! I spent a long long time explaining my problem, what i'd done to solve it, the steps I took and provided a screen shot - only to wait a day and get an automated response - which had nothing to do with the problem, and i'd already reviewed prior to submitting the question because they force you to - and the "person" who responded proceeded to provide feedback and steps that did not address the issue, solve the problem or leave me with the impression that he understood what he was doing.
- The first backup performed with their software took overnight - that's fine, it really was 300GB of uncompressed data on a windows drive - but when it was done, it wasn't - their backup software puts it's own "restore" binaries in the directory you created at backup time - and for this one, it didn't. It seems the backup software is unable to backup when you input over 50GB of data at a go. The workaround, though, is to break it up into smaller chunks. PITA when you have a system for "filing" within your windows directories, but livable considering the bigger PITA to backup to DVD :)
- The drive makes not so nice sounds when shutting down. Yes, it's a known "issue" - they say it's not an issue, but when you shell out a lot of money on your drive, your heart stops for a moment when you hear a painful clicking sound. You know, the sound your drive makes a day or two before it stops working. Yup, it's that one. For what it's worth, i've had the drives on for roughly a month without a problem - but you should be aware that it'll be a little strange the first time you hear it.
The really bad:
- The backup software refuses to work. The problem I have is that it wasn't predictable in how it chose to .. stop working. I installed the drive, did a backup. That overnight backup. Which failed. The next morning I did the backup in smaller chunks and when i came back from work, sure enough it was fine. Great. I performed more backups over the course of a week. No problems. Last week I launched the software, selected the folders i wanted to backup, even selected the files - and the software insists on telling me "Please select the files to be backed up". Nothing changes this message. I'd removed the drivers/software, rebooted, reinstalled, uninstalled just the backup software, reinstalled - it doesn't matter - it just simply refuses to work.
- The diagnostic tool that their website and their techical support people will tell you to use is useless. When you launch it, it does a SmartScan - which, if things are fine, it says "Pass" and you think "great". The problem is when it says "Info unavailable" - what does that mean? You check the help files, right? There's nothing in there that mentions what it means - or mentions it at all. So I reviewed the responses I got from technical support - which provided me a link - and the information in the link simply reiterated their software help info - which was useless. I'm a self service junkie. I don't want to call you. I don't want to email you. If I have a problem, I want to read the manual, or your website, or your forum. While I don't really believe i'm the first to have a problem with their backup software, I absolutely refuse to believe i must have been the first one to ask what "info unavailable" means. Help me help you help me! :)
I think for me the issue is now trust. I think the data on the HD is fine - but considering the application stopped working out of the blue - who's to say the application in each directory I made a backup of on this drive won't stop working too? It works today, but there's no telling if it'll work tomorrow. Yes, I could manually copy the files - but when you're backing up 2TB of data, incremental backups really are the way to go. Another potential workaround is to purchase another vendor's backup software. Which i've done, and not yet tried - but this is wholly not the point. Don't shlep cheap and buggy software off, charge $25 more than the version of the product without it, and market it as "backup software that provides the world in gold" - that's just wrong. And frustrating.
As a result, I won't be buying this drive again. I highly recommend you don't either. There are plenty of competing products on the market already, and if you're going to buy someone else's backup software - you might as well buy a hard drive from a vendor that invests in competent online and software support. After all, as of today, what were you spending that extra $25 on?
| Hard Drive | 500 GB Desktop |
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