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Do you trust OWC products?
- Thread starter pjny
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"Do you trust OWC products?"
No!!!
They are price gougers! I don't trust price gougers! Gouging as they do means they are interested in pretty much ONLY one thing... maximizing profits! When that is the central interest corners are cut anywhere they can be and that usually means quality and testing goes out the window.
They do NOT have a "sterling reputation"! What they do have is a steady stream of people recommending them (I guess many of whom are under their employ) and a web site that comes up very often when searching for Mac related goods. Neither of those things should actually contribute to their "reputation".
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No!!!
They are price gougers! I don't trust price gougers! Gouging as they do means they are interested in pretty much ONLY one thing... maximizing profits! When that is the central interest corners are cut anywhere they can be and that usually means quality and testing goes out the window.
They do NOT have a "sterling reputation"! What they do have is a steady stream of people recommending them (I guess many of whom are under their employ) and a web site that comes up very often when searching for Mac related goods. Neither of those things should actually contribute to their "reputation".
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I'm not sure exactly what you mean but all HDD manufacturers list a life for their drives usually in number of hours. The SMART for a drive will tell you how many hours the drive has been operating. When those two are equal that's when to start shopping around for a replacement drive.
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I think I have OWC (or Crucial?) memory in one of my MacBook Pro's and I have had no problems so far. Seems like they provide wonderful products to me!
Trust? Well...
've bought several items from OWC, and clients I work with have bought reams and scads of stuff...
I have a pretty favorable impression of them, but the bad apples always leave a poor taste in my mouth. A couple of horror stories:
I purchased two Mercury Elite Pro QX2 RAID cages for a large project I was tag-teaming on with another editor. Weeks into the project I visited him in his studio, and was surprised to see he was working off a couple of FW drives and not the RAID; when I asked, he said that drives failed constantly in the QX2 and he was sick of waiting for rebuilds, only to have another failure. Oh well, whatever works. At the conclusion of the project, I took posession of his QX2, and found that yes, indeed, you could format new drives in it and within a week, one of them would inevitably fail. When I called OWC tech support, I was informed that my release version (it was a 1.0, I believe) had been "upgraded"...meaning the new version was incompatible with my version; and furthermore, the tech didn't think they even had one of my version to test. Now THAT'S what I call true product obsolescence! BTW, the other cage is limping along, occasionally not booting up...I'm looking for a replacement, which is how I stumbled across this thread.
My other problem with an OWC drive was with a small bus-powered 2.5" unit, which I'd copied some work for backup purposes. Just decided not to mount one day, for no apparent reason, no matter which interface I plugged in. Solution? Bust the damn thing open and put the drive into a dock...and toss the worthless controller and case into the trash, er, recycle bin.
So while I've had some success, and they have good prices, I'm a bit leery of OWC's hype.
've bought several items from OWC, and clients I work with have bought reams and scads of stuff...
I have a pretty favorable impression of them, but the bad apples always leave a poor taste in my mouth. A couple of horror stories:
I purchased two Mercury Elite Pro QX2 RAID cages for a large project I was tag-teaming on with another editor. Weeks into the project I visited him in his studio, and was surprised to see he was working off a couple of FW drives and not the RAID; when I asked, he said that drives failed constantly in the QX2 and he was sick of waiting for rebuilds, only to have another failure. Oh well, whatever works. At the conclusion of the project, I took posession of his QX2, and found that yes, indeed, you could format new drives in it and within a week, one of them would inevitably fail. When I called OWC tech support, I was informed that my release version (it was a 1.0, I believe) had been "upgraded"...meaning the new version was incompatible with my version; and furthermore, the tech didn't think they even had one of my version to test. Now THAT'S what I call true product obsolescence! BTW, the other cage is limping along, occasionally not booting up...I'm looking for a replacement, which is how I stumbled across this thread.
My other problem with an OWC drive was with a small bus-powered 2.5" unit, which I'd copied some work for backup purposes. Just decided not to mount one day, for no apparent reason, no matter which interface I plugged in. Solution? Bust the damn thing open and put the drive into a dock...and toss the worthless controller and case into the trash, er, recycle bin.
So while I've had some success, and they have good prices, I'm a bit leery of OWC's hype.
Personally I've had a lot of success with OWC products, but I've also had an OWC Qx2 enclosure die on me entirely.. the newer USB3 models seem to be better made.
I got 2 of the 480GB SSD upgrades for my MBPr late 2012 a year ago. One of them died after 3-4 months of daily use as an internal. Completely unrecognizable so I had to exchange it for a new one.