Yes, policies are ... well, policies. But my thoughts are, will a business stand behind it's products or hide behind their policy.
I bought an 'A-Power Aluminum External Combo 5.25' drive case from Computer Geeks. Walked over to the place during lunch last Friday, Feb. 3rd...
I 'researched' their products very carefully- as to make sure I was getting a drive case that can do more than 128GB. I wanted to get something with the Oxford chipset, and Firewire. I don't care about USB and Prolific chipsets blow chunks.
None of the products they had in stock listed either their chipset of bragged about the capacity. It seems that not long ago the packages did say "high capacity", "Up to 400GB", etc- to distance themselves from the ones that don't. With not a mention I figure this must not be a problem anymore.
Suffice to say that no packages mentioned any useful tech specs, I asked the sales droid at the counter about this particular item and he said "we put large drives in those all the time, 250GB and more". Ok, fine. Sold.
Buy it, finish the work day, go home, plug in my drive and the computer does not recognize it. Everything is spinning and lit. Disk Utility sees no hard drive in the enclosure once the hard drive spins up.
Ok, fine. That was a 160GB drive and I really wanted to use the 300GB in here anyway, perhaps it's just drive voodoo.
I put in the 300GB drive instead- power it up. Drive spins up and makes some hideous recalibration noises like I've never head from it before and the LED on the front of the unit is glowing intensely brighter than it should. I shut it off, pulled the power and ribbon cable on the hard drive, turned back on the case.
The fan is now spinning at an attrocious rate. Noiser than a Mirrored Drive Door G4. That little pathetic itty bitty fan. Wow. The LED on the power brick thing was also nearly as bright as a blue or white LED in a flashlight, yet, it's not supposed to be.
Neato.
I reached for the multi-meter, out of curiosity. Since that fan was haulin' arse.. maybe.. and low and behold. The meter being set on 20V DC range, it showed me 11VDC on the 5V line.. great, this bugger is wired backwards. So I thought.
Checked the 12V line and the meter went over limit. Upped the range to the next setting, 26V on the 12V line. No, it's not wired backwards, it's just plain whacked.
Ok, this can't be good. I wonder what it did to my hard drives. I shut it all off and grab the power brick to utilize the power cord plugged into it and the thing was just getting ready to start melting. Nice and toasty. The LED was really bright now, too. With no case load on it.
I wish this were really 'the case', but the end result is, my once 300GB drive now reports itself as a 2TB drive. Wow, Magic Drive Enclosure!! <not>
http://www.apple2.org/Picture3.png
Oh, and this 300GB drive, I just unwrapped it from the factory package the week before.
I had to work on three airplanes on Saturday, took the whole day- couldn't get to Computer Geeks until Monday after work. Here's the funny part now..
I know it's not their fault, they didn't design it- etc. But ..it's their product, hence my "stand behind your product or hide behind your policy" statement.
"I have an issue with this drive case ..." my opening line.
They referred me to someone at a bench, who came to the counter. "This drive enclosure killed two of my hard drives" - "It's got too much voltage from the power supply"
Your options are:
We can exchange it for a like product, I can take it in on a work order and have it tested, or you can get a refund.
I mentioned the over voltage again, he didn't seem interested in the fact that there could be a defect worth paying attention to and checking further instore stock rather than pissing off more people. I also asked if there was any recourse about my now bricked hard drives.
He repeated the same thing nearly, again, paying me no mind. This is where the irritation builds. I pick up the hard drive and point at it, again saying "I don't care about that drive case, here is my concern" at which point he says something about policy, and walks toward a computer to do something- I presume print a web page. I told him I don't care what it says, and something else- and then collected up my stuff off the counter and said "I'll take care of this another way", and granted, all I had to do was get out of there - but no, I managed to let my inner self win and I let out a colorful sentence as I walked out the hall.
Such is life.
I have already had such crappy luck with those external power supplies that my actual intention was to just test the drive case to make sure it worked and then the bridge board was going to be mounted into a SCSI case instead with a custom made bracket. The only reason I plugged it all in, in the first place was to make sure the thing did a 300GB (or large) drive- so that I wouldn't have yet another darn 128GB limit FireWire box. Because I have 6 other Oxford chipset based cases that have a limitation. No 48bit addressing. Several friends have brought me dead power supplies of the exact same kind, and I've had couple crap out on me too, but in all these years I've never had something over-voltage a drive to death like that.
What was I going in there looking for? The drive case was $34, I didn't care nearly as much. But at least a "let me get a manager", "wow, it did what? maybe we should check the others".. show some damn interest. If I were really twisted I could have written down on a work order, "does not work with a 400GB drive" and let them plug in a nice hard drive and crash it.
It's not their fault, they didn't make the thing, they did import it from China. My true goal was to aquire a bridge board- and use it in a better enclosure. Otherwise I would have bought a better quality case. Bridge boards are about $50+ from FireWire Depot, Direct, etc. This was a deal. Now I know why.
Their policy states that they are not responsible for whatever happens with anything you buy from them. I bet the drug stores that sold the tampered with Tylenol in 1982 would have loved to have that disclaimer on thier register receipts.
It's not as if I'm a novice with hardware. I do this daily. I've designed an manufactured peripheral cards for the Apple II even. But they don't know that when you walk in the door. Every customer is an idiot, is how they treat people.
There you have it.
I bought an 'A-Power Aluminum External Combo 5.25' drive case from Computer Geeks. Walked over to the place during lunch last Friday, Feb. 3rd...
I 'researched' their products very carefully- as to make sure I was getting a drive case that can do more than 128GB. I wanted to get something with the Oxford chipset, and Firewire. I don't care about USB and Prolific chipsets blow chunks.
None of the products they had in stock listed either their chipset of bragged about the capacity. It seems that not long ago the packages did say "high capacity", "Up to 400GB", etc- to distance themselves from the ones that don't. With not a mention I figure this must not be a problem anymore.
Suffice to say that no packages mentioned any useful tech specs, I asked the sales droid at the counter about this particular item and he said "we put large drives in those all the time, 250GB and more". Ok, fine. Sold.
Buy it, finish the work day, go home, plug in my drive and the computer does not recognize it. Everything is spinning and lit. Disk Utility sees no hard drive in the enclosure once the hard drive spins up.
Ok, fine. That was a 160GB drive and I really wanted to use the 300GB in here anyway, perhaps it's just drive voodoo.
I put in the 300GB drive instead- power it up. Drive spins up and makes some hideous recalibration noises like I've never head from it before and the LED on the front of the unit is glowing intensely brighter than it should. I shut it off, pulled the power and ribbon cable on the hard drive, turned back on the case.
The fan is now spinning at an attrocious rate. Noiser than a Mirrored Drive Door G4. That little pathetic itty bitty fan. Wow. The LED on the power brick thing was also nearly as bright as a blue or white LED in a flashlight, yet, it's not supposed to be.
Neato.
I reached for the multi-meter, out of curiosity. Since that fan was haulin' arse.. maybe.. and low and behold. The meter being set on 20V DC range, it showed me 11VDC on the 5V line.. great, this bugger is wired backwards. So I thought.
Checked the 12V line and the meter went over limit. Upped the range to the next setting, 26V on the 12V line. No, it's not wired backwards, it's just plain whacked.
Ok, this can't be good. I wonder what it did to my hard drives. I shut it all off and grab the power brick to utilize the power cord plugged into it and the thing was just getting ready to start melting. Nice and toasty. The LED was really bright now, too. With no case load on it.
I wish this were really 'the case', but the end result is, my once 300GB drive now reports itself as a 2TB drive. Wow, Magic Drive Enclosure!! <not>
http://www.apple2.org/Picture3.png
Oh, and this 300GB drive, I just unwrapped it from the factory package the week before.
I had to work on three airplanes on Saturday, took the whole day- couldn't get to Computer Geeks until Monday after work. Here's the funny part now..
I know it's not their fault, they didn't design it- etc. But ..it's their product, hence my "stand behind your product or hide behind your policy" statement.
"I have an issue with this drive case ..." my opening line.
They referred me to someone at a bench, who came to the counter. "This drive enclosure killed two of my hard drives" - "It's got too much voltage from the power supply"
Your options are:
We can exchange it for a like product, I can take it in on a work order and have it tested, or you can get a refund.
I mentioned the over voltage again, he didn't seem interested in the fact that there could be a defect worth paying attention to and checking further instore stock rather than pissing off more people. I also asked if there was any recourse about my now bricked hard drives.
He repeated the same thing nearly, again, paying me no mind. This is where the irritation builds. I pick up the hard drive and point at it, again saying "I don't care about that drive case, here is my concern" at which point he says something about policy, and walks toward a computer to do something- I presume print a web page. I told him I don't care what it says, and something else- and then collected up my stuff off the counter and said "I'll take care of this another way", and granted, all I had to do was get out of there - but no, I managed to let my inner self win and I let out a colorful sentence as I walked out the hall.
Such is life.
I have already had such crappy luck with those external power supplies that my actual intention was to just test the drive case to make sure it worked and then the bridge board was going to be mounted into a SCSI case instead with a custom made bracket. The only reason I plugged it all in, in the first place was to make sure the thing did a 300GB (or large) drive- so that I wouldn't have yet another darn 128GB limit FireWire box. Because I have 6 other Oxford chipset based cases that have a limitation. No 48bit addressing. Several friends have brought me dead power supplies of the exact same kind, and I've had couple crap out on me too, but in all these years I've never had something over-voltage a drive to death like that.
What was I going in there looking for? The drive case was $34, I didn't care nearly as much. But at least a "let me get a manager", "wow, it did what? maybe we should check the others".. show some damn interest. If I were really twisted I could have written down on a work order, "does not work with a 400GB drive" and let them plug in a nice hard drive and crash it.
It's not their fault, they didn't make the thing, they did import it from China. My true goal was to aquire a bridge board- and use it in a better enclosure. Otherwise I would have bought a better quality case. Bridge boards are about $50+ from FireWire Depot, Direct, etc. This was a deal. Now I know why.
Their policy states that they are not responsible for whatever happens with anything you buy from them. I bet the drug stores that sold the tampered with Tylenol in 1982 would have loved to have that disclaimer on thier register receipts.
It's not as if I'm a novice with hardware. I do this daily. I've designed an manufactured peripheral cards for the Apple II even. But they don't know that when you walk in the door. Every customer is an idiot, is how they treat people.
There you have it.