Joined on 12/18/06
Great RAM!
Pros: The best Quad Channel X79 RAM. Seems stable at standard XMP speed.
Cons: When running 8 modules, there seems to be a noticable decrease in stability. Not sure why. Wish they would have included Fan in quad channel kit. Also, heat-sink intereferes with most liquid cooling, and the Ares series won't help someone who's already bought.
Wasted Purchase
Pros: Was seemingly a good deal
Cons: - Does not install on Windows 8.1 - Assumed upgrade to 2014 would be eligible. - Wrote Tech-Support never received a response.
Overall Review: Would not recommend.
Poor Quality for a Premium Drive
Pros: The reviews raved about this drive. High MTBF, Premium Warranty and great performance. I purchased the drive because I wanted something solid to move my important data to while I upgraded my NAS. I went from 5 to 10 3TB RED drives in my Synology system and thought moving my critical data to this drive would keep it safe. Instead, I just lost about 2TB worth of data that cannot be replaced. Didn't have a fair or reasonable chance to back it up and it failed. It's been making a consistent clicking noise. Data LifeGuard Diags picked up the failure instantly on the quick test, although the SMART status indicates the drive is fine.
Cons: It failed within about 2 weeks. I've been trying to copy the contents to another drive. But it's taken at least 3 days of it running, clicking and grinding to get 500GB off so far. I've been skipping the files with read errors and assume they are lost for good. Worse yet, is the copy just froze on the last leg of my copy. Then I rebooted and the drive is no longer identified. This is bad.
Overall Review: Very disappointed. I thought buying a "better" drive would make sense because I needed a temporary place for it. Let that be a lesson. Multiple backups everywhere, buying a higher quality drive won't help you. I'm pretty sure the last 10 years of my work has been destroyed. I think Western Digital should know. I know question whether going with all WD 3TB Red Drives is putting stacking deck against me down the road. As an IT professional I've recommended WD drives for years. I've generally had good luck, with them. This disaster has certainly caused me to rethink my commitment.
Great Product shakey support
Pros: WinZip is a legendary product. For years and years it WAS the standard for zipping files. v17 holds some promise with some innovative new features.
Cons: The company still seems to be in transition to Corel, which I also believe is a wonderful company. BUT The product right out of the gate didn't work with the Office 2013 RTM. It crashed Outlook right away because it didn't recognize the version number. Now I understand it's not released year, but the Preview has been WIDELY available. I clicked on a link to fill out a support form and got a missing page on their website. I finally found a general support area where I could enter the concern. I wrote, but there was never any feedback to indicate my question was received, etc. I would even thing it would be knowledgebase worthy but nothing there. The support options for this software are extremely limited. I partially understand why, but there needs to be a better method for contacting them and establishing a human dialog about legitimate issues or bugs.
Overall Review: I'd have no trouble giving five stars if support was improved. I do love the product.
Outstanding Service
Pros: Clever product that works very well. There are not a lot of solutions that allow you to use IDE and SATA. The solution is well designed and they give you everything you need.
Cons: Yellow IDE Cable is a very tight fit to pins on drive, definitely too tight. It seems like IDE connectors do vary, but it was rather difficult to push connector onto multiple drivers. It's also very easy to break plastic when pulling the cable out of a drive. Since the best application of this adapter is to reuse for multiple drives, more attention should have been given to actually how easy it is to move to another drive.
Overall Review: Customer service was outstanding. I had to get a replacement adapter, and their RMA service was one of the best I ever dealt with. Very efficient and prompt.
Solid RAM
Pros: Great RAM. Stable, solid and a good value.
Cons: Heat Sink barely fits in a liquid cooled machine. No RAM fan for an 8 stick kit is disappointing.