Joined on 06/01/09
Amazing customer service
Pros: * Amazing customer service -- everyone had thought my RAID was dead forever, with terabytes of lost data, but LSI calmly walked me through diagnosis and got my RAID back to an online state, which let me recover all of my data! * Great performance even with complex encoding like RAID6 over 8 drives (when battery backup is online -- slow writes otherwise). * Worked reliably over 2 years.
Cons: * Battery backup didn't last very long (~2 years), so had to replace, which wasn't terribly cheap.
Breaks permanently (when inserted into Mac?)
Pros: Very fast (especially on USB3, but even on USB2), very high capacity. Overall would be exactly what I want...
Cons: My first device died after its first file transfer. It died a permanent death in that it henceforth became recognized as a Removable Disk (in Windows 7), that was currently removed, and it could not open with any software I tried (and I tried a lot). RMA was easy. My second device unfortunately also died, after several transfers. This time I noticed the pattern: it died right after use on a Mac. So it *seems* OK between Windows 7 machines, but so far both Macs I tried it on killed the device permanently. I'm waiting for second RMA. I don't like the idea of a self-destructing device, so can't recommend this product. It's also a little on the fat/big side, making it hard to put next to other USB devices sometimes, though from what I can tell, it's smaller than most USB3 drives out there.