| Reviewed By:ww |
Date: 08-APR-05 |
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thank you
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| Reviewed By:Phil |
Date: 02-DEC-04 |
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Like many others before me, my 2.2 GB ORB worked just fine for 9 months. Then it started ruining disks... ON THE UPSIDE, I purchased it with VISA, who has an INSURANCE POLICY THAT DOUBLES THE MANUFACTURER'S WARRANTEE UP TO 2 YEARS (I'm in Canada, but I assume that's everywhere). So it hasn't been 2 years, and I'm attempting to make the claim. VISA said they will pay to have it assessed and fixed if possible, and if that doesn't happen they'll refund me. Pretty good reason to use VISA.
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| Reviewed By:olli |
Date: 08-OCT-04 |
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hey 'yall,
if you check
http://www.castlewood.com/
castlewood has filed for bankruptcy. kind of sums it up nicely.
o.
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| Reviewed By:hsameh |
Date: 07-OCT-04 |
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it is working good but not with XP yet
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| Reviewed By:MadMike |
Date: 28-MAY-04 |
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Sent it back twice, got it back twice with the same problem. Now in use as a wheel chock for an old car. Do yourself a big favor, buy a CD or DVD burner and spare your self the heartburn!
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| Reviewed By:phot |
Date: 23-APR-04 |
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ORB 2.2 GB
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| Reviewed By:Bill |
Date: 21-JAN-03 |
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I have a Castlewood ORB 2.2GB USB, it has lasted for 12 months and 15 days.. just out of warranty..Its not spinning up the disc (no motor action) what should I do? junk it or can it be repaired?
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| Reviewed By:nas |
Date: 03-JAN-03 |
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I bought my external SCSI ORB drive in January 2000 for use with my Power Mac 5400 running Mac OS 7.6.1. At first I installed Castlewood's driver but it was a nightmare: while copying files to and from the ORB disk, the machine would crash. The situation was worse than unreliable; it was suicidal. So I deleted Castlewood's driver and began initializing the disks with FWB Hard Disk Toolkit. With FWB's driver, the ORB drive worked flawlessly. I've been using the ORB drive for three years now as backup media (using the exellent Dantz Retrospect backup software) and I haven't lost any data. The ORB drive is fast and convenient; the only problem is that the price of ORB disks is rising and they are harder to find. If you're having trouble using your ORB drive with your Mac, try deleting Castlewood's drivers and using FWB Hard Disk Toolkit to initialize them. It worked for me.
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| Reviewed By:diplomat |
Date: 26-DEC-02 |
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I was using the EIDE internal Orbdrive. After less than a year of use, the drive would not accept any disks. It would try to read them and then spit them out. I don't know if this is a firmware or component problem, but the drive broke when I unmounted it while it was doing a journal write. Evidently, it is very "brittle" and cannot tolerate any unusual process changes.
I found the tech support person at Castlewood to be very indifferent to my requests for assistance. After reading the reviews on this forum, I decided to retired the drive and not bother with rmas. As other folks have stated in this forum, Castlewood has a great idea, but Lousy engineering. I am going to cdrw or dvdrw backup instead. Put your money into a good cd or dvd burner. Please do not waste it with Castlewood.
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| Reviewed By:Nashman |
Date: 17-SEP-02 |
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I have used an ORB 2.2 for a few years now with no problem. I gave up on Jaz after loosing two disks. I wish it would load faster, but other than that, they've been great and a much better price than the dying Jaz drives!
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| Reviewed By:Mikaelb |
Date: 12-AUG-02 |
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Worst product I ever bought. We bought 6 at work and 3 never worked properly and the others so so . They where actually so bad and unreliable that we did not even bother to bitch about it, we just stopped buying and wanted to forget them as fast as possible. Interchangeability was also bad. Som drive could only read its own disks.I tested several of them on several different computers an on some they worked so so and on others everything just hung hard. Hard reset time...
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| Reviewed By:Phoenix |
Date: 02-MAR-02 |
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It is really ironic to read all your reviews with problems the ORB has. I was seriously looking at the ORB to replace my Jaz drive(s). Over the past year I've had two Jaz's die on me (a 1Gb and a 2Gb drive), and they took 4 cartridges with them. Given the cost of both the drive and the cartridges this kind of sucks and the ORB seemd a perfect alternative. If you search the web for problems with Jaz drives you'll find a lot of stories just like your own (and mine). I guess it's just not meant to be with all the 1Gb+ removable storage devices... So if you're not going to buy an ORB, please don't buy a Jaz drive either...
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| Reviewed By:Jim |
Date: 06-FEB-01 |
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I bought the Orb drive just over a year ago, The first drive lasted just three months before it wouldn't take a disk any more. You could put in a disk and after a minute or two it would spit it right back out. One week after the 1 year factory backing was over the last unit died. In this year I went through 5 different drives. All of which had the same problem. The last drive went for 5 months before it died. One unit lasted only two weeks. Save your money and pass this drive by.
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| Reviewed By:Greg Boehnlein |
Date: 25-JAN-01 |
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I purchased an ORB Drive about 14 months ago. In that time period, I have never had the drive function at a reasonable level of reliability. This particular unit has been shipped back to Castlewood Systems on 3 separate occasions. My companions ORB drive at work has been shipped back for RMA 2 times and is about to go back for a third.
For those of you that are not familiar with the ORB Drive, Castlewood Systems manufactures a line of removable media drives that are supposed to give Hard Drive speed w/ inexpensive cartridge costs. The concept is great, as the cartridges run about $30.00 apiece. The problem is that the drives and cartridges stop functioning after minimal use.
In my case, I have had 10 different cartridges die across 2 ORB drives. For example, the straw that finally broke the Camel's back today was when after 2 weeks of die hard MP-3 encoding of my wife's CD Collection, the cartridge with 2.1 gigs of data on it was spit out of the ORB drive. All subsequent attempts to insert the cartridge and re-mount it have failed. The cartridge is inserted, the light on the front of the ORB flashes briefly between Orange and Green and then spits the cartridge back out.
This has happened to me with 9 other cartridges. Each time I call Castlewood for support, they suggest RMAing the cartridge. It's getting really expensive to ship these fubarred cartridges back!
Last 2 times, NO cartridges could be read by the drive. Castlewood advanced replaced me an ORB, and to my delight all my data stored on older cartridges could not be accessed! Same behavior as described above. Insert disk, watch lights blink, disk is spit out.
Now.. I feel I'm pretty reasonable about this. It's been 14 months, 5 RMAs and 10 ORB cartridges. In that time, I've racked up nearly $100 in shipping costs for the RMAs. Any cost savings that I may have experienced in purchasing the drive have gone out the window in lost time, lost data and problems. I would like to see Castlewood refund me, as I'm planning on buying a large IDE drive, or a Jazz. It would be nice to have support from other individuals who have similar experiences, if they exist out there.
If so, Email me.
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| Reviewed By:Mitch Fields |
Date: 24-JAN-01 |
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In the first year I had my internal ORB drive, the drive was replaced 3 different times, along with my ORB disks (the disks were each rendered unreadble when the drives failed, meaning, of course, all my data was lost). I finally wrote Castlewood and asked for a refund, which they agreed to. Four months, and 3 customer "support" people later, I have yet to receive a refund. Each rep have asked for (and been provided with) copies of my original receipt, and doled out various promises about taking care of this problem, but none have done so. I would urge all with a problem with the drive (and also with a problem with the company promises to repair or refund) to contact the California Attorney General's office and file a formal complaint. Although I don't expect it to accomplish much, I would think that the ensuing bad publicity might gice Castlewood second thoughts about screwing their customers over in the future. Had I read any of these reviews or saw notice of complaints filed with state AG's offices, I certainly would not have purchased the drive in the first place. I was able to voice my opinion to a guy considering buying one at a local CompUsa store last week, and he decided to but a ZIP drive instead. It's good to know that I've cost Castlewood at least one sale, even if I'm still waiting for them to finish screwing me over.
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| Reviewed By:Carey |
Date: 30-NOV-00 |
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I am torn on my experience with the Orb drive. My first unit went bad and I got it replaced. I experienced pauses when transferring a couple hundreds megs from the hard drive to the orb where the little piece of paper that moves from one folder to the next would just suddenly stop, my hard drive light would go out and my orb drive light would go out. Then, after a few seconds, it would continue and then, after a few seconds, it would pause again. Over and over until all data was transferred.
I also couldn't get the drive to read the disks in Win2k and Orb tech support had no ideas why. After a re-format and reinstall, and even a motherboard and processor upgrade, all the same problems were still there.
Recently, Castlewood posted a firmware update and I downloaded and installed it. The pausing seems to have gone away and, as a result, the drive operates much faster now. However, I still feel the drive is slow (maybe I am just used to hard drive speeds), but it can take about 20 minutes to copy little more than 1gb of data. I can do it in about 4 minutes from one hard drive to the other, and I can do 700mb's on a CD in about 8 minutes.
This second Orb has been working well, however, I don't use it very often because I just don't have the patience. I also haven't tried it in Win2k since the firmware upgrade.
Unfortunately, I can't think of a better alternative to the Orb. The $29 per 2.2gb cartridge is a great deal and is much less expensive the the Zip drive. CD's are much cheaper, but hold less data.
Tape drives are too slow and tapes can be expensive. The LS-120 drive is about dead, and even if it weren't, the media is expensive and the data transfer is slow and limiting.
So, considering what options are available for the price, the Orb is a good deal. But, that's like choosing between the lesser of the evils I suppose.
Carey
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| Reviewed By:ebaugh57 |
Date: 23-NOV-00 |
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More reliable than my hard drive... say no more.
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| Reviewed By:Dan |
Date: 20-AUG-00 |
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I see that I am not alone here. I bought a Castlewood Orb Drive about 9 months ago,
and like several have said, it started out great. This past week, it started destroying
disks. For no reason at all..... it started having disk read errors, or take 20 minutes
to copy a 10 meg file. The drive was working so hard, the red light came on
instead of the orange read/write light. I am making no attempt at replacing this
with another Orb drive. I guess I'll just be burning more CDs instead of storing
stuff on Orb disks. I do not recommend the Orb drive anymore, seeing as how
it's lifespan is so short. Castlewood had a great idea.......to bad they didn't engineer
it better.
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| Reviewed By:Loren |
Date: 18-AUG-00 |
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I also (as alot of others have stated here) am on my second ORB drive and still experiencing sector errors on disk. I currently am unable to get either drive to work on any of the 3 machine I have (win 2000, and 2 win 98). $200+ down the drain
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| Reviewed By:Lynn McGuire |
Date: 13-JUN-00 |
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I got two of the ORB IDE drives when they first came out in June of 1999. They worked OK for a while then they started having random failures. Then one of the drives totally failed. Castlewoord has replaced the drive which is still sitting on my shelf in it original wrapper.
I have been told that there is a media change to make the media more reliable.
I replaced the two ORB drives with two Fujitso MO drives for about $250 each from www.buy.com. The MO drives are slower and hold 640 MB but they are reliable as anything. They also are a true 3.5" cartridge and fit into any shirt pocket. I have zero problems with the Fujitsu MO drives or media.
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| Reviewed By:roger |
Date: 27-MAY-00 |
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I have had the orb for about a year. It started out great ! but started distroying the disk.. I returned the first one to castlewood the second orb worked about two weeks then began distroying disk. I am useing Windows 2000 Castlewood should work, but from the user's I have been reading it is doing the same thing on any and all systems. I wish they would fix it as I think it would be wonderful if it worked. CAN NOT RECOMEND IT NOW!
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| Reviewed By:Ken |
Date: 26-APR-00 |
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My first drive had a problem finding the true contents of media as they were changed. After bios updates, then an RMA from the friendly folks at Castlewood, I got a newer drive that had the same problem and a new media with media problems. This unit is not reliable so it is worthless as mass storage. It was uninstalled and labeled as a bad investment.
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| Reviewed By:snodman |
Date: 26-APR-00 |
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I installed an EIDE internal ORB drive in my Apple G4 system. Not wanting to be too much on the bleeding edge I did wait until the drivers were fairly mature and have really had no problems with it. It is very fast and has worked with the Mac OS (8.61 and 9.04) just fine. Works fine as either a master or a slave with the stock G4 ATA DVD ROM (Matsushita) drive. I also have used 3 different ORB media disks and have had no disk errors or lost data. Retrospect uses the ORB drive just fine and regular file copies/replacements/writebacks have worked fine. I'm pleased with it. The only criticism I would have is that there is no plastic bezel (at least that I could find) to make the acutal drive mounting look decent. I wound up sawing a hole in the stock 3 1/2" drive bay graphite colored plastic cover.
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| Reviewed By:Pete |
Date: 01-APR-00 |
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I returned the drive after a complete DOA. After fishing around on the net, I discovered multiple reviews that all say basically the same thing: it's an unreliable form of mass storage. Well, when it comes to data, there is no such thing as "unreliable mass storage": there are only door stops and real storage. Unfortunately, it looks like Castlewood is making hyped doorstops. I can't imagine how they can release such an unreliable product in good conscience. Someone should do a serious expose on them. Where are the computer mags when you really need them?
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| Reviewed By:Mark Davidson |
Date: 10-FEB-00 |
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Using the Orb on a Mac... First drive stopped working after about 3 weeks. I had a lot of stuff on several Orb disks and believed Castlewood was onto a winner, so I bought a 2nd Orb drive. It worked fine... has been great for about 2 months. Castlewood repaired the first drive in and returned it to me in a few days.
BUT, after using one disk more or less on line, but shutting down carefully and keeping the disk in its plastic case when not in use, that "main" disk now won't read. Castlewood referred me to Total Recall which makes "revovery" software (free) for Macs, anyway, to use with Orb drives-- in itself a bad sign. However, while the special software sees my Orb drive, it says it can't repair it and suggests I call Total Recall. I did. They will try and recover my Orb data for a cost of (they said) "between $200 and $1300."
I want to believe. I might continue to believe if Castlewood would give me access to the recovery software in use by Total Recall. If not, they should release the real return and failure rates of the Orb drives and media.
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| Reviewed By:Russel |
Date: 15-DEC-99 |
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I bought the ORB drive during the summer and had problems getting it to mount disks. After ignoring it for a long time, I finally contacted Castlewood and they promptly gave me an RMA and let me return it. Less than two weeks later they gave sent me a drive back and it has worked like a champ ever since.
I give them good marks for customer service and a good drive at a great price. I've been using it for about a month and a half since I got it replaced and it's been a solid performer.
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| Reviewed By:Victor |
Date: 08-SEP-99 |
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Worked fine in the beginning, now more and more bad sectors apears and being "reassigned" by defect scan utility included. To me it was just useless, since scanning "reassigned" and supposedly fixed disk again yields a bunch of new different bad sectors. All my disks (so far six, always kept in their plastic casses) give me I/O erors, unable to finish working with any large (like >1GB) files. Sending drive in for replacement. If second drive will fail, will return for refund, and recall that Castlewood's management (and probably production philosophy) came from SyQuest, including their founder/CEO and all senior staff... If they'll cut corners (why it's so cheap, huh?) sooner or later they'll end up where SyQuest did [read: THEY did a while ago...]
Bottom line - OK for storing photos, MP3s and digital video, where couple of wrong bits won't matter. For error free file storage/backups - can't be trusted. Unless I was just unlucky one...
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| Reviewed By:EA |
Date: 09-APR-99 |
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Please check http://www.castlewood.com for specifications and related info. I personally like this drive very much. It is as fast as a hard drive. The price is very good too. Check it out!
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