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ADS Technologies API-800 Pyro Drive Kit

ADS Technologies API-800 Pyro Drive Kit

List Price: $189.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Buyer beware!!!
Review: As I am writing, my 120GB WD hard drive mounted in my ADS firewire drive is clicking away. I am on my second replacement. The controller boards on these units are faulty.

I'm a computer system integrator, and I have never seen a name brand peripheral, fail as this one does. Search the internet, and you find many similar experiences.

ADS has been known for making excellent and affordable firewire cards, however there external firewire drives are another beast all together. Buyer beware!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awsome Kit!
Review: Great Card!! Great for fire wire devices and editing videos. It's a big plus because now you don't have to buy an I-MAC to produce high-quality videos. This is compatible with most systems.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: No real complaints here (a 1394b variant is advertised)
Review: I have a couple of these, and they've basically been fine (one's power supply blew out, but they sent me a new one pronto - good warranty service). The new version, api814, which supports ata133/1394b, sure looks sweet.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: No real complaints here (a 1394b variant is advertised)
Review: I have a couple of these, and they've basically been fine (one's power supply blew out, but they sent me a new one pronto - good warranty service). The new version, api814, which supports ata133/1394b, sure looks sweet.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: fast, convenient product
Review: My computer is under a desk with a wide surface, away from outstretched legs to avoid kicking it and kids' fingers that like to turn it off, so accessing the CD drive was a pain. I didn't want to buy an external CD-RW drive as I already had one in the computer so this kit seemed like a perfect solution.

Software and hardware installation was very easy and it worked flawlessly from the start. The only drawback I found was that being a separate unit, the fan inside would always run, even though the computer would enter powersave mode. I made the mistake of turning off the kit without ejecting the hardware from Windows 98. After that, every time the kit was powered on, the computer would hang then reboot.

I didn't want to return it so I decided to go through ADS Technical Support, even though it stopped working after only 3 days. The support was excellent and after 5 days of e-mail exchange of providing information and trying to fix it, they had me return the small board in the kit to them. I got a replacement board in a week, and it's worked flawlessly ever since. I've since (mistakenly) powered off the kit without gracefully ejecting it from Windows 98 with no problems, so I'm not sure if the original problem was related to this action.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not good for video capture
Review: This drive kit would fail when I captured my video from my DV camcorder. I used this drive kit to convert my ATA-100 hard drive to external IEEE 1394 drive for video capture and editing under Windows XP. The installation is easy and Windows XP can detect it without any problem. But when I tried to capture the data from my DV camcorder, this drive would stop DV from sending data. Moreover, the data captured in the drive was damaged. I checked up the web site and found the other users have the similar problem. Help yourself to find the other better storage solution.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not good for video capture
Review: This drive kit would fail when I captured my video from my DV camcorder. I used this drive kit to convert my ATA-100 hard drive to external IEEE 1394 drive for video capture and editing under Windows XP. The installation is easy and Windows XP can detect it without any problem. But when I tried to capture the data from my DV camcorder, this drive would stop DV from sending data. Moreover, the data captured in the drive was damaged. I checked up the web site and found the other users have the similar problem. Help yourself to find the other better storage solution.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: it works
Review: Unlike many other computer products I've bought, I had no hassles setting up and installing this Firewire drive kit. I simply purchased a good (brand name) hard drive, put it in the enclosure, hooked the cable up to my laptop and followed the short, paragraph size instructions on how to initialize the drive (WinXP eases things a lot). It worked flawlessly right from the start (...how many DIY computer projects can you say that about?).

I think part of the reason this enclosure recieved lukewarm reviews is that some people expect too much from Firewire. As far as simple storage goes, I think it's fine, but trying to play/edit video and multitracked audio files in realtime is going to be much more limited than on an internal hard drive.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: it works
Review: Unlike many other computer products I've bought, I had no hassles setting up and installing this Firewire drive kit. I simply purchased a good (brand name) hard drive, put it in the enclosure, hooked the cable up to my laptop and followed the short, paragraph size instructions on how to initialize the drive (WinXP eases things a lot). It worked flawlessly right from the start (...how many DIY computer projects can you say that about?).

I think part of the reason this enclosure recieved lukewarm reviews is that some people expect too much from Firewire. As far as simple storage goes, I think it's fine, but trying to play/edit video and multitracked audio files in realtime is going to be much more limited than on an internal hard drive.


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