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Customers most agreed on the following attributes:
Instructions reasonably clear. Installation, from unpacking to use, took less than 1/2 hour.
from Richmond, VA on 7/15/2008
If you have problems, you are out of luck. The tech support number goes to some poor guy's cell phone who says he not connected with this company's technical support. The Mad Dog web site is gone.This PC World article notes that Mad Dog "has an unsatisfactory rating with the Better Business Bureau due to unanswered complaints; those complaints commonly involve refund or exchange issues.[@]
from Seattle, WA on 6/28/2008
Bought this enclosure hoping to recover data on a Maxtor hard drive. Went together easy enough but my HP desktop does not assign it a drive letter. Nor does it give the option to repartion the drive. As what little insturctions in the box indicated. There seems to be no tech support anywhere to help a novice make this work.
Cheap, a lot of accessories, everything you need to setup fast and easy this external enclosure.
Excellent construction and design.
from Foster City, CA on 5/17/2008
I just switch to a Laptop, so now how do I access my destktop hdd? I've been looking at enclosures and this fits the bill. I don't have to think about compatibility - it's got it all. My desktop hdd, two of them, are now accessible to my laptops. Sweet! My Seagate HDD gets really hot after an hour of use, but the Western Digital is just warm. Strange. I'm running XP Pro on a Lenovo Z61P, no problems at all. I have other external drives, WD Passport 160GB, Seagate FreeAgent 500GB, and WD My Book 500GB; adding this to my arsenal of backups possibilities. The cords are included and they're long enough to stretch around my desk and around my file cabinet. Plus, a nice little stand is included to let it sit sideways and out of the way. Buy this enclosure before they're out.
Images shared by: Evil SmileyMad Dog MegaVault 3.5" next to WD Passport
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I needed an enclosure that could handle large drives. This one handles up to 1TB! I figured that since SATA drives are cheaper, having support for that would be good too. I don't have an eSATA port, but will definitely look forward to the faster speeds when I upgrade. It gets a tad bit warm after being on a long time, but not too bad. I gave it a 4 only because of an issue trying to get Windows XP to disconnect from it sometimes.
I had a 250 GB external drive that started acting loopy -- first disk i/o errors, then I couldn't see the files on the drive, finally, the drive would not mount.
So what were my options? According to the mfg, send the drive back under warranty and either pay an exorbitant data recovery fee or lose all my data (they would simply replace the drive).
Under the assumption that the power supply or controller might be at fault I decided to try a new external enclosure, so I went down to Radio Shack and bought the Mad Dog MegaVault (it works with either IDE or eSATA drives). After about 15 minutes easy assembly, I hooked up the drive and fired up my computer -- I didn't even have to re-partition or anything, the disk mounted and read perfectly.
If anyone else is having trouble with their external USB HD (and the blogs seem to indicate that I am not the only one) give the Mad Dog MegaVault a try. Maybe it will work for you too.
Can't complain on first day. Instructions are straightforward to follow. Up and running within 20 minutes with a 160 GB SATA drive/USB connection. Then switched through two older IDE drives without problems (8GB and 30GB) to recover files and reformat. All were recognized on Dell Dimension 8400 running XP-Pro. Warning: You need to be careful stuffing wires into the case. Its easy to pinch the LED power cord.
Works great. Got it on sale for [$] and it's easily worth every penny!
[1 of 1 customers found this review helpful]
This is a very very good deal for an ext drive enclosure. IDE and SATA connections at the SALE price is the best deal out there. I am a SCSI fan, but this is fine for SATA. However, just as the limitation of all ATA drives, if you try to do multiple data transfers, it just plain bogs way way down.......However, it is just fine for all practical purposes. It DOES get very. I'd recommend drilling a few holes around the case and if you are technial enough, put a small fan inside of it, also. But this is very handy and I really love it. I have two of them, this being one of them.