Item: ClubMac/Seagate Medalist Pro 4.5GB

Manufacturer: ClubMac/Seagate

Price: Now $309

Hardware

Hard Drives

Introduction

This hard drive is available from ClubMac. Originally, Seagate sold just the drive to them, and ClubMac put a case on it along with an added new price. Many resellers put their own case on external drives. However, ClubMac has made this a really nice looking hard drive.

Details

The ClubMac/Seagate Medalist Pro 4.5 GB is a really nice hard drive that has great performance along with an easier price. However, you should know that the drive is not an actual 4500 MB drive, but has a capacity of 4340 MB. I don't know how that was messed up. This drive also spins faster than many others. Instead of the entry level 5400 RPMs, this drive spins at 7200 RPMs. You may not know it, but that means much faster use of large files. If you compose large graphics or videos, time can be cut. If you wanted to spend hundreds of extra dollars, you could get a 10000 RPM drive. A speedy 9.5 millisecond access time is another feature of this drive.

Details: DON'T GO BUY THIS DRIVE YET, YOU SHOULD KNOW...

We feel it is our duty to provide complete reviews on products. Not only is the product reviewed, but how the company or reseller handles their customers. This is all taken into consideration when giving final words for the reviews. The reseller, ClubMac, has easily influenced this review.

Well, you should also be informed that something went terribly wrong with this hard drive. It happened while we were in the middle of our review. What could have went so wrong with such a neat looking drive? To answer that, just image the big fear that people just stick in the back of their heads. Are you thinking:

CRASH

LOSS OF DATA

HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS DOWN THE DRAIN

SOME SERIOUSLY ANGRY PEOPLE

Those are just a few of the things that happened. The drive had a head crash. If you turned it on, it made a hard grinding noise and then crashed your computer. This is a fearful situation. At the intimation of your data, time, effort, and money being gone for good, you hope the drive will come back to life. What would you do in this situation? How about call ClubMac and speak to Technical Support? This proved to be more of a problem.

At the time of the crash, of course tech support was closed. So then the next day arrived and finally we spoke to them. They had us perform some odd and quite strange test on the drive. It still made the grinding noise and they didn't know what was wrong. The representative stated that this is odd and we should send the drive in for repair. What about the data? That will be lost and not ever recovered. You could fall over after hearing that. But, you could send it to a Data Recovery company and they might be able to get your data back. ClubMac does not perform any of these operations. But they suggested some places that may. One of them was DriveSavers. For this specific drive, it would cost anywhere between $1000 and $3500 to recover the data. That might be a bit too much for a $300 drive. Those prices are effective only if the drive is recoverable. If not, there is a $200 fee just for trying. Now you have to try to realize that you have lost your data and it is not coming back. Gigabytes of data are gone.

But what about the ClubMac repair? They issued a warranty return number so we could send it in. First thing Monday it was shipped via FedEx. A nice air bill was accumulated for overnight shipping. We wanted the drive back ASAP. So, Tuesday we called them and asked if they received it. FedEx once again pulled through and delivered on time. ClubMac also stated that it should be processed and looked at very soon. They even put a rush on it for us. Well Wednesday came and we called them again to see if they started processing it. They claimed that it was looked at but if they could not repair it they would have to send it to Seagate. This would take two to three weeks. You could almost fall off your chair again. You lost all your data, quickly send it back for repair, and then they say it could take three weeks. Imagine three weeks without a hard drive. That could really cripple your computer work. Now some people got quite angry about this problem. So we spoke to some more people and asked if they could send us a replacement drive so we wouldn't have to wait three weeks. ClubMac denied our request. They stated that they could not ship us another because Seagate doesn't have a special program to do that. What does Seagate have to do with it? It is an external drive with a ClubMac case. The drives are at ClubMac. They also stated that it was past the 30 day money back guarantee. Apparently we missed the cut off by a few hours. They did not want to cooperate at all and said they could do nothing else. How would you feel if a company treated you like this? After this, we started to talk with some other people here at CCPlace. Another person seemed to be outraged with ClubMac's attitude. That person called ClubMac also and had a conversation with them. We finally found out why it was so difficult to contact tech support. There was only one person taking calls. Imagine that, one person for the entire company. We even asked to speak to the manager. However, he works shortened hours and wasn't there. Once the situation was laid out yet again to customer service, they said they would call us back. That day passed without a call. The next day ClubMac was called again. Again, they said they would call us back. We can't wait all year. Later we called them again and asked to speak to the manager. This time he was there but not available. Again the representative said that they could not help us and it would take three weeks to get the drive back. Disputes came again and again. We spoke directly to the service department. Now they had claimed that they had not looked at the drive and did not test it at all. But the day before ClubMac claimed that it was processed and might be on the way to Seagate. How can they claim that it was not looked at? Then they started getting technical. We told them that three weeks was unacceptable and they should do better. After all, we spent $300 on the drive, lost gigabytes of data, got a hefty air bill from FedEx, and were treated badly. ClubMac lied to us and wanted to take three weeks to get the drive back to us. The service department person claimed to be the head person that deals with the costumers. His bottom line was that it would take three weeks and that is final. Basically it was their way of saying you are getting raked over the coals. Finally, we resorted to telling them that we are a group that reviews computer products and that we had already started a review on this hard drive. The outcome of the review would change. Perhaps they were trying to call a bluff, and they asked about our group and where the review would be. We told them to go to our web site and check it out. They stated that they would. So if you remember speaking to us and work in the Service Department, tell your colleagues about this review. CCPlace publishes all the facts for consumers. Consumers should know about how ClubMac treats their customers.

Oddly enough, later a representative called us back and said they could do nothing. Even later, another person called us and stated that they could do something. They said even thought it was just over the 30 days, they would ship a new one and charge us for it. This of course was a curtesy, stated the representative. Imagine that, as a curtesy they would ship us another one and bill us for it. However, when the hard drive is finished being processed by ClubMac, they will credit us for it. Why would it take them so long to come up with such a simple plan? The simple plan has already been established and known as placing an order. But, we accepted their proposal. Now lets see if they correctly ship, bill, and credit. Hopefully things will go smoother. Even more important, hopefully we will get a working hard drive.

Details: Completeness

This review was cut short due to the fact that we didn't have the hard drive any longer. If we get it back in reasonable timing and there is more to add, we should update it. We couldn't get any good pictures of the drive or case in the time we had.

Conclusion

A hard drive is one of the most important pieces of your system. You cannot operate your computer without it. Think how much you rely on your files being there the next time you turn on your computer. You probably have stuff that cannot be replaced. You probably created files that took very much time and effort. You could have personal or corporate items on your hard drive. Whatever is on your hard drive, you probably expect to see your files there each day for years. It is a bit difficult to backup your entire drive. So, would you gamble with the loss of all your data on your hard drive? This means loosing every single file and never having it rescued. Just try to think what you would do if you lost all your data. Your operating system, configuration files, internet stuff, games, work files, etc., would all be gone for good. You cannot afford to loose all this. Your hard drive should not fail you. It should spin for years and years. That is why you must make a very smart choice when getting a hard drive. This ClubMac/Seagate hard drive crashed. There is a three year warranty on the product. How can it crash so early in its life? Even if the odds are slim, would you take that chance? Would you risk all your data? Or would you choose a super reliable hard drive to store all your data? If you have to make the choice you better choose safe and reliable. For your benefit, weight the options before getting a certain hard drive. Your data is at risk.

Rating

2/10 2/10

Obviously if the drive didn't fail and if ClubMac would have been more pleasant, the rating would have been greater.