Overall Rating: ( 1 reviews )

1. Posted: Jun 14 2008

   Absolutely no support is provided with this backup drive. Specs are terrific, but you'll waste a day getting it to work, even if you're a professional like me. 1. No drivers are provided, and nothing in the package tells you you need one. When you discover it doesn't work you might eventually find the tiny print on the tiny quick-start guide that gives you the Sony website where all the drivers are (it's a nonexistent site, so you'll have to figure out what the right one is), and then figure out how to download and install the proper driver for your OS (I'm WinXP). 2. Then you'll have to get compatible backup software. I discovered that the Sony hardware compression doesn't work with my current backup software, so I get only 80 GB on an AIT-2 tape instead of the full 208 that I'd get if compression worked. That's an extra $100 every time I backup my system. 3. It comes packaged with a Symantec BackupExec CD, but guess what: you can't get that to work without "activating" it, and the Symantec activation site doesn't work -- after being forced to enter 20 items of intrusive personal information I get the "try again later" message from the ever-incompetent Symantec folks. 4. I waited 20 minutes to talk to a Sony guy, who promised to give me an activation key in three days when the engineer returns. I'm returning the drive to Amazon as defective, and suggest you avoid it until Sony goes back to making decent products.

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