Dan

I find this to be one of the core problems with many reviews or the window and time frame for reviews and I do wish long term testing were more the norm. Regardless I do have to thank you for your comment though because based on what you and Wayne have said I need to do way more research to see if I can understand the problem. Is it the SSD’s that are bad or the cards have some flaw in the design that produces increased stress in a machine with an older architecture and this causes the card to fail? Are they flukes? 3 times?

That’s very worrisome. Did you end up taking a refund or went with a 4th and how did that work out?

what happened was: i came back to the machine after it was in sleep mode (yes, i’d installed the accelsior software) and it was mostly unresponsive. SBBOD for minutes after each mouse click. would accept switching applications. would get maybe one click or move with each before going unresponsive. so i rebooted the machine.

after reboot, machine was functional but still sluggish. so as a precautionary measure. i quickly backed up the critical client files that were still on it. after another reboot (with another internal) the drive filed to mount. system info saw the device, but nothing showed it as a storage volume. still worked as an esata device. but not a drive

after a number of support chats and efforts to see it via terminal. we decided that it was most likely “bad blades”. unwilling to accept defeat (and in hopes of retrieving my personal data), i left the card in the machine for a few weeks. as twice it had come up briefly then disappeared again.

i’d told support that it had also had periodic failures in esata connectivity during this time.

fast forward a few weeks. i admit defeat and send it in. within 2 weeks they returned it to me at no cost with new blades BUT on my same base PCI card. ok. fine. whatever.

a few days later it started to do EXACTLY the same thing it had before. BUT this time i had a copy of disk warrior on hand and was able to remedy the problem.

(if you own an accelsior, i HIGHLY suggest factoring the cost of disk warrior into the purchase).

i contacted support and asked that given the esata issues, why they would not have sent me an entire new device? they said that it had been extensively tested and had been proven functional. one tech said that it was odd that they would have done that. and i should have been contacted before they made the decision.

so anyway. i told them that i had every reason to be suspicious of the base card itself. they agreed to send me a new card. but only while putting a hold on my card for the price until the defective one was received in return. i told them that i was unwilling to come out of pocket (even temporarily) for something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. but they refused to budge.

i then said “ok. how about since i have no faith in the product. i just return the whole thing for a full refund?” which they approved.

so basically. they are going to return me $500 for a year old product. rather than simply bypass a charge and refund of $150? go figure.

i know i’m being super petty at this point. but exemplary customer service and product support was one of the many reasons i stayed both a customer and very vocal supporter for so many years. it seems that like in so many other cases, as a company grows larger, the quality of service takes a downturn : (