Home > Consumer Reviews > ACOMDATA External 120GB USB 2.0 & FireWire Hard Drive (PC/MAC)

I purchased the ACOMData 120GB external hard drive looking for a convenient way to transport large graphic design images between work and home. I chose this specific drive due to it's flexibility in using USB or Firewire and a decent price tag for the storage size. It was purchased from CompUSA for sticker price of $230 in January of 2003.

The drive worked perfectly on my home computer (XP using Firewire connection). Never had any issues straight out of the box. On my work machine, however, I got the drive to work a handful of times only (XP tried both USB and Firewire connections). So, the drive ended up primarily serving as extra storage on my home machine. Not what I bought it for, but hey it's still usable. I wasn't pleased, but I could deal with it. Then things got worse...

In less than one year from the original date of purchase the drive died completely (purchased Jan 2003, died Oct 2003). It began to give what we used to call in the computer labs the "click of death." Whenever the drive was accessed, it would emit a looping click-whir noise and never be able to actually access the drive. The drive was never maltreated, dropped, kept in unventilated area, etc. Thus far, the customer service center of ACOMData has been unresponsive.

I now have a $230 paper weight. Definitely do NOT purchase an ACOMData drive.

I bought this drive myself, because the space I was using on my laptop (20GB at the time) wasn't enough. I needed to archive some things to make way for new. At the time, the laptop I had did not support USB 2.0, but it did have Firewire. Wanting to make sure it was as fast as possible, this was the cheapest method to accomplishing what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, the saying that "you get what you pay for" has never been more true.

As a drive? IT's great. It's fast, efficient, great storage for the price. AS a product? It sucks. Like many others, mine started making the loud noise too, and the only way to get it to stop is to bang it. Not very comfortable with continual banging of a storage device. A lot of my information has sensitive parts, so I can't send it to the shop to repair it under warranty, because of privacy laws. I bought another drive, a US Logic with less space and no Firewire (I have a better laptop now that supports USB 2.0), and it's not as fast as the other, but it does what I need to, and quietly.

If you need external memory? Don't buy ACOMData products.

I purchased this drive from Best Buy approximately 4 months ago for it's features and size. I was in the process of transferring all data from my laptop to this "backup" storage device so I could format and reinstall a fresh Windows XP image. I also had several other friends' data backed up on the device.

The device suddenly stopped working WITH NO WARNING WHATSOEVER! I've just written tech support so I don't know what kind of response I'll get, but judging from the tone of these reviews, it doesn't look good.

My data can be reconstructed from a menagerie of CDs, but it will be a laborious process. Next time I'll read the reviews before I buy.

Like the folks below, I bought the acomdata 120gb external hard drive roughly 6 months ago. I got it at CompUSA for roughly $160, and was delighted until about a week ago. For the record, I'm running Mac OS 10.3 on an Apple G4 (dual 5, desktop w/ 1.5gigs of ram)... so it's not just Windows this thing conks out on. It started making noise, on and off, REALLY loud whirring... about a week ago.

Last night I was watching a movie in my livingroom when I was literally startled out of my seat by a loud noise coming from my office (it was so loud it was audible over the movie I was watching with the surround sound turned up). It was the acomdata hard-drive, howling away like a sick dog. I turned it off. I let it sit.

This morning I turned it on, and experienced the death-gurgle: clicking and whirring. The light blinks red once, and then 3 x's in succession. It clicks 4 or 5 times when you turn it on, then nothing... except that whirring noise.

I for one had thousands of dollars worth of digital product stored on mine. I'm a graphic designer and I lost dozens of original works of art, of client designs, of business documents, of important writing and software. This crash has very literally cost me thousands of dollars; both in cash to layout for new versions of software, and in hours spent manually retrieving and re-creating the lost files and art.

Do NOT buy this product. It will ruin your day, week, month, and quite possibly your business. I strongly suggest not buying anything from this manufacturer.

I purchased the 120GB USB Firewire at the end of Oct '03 for storing video clips. I had a problem at first getting my iMac to recognize the drive but other than that it was fine until 2 weeks ago when I turned it on and it made a terrible clicking sound. I tried disk warrior to no avail. In the meantime, I tried calling and emailing Acomdata tech support and no one would respond. Finally, 10 days later reached a human being at the firm and refused to get off the phone until I spoke to a a live person in tech support. They said to me that the data is probably lost but offered to look at the HD. Although I can ultimately restore my data from tapes, I still lost hours of work, never mind the frustration of trying to reach this company. I don't trust them and suspect that the reason I couldn't get a response out of them is because they are responding to other irate customers!