Gericom 250Gb External Hard Drive At Aldi [CLOSED]

Den

Did you pluged in Power adapter. 3.5" HD will not work from USB

MyUserNamesTaken

mak_attack wrote:

hi,

i am having doubts
i am now thinking i should have got a firewire as i use a mac on regular basis. i could transer video etc at a better constant rate. i could also have booted the os of the hdd.

i have seen a 500gb hdd for £211 from dabs delivered.

2 * aldi = £200 so the dabs one (formac) sounds good value.

its firewire 400/800.

should i return the aldi due it being usb2?

also savestore/scan do icy box fw/usb with 250gb seagate/hitachi for £118 delivered.

thanks,

The Gericom is a Seagate Barracuda drive, so the only reason you'd be paying extra on the savestore/scan version is for the f/w connectivity. Also, have you read up on the problems firewire connectivity can cause with an external HDD? If not, google it. You'll probably decide that USB2 is the preferred method of connection once you've read about HDD corruption and data loss caused by firewire connectivity.

MyUserNamesTaken

georgedawes wrote:

Bought this on saturday and have not got it to install on my laptop yet!!
The card reader works a treat,but the hdd itself will not install.I am running Xp pro and have sp1 on because the lappy does not seem to like sp2 for some reasons??It seems to jerk and judder and just does not perform as it should.
As for plug and play,well i can plug,but there is no playin!It will not recognise in the usb ports.In fact its says unknown device and will not go any further from there not matter what i do.
Has anybody got any ideas???

Sounds to me like your laptop is a crock, rather than the HDD. If you've got problems running SP2, you've got a software or hardware conflict going on there. If that's the case, chances are it's stopping the HDD working too. Are you using USB or USB2? Are you even connecting the HDD correctly to the laptop? (Not using the USB ports at the front, as they are a separate USB hub.)

mak_attack

hi myusernamestaken,

thanks for your comments.

what are the main issues in relation to a fw drive being used on a daily basis?

what drive do you have?

thanks,

rainbowsden

Hi all,
This is my first message so 'Glad to meet you'
I bought a Gericom ext HDD from Aldi and I am certainly having installation problems with it. My PC is a desktop model and it's about 3yrs old. The specs are;
Windows XP home SP2......NTFS
CPU: AMD Athlon 2000+ XP
768 DDRAM
80GB HDD...75% free
USB 2.0 6 port hub (2 internal: 4 external)
USB 1.1....2 ports
I followed the makers instructions on 'how to install' and connected the cables in the right order and switched on. The first thing I noticed was a flickering Blue LED. the icon that should be installed in My Computer' didn't appear and a series of clicks/switches could be heard inside the ext HDD.
There's no sign that it is recognised in Device Manager or Disk Management.

To make sure that the thing wasn't broke I then tried to install it on a Laptop (14mths old) with similar specs but with SP1, although it was recognised in Device manager and Disk Management it still would not format/convert to NTFS. Nor could I save anthing to it, images etc
All help appreciated.
BTW. if anyone does have a fix please explain as though you're talking to a person who thinks slowly.
Thanks

rhubarb_2

Duh, I've spent since last Friday trying to get this product to work on my W2K SP4 PC. It works for a short while then windows pops up the "Unsafe removal" warning. It continues to do this every 20 seconds or so for no reason. I took the first drive back to Aldi & swapped it, but the second one does exactly the same. I've Flashed the MB bios and done a full windows update but it still !!!!!! around like this.

It's the same even if I switch off both reader & HD and just plug a digicam in the front. It just randomly unplugs. Just for kicks I plugged it into a USB1 port and it works fine apart from going at a snails-pace. It sometimes boots at USB1 speeds when plugged into the USB2 socket as well, and when it's like this it doesn't do the random unplug, but it's hardly usable.

What a laugh ringing the tech support number on the box ~ straight through to the Indian sub-continent for a lesson on USB Fire-walls!?! Any one else using this device with W2K ?

MyUserNamesTaken

mak_attack wrote:

hi myusernamestaken,

thanks for your comments.

what are the main issues in relation to a fw drive being used on a daily basis?

what drive do you have?

thanks,

I have two external HDDs (one is a Gericom 160GB HDD with both f/w and USB2 connections - I use USB2 on it, the other is a Pikaone 250GB HDD, connected to my laptop via USB2). I would have gone for this latest Gericom had I not managed to pick up the Pikaone from QVC Warrington for £75 a few weeks back.

For issues relating to f/w drives, go back a few pages on this thread:


http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=51401&page=5&pp=10

Neilly_Boy

hi myusernamestaken

i have just bought the gericom £99 special but not sure now whether to take it out the box after all I have read here and on other review sites. I am running XP home with a 2.66GHZ intel pentium 4 processor but no SP1 or SP" installed yet. Am I right in thinking that i should not be concerned with the whole 137GB XP limit thing because it is an external device??? And also I was wanting extra storage for Mini-DV footage aswell as audio, is USB 2.0 going to be fast enough for me???
Finally I would like to convert it to NTFS if I do get it up and running.
Would really like some help on this otherwise its going back to Aldi!!!

Thanks

matty66

to all frustrated users i have called helpline in germany but mac person wasn't there.
i have this thing working in os9 as a hard drive but as i want it in os 10.2.8 this isn't much use. will try helpline again tomorrow but feel a return coming on and a lacie d2 purchase coming on they know macs, 20 quid more but if it works what the hell!

MyUserNamesTaken

Neilly_Boy wrote:

hi myusernamestaken

i have just bought the gericom £99 special but not sure now whether to take it out the box after all I have read here and on other review sites. I am running XP home with a 2.66GHZ intel pentium 4 processor but no SP1 or SP" installed yet. Am I right in thinking that i should not be concerned with the whole 137GB XP limit thing because it is an external device??? And also I was wanting extra storage for Mini-DV footage aswell as audio, is USB 2.0 going to be fast enough for me???
Finally I would like to convert it to NTFS if I do get it up and running.
Would really like some help on this otherwise its going back to Aldi!!!

Thanks

I'm running my Gericom 160GB HDD on an Intel Pentium 2.66Ghz processor pc using XP Home edition, too. If I were you, I'd install SP2 anyway, as it really does iron out many security issues in XP. XP won't recognise it as a 250GB HDD if you don't update to SP2. Although it's an external HDD, when it's connected to your PC, it will act in exactly the same way as an internal drive. You'll be able to convert it to NTFS by right clicking on the drive icon in My Computer, then clicking Format. Before you try to format the drive, I'd strongly recommend installing SP2 (you don't need to install SP1 if you just install SP2). The drive itself is very good (seagate barracuda). Obviously, there will always be the odd one or two which are faulty, but in general the only reason people are having problems is due to hardware conflicts.

USB2 is fine - i use USB2 and my transfer speeds are excellent.


You can open it up and try it, by the way. Aldi has a no quibble guarantee on their products.