Imagine plugging your nice, shiny external firewire drive into your computer, and moments later hearing an explosion and seeing a jet of smoke shooting out the back of your enclosure! This is exactly what happened to me THREE TIMES.
I post here because I had previously recommended this product to people on this list, owing to the nice design, and apparent quality. I now feel obliged to report my horrendous experience to you all, in the hopes that you will be able to avoid the trouble. I also submit my sincere regret to anyone who had this problem because of my prior recommendation.
Way back in March, I wrote:
Jeff wrote:I picked up a refurb 20GB IBM model 40GNX from consumerdepot.com for just $69 this week.
....I also suggest you investigate the external housing options by triumph technologies, for your surplus drive? (specifically, the model me-910 series) They make dual USB2, dual Firewire, and combo USB2/firewire enclosures, which ARE Mac compatible (and use the oxford 911 bridge for the firewire part).
The following experiences involve the ME-910U2F (combo firewire/USB) enclosure only. It is for 2.5" hard disk drives, typically the size used in laptop computers, not the larger 3.5" drives used in desktop systems. Several months ago, I purchased a pair of these enclosures, and was so happy with them that I promoted them on this list. Two months ago, I had to return one for replacement, and last week had to return the second one as well (vendor: "Computer Geeks", of Oceanside, CA, who issued RMA's for replacement equipment). Today the initial replacement from several months ago also went up in smoke.
These enclosures worked fine on an Apple Powerbook G3 "firewire" for several weeks, bus powered, and also on an Apple PowerMacintosh 7200 with USB PCI card, also bus powered, and also on two Dell computers, USB bus powered. They contained different brands of working hard drive mechanisms.
In April, the first enclosure exploded several seconds after plugging it into an iMac DV G3/450MHz computer firewire port at a job in New York (loud "bang", with smoke shooting out the back of the enclosure). It appeared that a capacitor (1 cm tall, black cylindrical component on the board inside the enclosure) blew up, releasing smoke and brown fuzz. The IBM drive mechanism was undamaged, and worked fine in the replacement enclosure provided by "Computer Geeks" on a Powerbook.
Last week, the second enclosure similarly exploded several seconds after plugging it into a separate, working, external firewire drive, connected to my personal iMac DV G3/400MHz computer, at home. In this instance, the ME-910U2F was not directly connected, but rather chained through another external firewire hard drive (3.5" style, from OWC, housed in a MacAlly enclosure.
Today I attached a third ME-910U2F enclosure (the replacement, above) containing an IBM mechanism to the firewire port of an academic G4 eMac, only to hear the same BANG and see the same smoke shooting out the back.
Different computers and different drive mechanisms; the only things in common were the ME-910U2F enclosures connecting to a firewire bus, and with the same capacitor exploding. Ironically, the second one exploded when I was *trying* to demonstrate to a friend how great this enclosure is.
The eMac and both iMac computers continue to work properly with other brands of external firewire drives and equipment attached to them.
I wrote to Triumph Technologies, with this information, inquiring if this was a known problem. They replied as follows:
There was one batch of them with bad capacitors, hence your "explosive"
problem.
This have been fix in later productions.
Most ibook/PowerBook user will never encounter this problem due to the lower
Amp.
The higher Amp on the iMac/eMac/PowerMac doesn't agree with the bad
capacitor.
I guess I have sufficiently bad luck to get THREE of the early ones. I doubt I'll be able to get Computer Geeks to accept the third one back for replacement, and I'm about to try replacing the "bad" capacitor myself, if I can find the part. Anyone know where to buy components like this on the www? Radio Shack doesn't seem to carry the one I need (220uF, 6.3V, radial, 105 degree C, electrolytic).
If you've got an ME-910U2F, I would suggest that you NEVER plug it into an iMac or eMac; if you're shopping for an enclosure, I suggest you avoid this one. Google it on the WWW to get a picture of it so you know what to avoid if buying on ebay or from another vendor. OWC formerly carried this enclosure, but does not list it anymore. Neither do the Geeks, in fact. I will remain afraid--very afraid--to use ANY hard drive enclosure from this manufacturer on my eMac or iMac systems.
I hope this helps someone.
--Jim.
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