Excellent product   June 18, 2002

The main issue I had was buying other disks in England in 2001 when Castlewood was supplying the US market first and most shops across the ocean ran out of stock. I wish those disks were more widely available, they are impossible to find in Mexico for example.


Cheap, fast, good. Possibly 3 out of 3?   February 6, 2002
  2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I've had my Orb for more than a year, and admit I don't use it heavily. I've got the external SCSI2 version and a beige Mac g3/300MHz running OS 9.2 (for the sake of comparison).

It was easy to install, easy to use, seems quite reliable. Fast enough random file access to keep me very happy. Vast improvement over backup with ZIP disks, which was starting to get silly for even 4GB partial backups.

Tough to find the disks, I have to agree there with other reviewers. I ordered a bunch when I bought the drive, and re-use them. Have been looking to buy a new batch, and had to look a little harder than I thought. At first, they seemed to have disappeared from the face of the Earth, and I was ... that such a good product might have vanished... But I found a few places that carry them, though they aren't heavily advertised, as they were when they first came out.

Only problem I've had is a little annoyance with the drive refusing to read the disk. I sometimes have to reinsert the disk a few times, or even restart the computer & drive before I get the disk recognized. I don't know if that's the fault of the disk, the driver, or the drive itself, but that seems to be the most common complaint around. However, it's just an intermittant problem for me, and I've been able to work around it without difficulty. Then again, I don't need to make large daily backups (monthly, at most). I suppose if I did, that problem would be more irksome.

So beware- if you want to rely on this drive heavily, be cautious, it could be problematic. Whatever QC manufacturing problems they seem to be having haven't been surmounted yet. But if you just like the convenience of large, cheap, reusable storage, like I do, this is a far better alternative to a Jaz drive.


Can not make it work.   October 29, 2001
  0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I wanted to use this as a backup device. However, when I copy files to it I always get a message that the transfer is not working and the files are not recoverable. Two disks insist that they are write protected. I have not been able to find that helps on the Castlewood site. This is the external USB 2.2 G drive


Cheap storage, fast   October 26, 2001
  1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I've never had a problem with the Orb drive, although I've heard that other people have. I'm not sure why this is so, but I'm very happy with mine, which is why I give the 5 stars.

I have the external USB/SCSI version, and four disks. I had one disk go bad on me, and Castlewood sent me a new one in no time.

I recommend the Orb for people who consistently have large files to move around to different computers. For example, if you have huge amounts of data to take from your office to your home, or vice versa, the Orb would be the most bang for the buck. You would probably need two drive units, but it's worth it.


Stay away!   October 17, 2001
Simply put: The worst peripheral I have ever owned. This product is absolutely unreliable - most of the time, it will not recognize disks that it just used previously but will suggest that you initialize it again, thereby erasing your data. I have been able to circumvent this problem, though, with persistent attempts and a lot of patience. However, things can quickly get worse as the ORB can actually stop acknowledging that you even supplied a disk that is worthy of accessing. It will simply spit it out again after a minute or so. Castlewood is aware of this problem and provides a rather simplistic solution which, of course, fails to solve the problem. After that, you're on your own since Castlewood is not so great about customer support. I have plenty of data stored that I have been unable to access in almost a year. I know now, that I will never buy another Castlewood product.