lavandeira.net

Look at this product page from G-Technology (Hitachi):

Wow! That must be an awesome product, right? Over 90% score from almost 450 reviews!

Too bad it’s a lie. Keep reading for my experience with this external disk.

How do I know that the scores are fake? Very easy: there are only a bunch of reviews with a single star (the lowest possible score you can give them). I looked at all of them, and my own review (posted on May 18th) isn’t there. It dissappeared mysteriously in the Internet’s tubes. I don’t usually waste my time writing product reviews or even giving my opinion, but I did an exception this time because Hitachi kept bugging me asking for a review. I got this email at least five times:

You see, I got this mail an annoying number of times, and the promotion doesn’t even apply to me because I live in Japan! And yes, they do have my address because I entered my personal information when I registered the product.

So I went and posted a review in their website. Here it is:

This is what I wrote:

Bought a g-drive mini unit and made the mistake of registering it with them. This last week I’ve received already 3 mails from Hitachi asking me to write a review, so here it is.

Besides Hitachi’s spam, the FireWire ports break easily. You also get a leather pouch (I hope it’s fake leather!). It’s not sewn, but glued together. There is too much glue and it sticks to the outside of the drive after putting it in the pouch.

Needless to say, this review has never appeared in G-Technology’s product page. I’m posting it here because they’re not allowing me (a paying customer!) to post my opinion in their website after they asked for it.

I’ll just add that this disk is expensive. It’s just a standard 2.5″ disk from Hitachi in a heavy metal enclosure. It has a USB 2.0 port and two FireWire 800 ports in the back. The  backplane containing the ports breaks easily. I wouldn’t recommend you to buy this disk. Buy a Western Digital instead.