Hyperdrive HORROR story.

This is just my account of this product.

I'm a pro shooter - Nikon, Lexar cards (all the same, 2gb 133x). Treat my equipment as best as I possibly can.

Bought the hyperdrive a few months ago. It worked great until randomly, in the MIDDLE of a card dump, I got error 12. Note: I had been dumping cards that night w/o any problems. Error 12 indicates 'card not compatible'. Thought - ok, I'll just put that card to the side and only use the other cards. No. Once that error came up, I couldn't dump anything else to the drive. Luckily, all the files I had dumped that night WERE accessible via USB so I was able to retrieve them.

It took me nearly ONE WEEK to get a response from Sanho - they simply asked me to send in the drive. They did not, despite my request, inform me of how to trouble shoot the drive on my own. Aweful customer service. NON-EXISTENT customer service is a better way of putting it.

So I got the drive back about 1.5 wks later - it was fixed. Same unit, repaired.

I'm using the drive for another 2 weeks, no problem, then again, SAME ISSUE. Error 12.

I immediately email them (because calling them is one big ole waste of time) and 3 days go by which brings us to today - still no response.

For us professional photographers who rely on devices such as this - I DO NOT recommend the Hyperdrive. I wish I could because I love the idea of it, but the drive is simply not reliable (or has not been reliable for me, let me say it like that). Their customer service is just aweful. JUST AWEFUL. The device is geared toward professionals, yet they never respond to emails and don't take the professional CUSTOMER they are selling to very seriously at all.

So that's just my account on them - it's a shame, because I have heard good stuff about the device and the idea of it is great.

Time to hit the drawing board again for a good portable solution. I'm giving up on them.

Thanks for listening.
Brian
--
***************************************
http://www.b-freed.com

My lesson from this is not to rely on only one means of back up. I used to carry a laptop with an external drive and blank CDs. I'd back up CF cards to the external drive and burn files to CD. I now have a Hyperdrive and a Giga Vu Pro Evolution that I'm trying in tandem to see if they're easier to carry and use than the laptop/externaldrive/CD case.

I've had no trouble with the Hyperdrive, but the GPVE wouldn't hold a charge, so back to the maker for several weeks in the repair queue. No one thing is the perfect answer, as you and I have found.

I understand that you are frustrated with the problems you are experiencing but your claims that we took a very long time to respond to you is not true.

It is not true that we took 1 week to respond to you initially.

From our records, you emailed us on Oct 11 and we replied to you on the same day, trying to troubleshoot the problem. A day later, on Oct 12, we asked you to send in the unit for servicing.

We received your unit on Oct 19 and you got a replacement unit in your hands in 4 business days.

For the latest issue, you emailed us last Friday close to the end of our business hours (pacific time). As we do not work during weekends, we only saw your email on Monday and responded a day later on Tuesday noon.

Actually from this users perspective, the turnaround time is not that important. These devices are not that expensive so owning several is quite possible.

What is bad is that the device (apparently) failed catastrophically, twice in operation, and (apparently) the owner does not know why. The turnaround time for a fix is really not that important, the photographer is already stuffed twice .

The only thing worse than that is secretly corrupting files.

You are assuming that the problem originates with Hyperdrive,

--
http://www.durhamprophoto.com

A Picture is worth a thousand....... plus expenses!

Robin Horlock said:

You are assuming that the problem originates with Hyperdrive,

Click to expand...

I think that's a fair assumption, based on the info. Even the Hyperdrive guy is not asserting otherwise. - When it went to Hyperdrive and they fixed it, they would have been in a position to determine the cause of the fault and if there was in fact any fault with the device at all. If the original poster was just wasting their time, you'd think they tell him to (politely) get lost.

Of course, this is the internet and maybe none of you even exist, but I'm assuming that's not the case as well.

Good point. From Hyperdrive's reply, it sounds to me like they were very responsive, and that we may have an OP who does not understand how business works?

Robin Horlock said:

You are assuming that the problem originates with Hyperdrive,

Click to expand...

this thread's issue is not about politeness, responsiveness or business conduct.

It's about hardware fault, which by the way hits you when you're out transferring pics to the device. No excuses about that.

If the initial poster was telling the truth and did not mistreat the HD, hardware fault happened twice, second time after supposed repair. That is not acceptable. The fact that Hyperdrive themselves did not mention AT ALL the fault in their reply but insisted on formal issues like time zones and weekend lapse pinpoints all the above.

BTW, in July I was about to buy a Hyperdrive but failure reports in this forum made me choose a Nexto OTG. I returned from a trip in SW US with 3027 pics, totalling 37 GB of data, without any single even minor operational problem.

With backup reliability is paramount, otherwise is just a "castle of cards".

Just my opinion, anyway.

M
--
Greets from Rome

Mauro

http://www.pbase.com/m_ben/

I don't think it is a fair assumption to make. This could be completely operator error

or it could be bad formatting on the Lexar cards. Error number 12 on a Hyperdrive

is incompatible cards. Where exactly are the cards being formatted? Lexar cards need to be

formatted in the camera where they will operate. Lexar recommends that their cards be

formatted twice to ensure a complete and clean format. How often does the HD80 get

formatted? It is recommended that it be reformatted frequently, if data is being added

and removed. If the gent from Hyperdrive is saying that they responded to the problem

and Brian is saying that they did not????? There has to be proof one way or the other.

More often than not, I find that people on the boards exaggerate their problems,

or look for someone else to blame their problems on. Heck there is someone on this
forum right now who believes that Hyperdrive should upgrade his hardware because
he bought an incompatible card.

Cheers,
Robin
--
http://www.durhamprophoto.com

A Picture is worth a thousand....... plus expenses!

The original poster dedicated 10 lines to talk about our "responsiveness and business conduct". I believe we had no choice but to respond accordingly with facts because the allegations put forward by the original poster are simply not true.

Our first priority is to replace users with a working unit as soon as possible. In this case, it was done within 4 business days.

As the nature to the cause of the problem is still unknown and under investigation, it is not possible for us to speculate what might have caused it.

Mauro.B said:

this thread's issue is not about politeness, responsiveness or
business conduct.

It's about hardware fault, which by the way hits you when you're
out transferring pics to the device. No excuses about that.

If the initial poster was telling the truth and did not mistreat
the HD, hardware fault happened twice, second time after supposed
repair. That is not acceptable. The fact that Hyperdrive themselves
did not mention AT ALL the fault in their reply but insisted on
formal issues like time zones and weekend lapse pinpoints all the
above.

Click to expand...

Yea, Mauro's post was mostly comprised of hot air. He was not a party to the transaction and has "assumed" things about which he had no direct knowledge.

HyperDrive said:

Our first priority is to replace users with a working unit as soon
as possible. In this case, it was done within 4 business days.

As the nature to the cause of the problem is still unknown and
under investigation, it is not possible for us to speculate what
might have caused it.

Mauro.B said:

this thread's issue is not about politeness, responsiveness or
business conduct.

It's about hardware fault, which by the way hits you when you're
out transferring pics to the device. No excuses about that.

If the initial poster was telling the truth and did not mistreat
the HD, hardware fault happened twice, second time after supposed
repair. That is not acceptable. The fact that Hyperdrive themselves
did not mention AT ALL the fault in their reply but insisted on
formal issues like time zones and weekend lapse pinpoints all the
above.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

The Hyperdrive people say they have had the device for over a month. It shows incredible dedication to investigate for such a long period of time. I am slightly concerned though if all their returns are subjected to the same scrutiny, the cost of technical people to do investigations will feed through into a more expensive (but obviously better) product.

Walt Jennings said:

HyperDrive said:

Our first priority is to replace users with a working unit as soon
as possible. In this case, it was done within 4 business days.

As the nature to the cause of the problem is still unknown and
under investigation, it is not possible for us to speculate what
might have caused it.

Mauro.B said:

this thread's issue is not about politeness, responsiveness or
business conduct.

It's about hardware fault, which by the way hits you when you're
out transferring pics to the device. No excuses about that.

If the initial poster was telling the truth and did not mistreat
the HD, hardware fault happened twice, second time after supposed
repair. That is not acceptable. The fact that Hyperdrive themselves
did not mention AT ALL the fault in their reply but insisted on
formal issues like time zones and weekend lapse pinpoints all the
above.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Of course, the actual problem could be a whole load of things, and given the card and the device there are a bunch of things I could try to determine if the fault was any of the things you mention. It would take 2-3 hours, but then I would know where the fault lies. I wouldn't know what the fault was, but I'd know which item I needed to fix / chuck in the trash.

Check the card format. Check the disk format. Read the card in a USB reader. Check the HDD SMART data. Read write test the card. surface scan the HDD.

The Hyperdrive guy says the device has been under investigation for over a month. What am I supposed to think? I don't think we'll see proof one way or the other in any case, just a bunch of unconfirmed reports and opinions.

as you might have experienced.

I anyway thank you for the useful comment, which could be directed to you as well, since you are not "party to the transaction" (which transaction ?) and are assuming too.

Anyway, your common "2-lines-teacher-like" post setting dry advices to anyone are illuminating.

At the end of the day, I only replied to your funny comment only since it made me have a good laugh and it is lunch break over here.

M

Walt Jennings said:

Yea, Mauro's post was mostly comprised of hot air. He was not a
party to the transaction and has "assumed" things about which he
had no direct knowledge.

Click to expand...

--
Greets from Rome

Mauro

http://www.pbase.com/m_ben/

Noting new, Hyperdrive poor customers support and service was being discussed many times in the forums.

Just do a search.....

First and foremost, it has always been my intention to give JUST my account of my experiences, without embellishing on what really has taken place. I'm a pro shooter, and the frustration comes when you purchase a device that is designed to be a total portable solution for downloading images. I travel with 3 cameras, 7 lenses, 5 cards, tons of batteries, the hyperdrive, a laptop w/ two usb2 card readers, etc. I'm the king of redundancy, because when you are on a job and getting paid, equipment failure is not acceptable. In this particular case, I had all of my equipment as I was not shooting in an environment where I COULDN'T have all this equipment - I'm sure for some (sports shooters, nature shooters, paparazzi), there are plenty of times where you can't have a laptop setup without having someone step on it.

So it's frustrating as heck when the portable drive fails on you, you can't get immediate assistance, and the only way to get it fixed is to send the drive in. Even if I just knew how to reset the entire thing that would have helped. And prior to this past incident, I had trouble with this particular drive and had a hard time reaching someone. I used the online form and really didn't get a quick response.

With that said...

I would like to thank the folks at Hyperdrive/Sanho, for recognizing that there is an issue here and for sending me a replacement Space drive. I haven't even turned it on yet, but the fact that they sent me a brand new and upgraded product is worth mentioning here and I just want to say thanks. It was never my intention to cause strife over this - just to inform my fellow photographers of my experience with the product, as I know we are all demanding of our purchases, especially the ones we spend good money on and have high expectations of.
--
***************************************
http://www.b-freed.com

I'm still trying to figure out how to safely use the Hyperdrive. I've had the drive fail on me at a job when it reported that it copied my CF card but when I got home, I couldn't find the images. I believe it has to do with folder naming convention corruption. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the manual does not provide any guideline or cautions when it comes to modifying folder naming convention in the Hyperdrive. From this experience alone, I'm not hesitant to use any portable HD that does not have an LCD image preview. Either that or just bring enough memory where you don't need to dump to HD...

booggerg said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the manual does not provide any guideline or cautions
when it comes to modifying folder naming convention in the Hyperdrive.

Click to expand...

Au contraire, as they say. Folder naming conventions are explained on page 41 of my manual. I'd suggest paying attention to the last paragraph on the page (it's unnumbered).