HP Smartbuy Dat 72 USB External Tape Drive Bundle

List Price: $699.99 Discount Price: Too low to display

Features:

• DAT 72E 36/72GB USB EXT BDL SBY INCL 4X CART

Customer Reviews:

Extremely Noisy [Posted on 2006-12-15]
I unpacked the drive, plugged it in and powered it up. Then I heard the noise. I turned off the drive, unplugged it and request an RMA.

It is loud, but they are all loud [Posted on 2007-01-05]
I have gone through about 5 DAT drives over the last 15 years. They have all been very slow and very noisy. If you expect a slow and noisy DAT drive from the start, you will be impressed with the easy set up and the good door that keeps the inside clean and buffers the sound. If you are expecting a something more like a hard drive or optical drive that writes to tapes, you will find DAT drives very slow and noisy... they are.

really noisy cooling fan! [Posted on 2007-09-04]
I've used HP DAT drives for ten years or so - internal SCSI til now - so I'm used to their noisy drive mechanicals. However, with this external drive, they've added a 400mm cooling fan that just screams. It'd be ok if the fan only ran when the drive was working - I do my backups overnight - but, alas, the fan's always on.
Another oddity about the cooling design, is that there are no vents to let the cooling air in. There are 'pretend' vents on the front of the case, but they don't go all the way through the plastic. (Uh, hey HP, maybe if you vented the case, it wouldn't need such a noisy fan!)
One last thing, is that HP requires if you're using a USB hub, the drive should be the only thing on it (and the point of a hub is....?)
Otherwise, the drive seems to work well, and I've had very good response with customer service at HP.

Almost whisper quiet [Posted on 2008-06-10]
I bought this backup drive with a little trepidation because the other reviewers agreed that it was loud. It's not. Its fan makes less noise than my PC's fan, and I can't hear it at all if I'm more than ten feet away. It is somewhat slow, but that comes with the territory of a serial device.

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