Complaint Review: Promise Technology Inc.

In 2007 I planned to purchase Promise NS4300N after performing some research on the technology, compatibility and costs. Prior to the purchase I checked the manufactures web page for a list of compatible hard drives. I purchased 4 One Terabyte hard drives and the NAS unit at a local Frys Electronics. The directions were adequate. The setup went without a problem. Upon importing my large data onto the unit I noticed it the NAS unit was not transferring the data at the speeds as published on the website. I was transferring my movies and music files of about 1750 GB at a rate of about 6kbits per second. This is about 1/6 of the advertised rate.

When I engaged tech support I was questioned about all my hardware in use to see if they were compatible. One the tech support representative agreed that the hardware was not the problem I informed that the real life data transfer rates are much less that what is on the website. I asked what was the bottleneck in performance speeds and I was told it was the memory and the processor. I asked about upgrades to each and were told you could not upgrade since they were permanently installed. I reviewed my options on returning the unit but the other competitive brands were three times the price. I waited for the transfer to complete and wanted to see how it performed once the data was on the NAS unit.

Approximately 24 hours later after the data was transferred onto the unit I was able to sign into the unit and finish the setup. The next activity that the NAS unit had to perform was an index of the media database. I had about 75,000 songs that I had imported into the unit. After about 8 hours of indexing the songs the internal database would freeze at 56,000 songs. After freezing the unit would start scanning all over again. I contacted support and was told that they were hearing from other users that they were experiencing the same problem and also had large data sets of music. There was not a known reason for the index failure.

The Promise support technicians just knew other were experiencing the same problem. I had an open ticket and was told to communicate with the Product lead Billy Harrison. Billy informed me that they were coming out with a new firmware in a few months that should fix the problem. I informed Billy Harrison I did not want to wait a few months. He responded by giving me Beta access to the firmware in exchange for reports to help them fix the problems. I stated of course and downloaded the firmware and updated the software on my NAS NS4300N. I went through the same procedure of indexing the data to only find that the problem I was experiencing still existed.

 

I called tech support again and I was told that they were aware of the problem and were making yet another firmware update that would be available in the Beta download area in a couple of weeks. I went through the process of waiting, communicating with Promise Tech Support, downloading the update, testing and giving feedback 14 times. The problem was never fixed. I was livid. Billy Harrison stopped communicating back with me in either email or phone message. I was following several forum bulletin boards where end users like myself and Billy Harrison of Promise could communicate.

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Billy Harrison of Promise Technology was called PromiseNASDude in the bulletin boards. The unit was now being replaced with a newer model. I found this out on the form where PromiseNASDude updated the pictures and details of the unit before it was released on the promise.com website. I thought that was strange since the old unit was yet still unfixed. I called Promise Tech Support and demanded to speak to a manager. I got Billy Harrisons manager. I complained to him about my situation. I immediately got a returned phone call from Billy Harrison. Billy was suddenly very helpful. He committed to sending me the NS4600N the new replacement product to the NS4300N. I said sure send me the unit. I received the unit about two weeks later.

I put my drives in a immediately experienced the same problem. I was informed that they were using a different software that they developed themselves on this model and I was one of the first to report the problem. I created a new Tech Support ticket to log the problem. I was communicating with Tech Support and Billy Harrison when they came up with a new DLNA update in firmware that was to address the data indexing issue. I downloaded it and tested it several time. After 3 tries on their part they finally came up with a version that worked. During this problem resolution I began to experience a new and more pressing issue. The NS4600N replacement unit had more hardware predictive analysis software built into the operating system. It also had more intelligence on hardware usage where it could power down the unit after a predefined period of time of non-usage expired.

 

Both of these technology should have made the unit more reliable but for some it made it less reliable. The first problem I began to experience was the RAID failure and rebooting of the unit. I could not figure what was causing it. After calling tech support and they didnt have any clue to what was causing it I began to read the public forums. I found several users experiencing the same problem. I started to keep a log to figure out when and what was causing the unit to go offline. What I found was the RAID engine in the Operating System of the NAS was reporting drives being suddenly disconnected even though the drive was physically still connected. I began to see a pattern on when this happened. It happened at or about the same time every morning. Nothing else was showing up in the logs on the unit itself. In my own personal log I recognized the pattern.

I was always 4 hours after I last used my computer. This was when the power savings software of the NAS unit would shut the unit down. I turned off the power saving hard drive settings in the NAS unit and immediately noticed an improvement. Great that was one problem solved. I reported it back to the forum community and received thanks to others who were experiencing the same problem. Within a few weeks of that solution I started to recognize that part of the RAID reporting Offline and rebooting the NAS was not just the Power Saving settings but something else. I was far less frequent but was still happening. I reported the issue to Tech Support. By this time after a few years of contacting Promise Tech Support the support technicians knew my voice and called me by name after I said hello. I was on a first name basis with Promise Tech Support.

My problems with the NAS unit I was experiencing would get escalated to Billy Harrison immediately. After several emails of what the NAS units symptoms were Billy Harrison mysteriously seemed to know what the problem was attributed to after asking about my hard drives. It was then, in email that Billy admitted that the drives I was using used a type of technology that was incompatible with the NAS unit. I said great, the NS4300 while didnt perform as advertised being slower and didnt not ever index all my files, it was at least reliable. The NS4600 while faster and did scan all the files (they fixed the memory whole in the software later admitted to me) had a hardware incompatibility with my hard drives I have been using on the previous unit.

Two months after receiving the NS4600N after several emails with Billy Harrison he committed to sending me four (4) Hitachi branded Hard Drives of equal size to my drives. He also committed to sending me one (1) two (2) terabyte drive for purposes of back up space while I create the new RAID set of the Hitachi drives. This sounded like a solution since we have identified the problem yet again. I kept thinking this is selfish of me to accept the solution since I know others were experiencing the same problem but were not getting free equipment. I just wanted my NAS unit I purchased to function. Months started to go by whereas Billy Harrison would inform me the equipment shipped and was either stolen in transit, delivered to the wrong address or stolen at the Promise office in the shipping center.

Meanwhile the frequency of the RAID rebuilds is getting worse. Drives 1,2,3 were being reported as disconnected. The unit would rebuild the data for 24 hours and then would be in the running state for 24-72 hours before failing again. I was told by Promise Tech Support to leave the unit off and Billy Harrison would call me back. Eventually I was informed by Billy Harrison in email not to contact tech support anymore. I was to call him or email him only. My trouble ticket remained open. My drives never shipped. Meanwhile I would need files that were only on the NAS unit every so often. I would turn the unit on, retrieve my files and turn it back off. Can you imagine having a $1000 computer hardware that functioned this way?

Finally the unit was reporting the same drive (drive 2) as always failing and being disconnected. I took the unit out of the NAS unit and placed it in a eSATA carrier so I could perform tests on the drive as instructed by the manufacture Maxtor. None of the test produced codes that authorized and RMA yet the drive continued to be a problem. Billy Harrison stated he wanted to have someone named Steve from Taiwan to look the at the drives. I said sure if this will help you and me with the data retention lets do it. When and what time would you like to do this? Billy Harrison stated this would be late at night since the person who was going to look at it was in Asia.

I stated well I dont want to leave the drives on running over night since the unit just keeps rebuilding the data and may cause the drive to ultimately fail for good. So I asked Billy to schedule the time. I would turn the unit on just before the time he was going to log in from remote and turn it off an hour or so later. Billy Harrison agreed and we scheduled it. Weeks went by whereas I was communicating in email asking what was found out by this procedure. I only learned that the person was very busy and had yet to log in. I kept complaining to Billy Harrison I didnt want to leave the unit on overnight since I was experiencing a single drive failure and if a second drive failed during this time I would lose my data. Billy informed me in email not to worry it that were to happen we could force the unit to rebuild. I was nervous about leaving it on overnight but relented since they were the experts.

Two days later in the month of November I woke up in the morning to see that hard drive 3 had reported to being disconnected while drive 2 was being rebuilt. My data was gone. I reported it to Billy Harrison. He was trying to get the person from Asia to log into the unit and see what can be done. After about two weeks I found out nothing could be done to recover the data. I was livid. I had warned them this might happen and was told in writing not to worry about it we could fix it. Now that I realized that they were either lying or incompetent I knew my data was gone. I confronted Billy Harrison by calling and emailing him on the issue. I was threatening to complain to everyone in the company till I had my hard drives he promised and my data back.

Billy told me that they had some success getting the data back with a PCIX RAID card called a FastTrack TX4650. The procedure was that Billy would go ahead and ship me a RAID card, one 2 TB hard drive and four 1 TB hard drives. I would attach the hard drives from the NAS box to the RAID card and place them in a computer that had free slots in the case. I had a computer that could fulfill this so I was excited to try. Two months went by with Billy Harrison telling me that the equipment shipped and was either lost or stolen or something. I stopped believing him so I logged into the Promise support website and looked at one of my RMA tickets with the hope of finding a tracking number. I knew that they algorithm from FedEx and could search through tracking numbers on FedEx.com to see if Billy Harrison did in fact ship me the equipment.

I found that the unit never shipped and I also found out by accident that the Support and RMA websites were insecure. I was able to see every other complaint by every other person. What the product was, what the proposed solution was and if something was shipped. I could see how staggering the amount of people who had the same experience as me. Something had to be done. This company knows that they have faulty equipment. I also found a highly publicized court case fromCarbonite.com complaining of a similar issue. I searched or keywords in google Promse Technology class action. The returned search results were of other people complaining that they wished a class action lawsuit was filed. I could not find an active lawsuit other than the Carbonite.com case.

In December 2010 Billy emailed that the equipment yet again had shipped but the hard drives were again stolen. Only the RAID card remained in the box. He asked me what I wanted to do. I emailed him back confirming that in 4 days time he was going to have the replacement hard drives and the RAID card shipped out. He stated yes. I received the RAID card and One (2) terabyte hard drive the second week of January 2011. The four (1) terabyte hard drives were again stolen. I relented and thought well I have the RAID card and the backup drive. Maybe they to just have a theft problem internally. Why dont I just work on the recovery of the RAID data? I immediately loaded the drives and RAID card into a free computer and found that they drives were reported as Offline in the RAID and nothing could be done to recover my data. I am beside myself. Everything I have tried to perform under the direction of Promise Technology has failed. My Data is gone and unrecoverable. I dont have replacement hard drives that are compatible with the NS4600N nor do I know which ones on the list actually are compatible since the list cannot be trusted. I contacted Billy Harrison in email asking him to just ship out the four replacement hard drives. I recognize my data is gone and while I am quite upset there is nothing further I can do about it. Billy Harrison also committed to sending me four (4) 1 terabyte hard drives to put the data on since my Maxtor drives they were not compatible. I have yet to recieve these at the time of this posting.Something must be done. I lost years of data that can be very costly to me. Some of the data was Company data, some was personal. Most can never be replaced ever again. Monetarily I have not even put this into a damaged assessment but I think I need to.