Doctor Micro
New Member
- Reaction score
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- Location
- Champaign, Illinois
Like many of you I'm sure, you have hundreds of CD's and DVD's. Operating System disks for reinstalls, hardware driver disks, softare installation disks, utilities and so on...
Ever since I saw a Sony CD unit that you could manage as a library and load a gazillion disks in it, I've been intrigued about finding ways to convert over my (ahem...) loosly organized collection of CD's. Plus, when I see jukeboxes in bars and clubs that can store, load and play CD's, I thought, "Crap, how hard can it be to have a jukebox optical media storage unit that can store, catalog, load and play CD's and DVD's?" And, how hard can it be to have the whole thing connected to my PC? I know there are enterprise units out there that can hold hundreds of CD's, and load any one of them, on demand by network query to a shared network drive... used to have one, a big floor-standing unit, costing half the national debt, at one of my previous jobs with a well-known energy company. But seriously, with all the advances in everything else, how hard could it be, and shouldn't it be reasonable in price, or at least within the dreaming realm of a poor starving PC tech?
So, imagine my excitement as I find this product called the "Powerdrive" USB CD/DVD carousel. Holds 100 CD/DVD's, has a built-in CD/DVD reader, connects to your PC by USB, and has a cataloging software where you load your disks, enter in the disk name & info into a database, and then can theoretically load and play any one of them just by a small series of PC commands and/or mouse clicks.
$399 from CyberGuys. Okay, not cheap, but hey... if it does what it says, it's worth it. So I order it and a few days ago, in it comes...
This morning, I unpack it and hook this bad boy up to my main admin machine (Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit, AMD Phenom quad, 6GB, yada yada). Instructions say to plug in the 7.5v AC/DC adapter, plug the USB cable into a PC port (they don't recommend an unpowered hub... can't say as I blame them) and the drivers will load automatically.
So far, so good. Device is detected as an external USB drive, drivers load and I get a msg that my hardware is loaded and ready to go. Fine, I go ahead and load the software off the included CD.
My first clue that something is not quite right is after checking Device Manager and seeing it listed under CD/DVD drives, and seeing a "J:\" optical drive suddenly appear in My Computer is when I pull up the software application and note that it looks like a VB app, circa 1999. Clearly, the software guy did not retire to Tahiti on the royalties from this program.
I re-read the manual, which, by the way, is probably written by, and best understood by someone who's just injested a major dose of magic mushrooms. I can get CDs to load into the machine, and I can make an entry for the CDs into their database. I can then call up a given entry from the database and have it pop out of the front-load slot into my hot little hand.
What I CAN'T do, is have any CD automatically load into the internal CD/DVD-ROM drive and show up as readable content in My Computer under the J:\ drive. In fact, I can't get the CDs to do anything except spin around and eject themselves (Geez, I was just thinking that I've got a couple of clients that I wish could do that).
Anyway, now that I've entertained you with the saga of this $300 non-working piece of crap, has anyone had any experience with this thing, any ideas as to why it's not loading disks into the CD/DVD reader? Is there something I'm missing? Did I just piss away $300? What Saint should I light a candle and give an offering to?
Ever since I saw a Sony CD unit that you could manage as a library and load a gazillion disks in it, I've been intrigued about finding ways to convert over my (ahem...) loosly organized collection of CD's. Plus, when I see jukeboxes in bars and clubs that can store, load and play CD's, I thought, "Crap, how hard can it be to have a jukebox optical media storage unit that can store, catalog, load and play CD's and DVD's?" And, how hard can it be to have the whole thing connected to my PC? I know there are enterprise units out there that can hold hundreds of CD's, and load any one of them, on demand by network query to a shared network drive... used to have one, a big floor-standing unit, costing half the national debt, at one of my previous jobs with a well-known energy company. But seriously, with all the advances in everything else, how hard could it be, and shouldn't it be reasonable in price, or at least within the dreaming realm of a poor starving PC tech?
So, imagine my excitement as I find this product called the "Powerdrive" USB CD/DVD carousel. Holds 100 CD/DVD's, has a built-in CD/DVD reader, connects to your PC by USB, and has a cataloging software where you load your disks, enter in the disk name & info into a database, and then can theoretically load and play any one of them just by a small series of PC commands and/or mouse clicks.
$399 from CyberGuys. Okay, not cheap, but hey... if it does what it says, it's worth it. So I order it and a few days ago, in it comes...
This morning, I unpack it and hook this bad boy up to my main admin machine (Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit, AMD Phenom quad, 6GB, yada yada). Instructions say to plug in the 7.5v AC/DC adapter, plug the USB cable into a PC port (they don't recommend an unpowered hub... can't say as I blame them) and the drivers will load automatically.
So far, so good. Device is detected as an external USB drive, drivers load and I get a msg that my hardware is loaded and ready to go. Fine, I go ahead and load the software off the included CD.
My first clue that something is not quite right is after checking Device Manager and seeing it listed under CD/DVD drives, and seeing a "J:\" optical drive suddenly appear in My Computer is when I pull up the software application and note that it looks like a VB app, circa 1999. Clearly, the software guy did not retire to Tahiti on the royalties from this program.
I re-read the manual, which, by the way, is probably written by, and best understood by someone who's just injested a major dose of magic mushrooms. I can get CDs to load into the machine, and I can make an entry for the CDs into their database. I can then call up a given entry from the database and have it pop out of the front-load slot into my hot little hand.
What I CAN'T do, is have any CD automatically load into the internal CD/DVD-ROM drive and show up as readable content in My Computer under the J:\ drive. In fact, I can't get the CDs to do anything except spin around and eject themselves (Geez, I was just thinking that I've got a couple of clients that I wish could do that).
Anyway, now that I've entertained you with the saga of this $300 non-working piece of crap, has anyone had any experience with this thing, any ideas as to why it's not loading disks into the CD/DVD reader? Is there something I'm missing? Did I just piss away $300? What Saint should I light a candle and give an offering to?
