I have never reviewed hardware before, so I thought I would give this a try. Since, I have removable hard drives, and I had a 30 gigabyte hard drive I had started to set up for a new computer, I knew that any problems with hardware configuration would not stop me from using the computer for my business. This proved to very wise as it could have taken a long time to get my computer back to where it was before I worked with the HDD Sheriff PCI.  After reading the packaging, I came up with two tests that I could perform to see if the hardware system would work. I knew that since the hard drive had not been used since August and this being November, there were upgrades to Windows Me that would cause the configuration files to change, and I could load a large program to the C: drive. I tried to think of a way to test the effects of computer viruses, but I could not be sure a computer virus would invade my computer before I had to write this review. 

So I started. First, I removed the two 3-gigabyte hard drives I use for my business and replaced the master hard drive with my 30-gigabyte hard drive. I then did the auto detect for the CMOS and rebooted. Since I had not used this hard drive in a while, I give a test to make sure the programs would run and that I could use the Internet. I then shut down the computer. Making sure that there was no power to computer, I put the PCI card in to an open PCI slot. 

When I started the computer again, my Microsoft optical trackball would not work. I shut down, removed the HDD Sheriff PCI card, and did all that was needed to replace the hard drives back in my business configuration. The trackball still did not work. Silly me, the USB PCI card had come lose when I install the HDD Sheriff PCI card. So I switched the hard drives and replaced the HDD Sheriff PCI card. When the computer came back up, everything seemed to be working, so I placed the 3.5” diskette into my A: drive. Nothing happened. How can this be, I had used the A: drive for my review that I had written last month. So since I was building a new computer, I took the 3.5” out of the case of the new computer and replaced the one in my old machine. Still nothing happened when I tried again to access the A: drive. Okay, so either the floppy cable is bad, or the buffer drivers on the motherboard are bad. So I drove from Kerrville to the Alamo PC Resource Center to E-mail the drivers to myself. I tried two computers at the Resource Center, but the diskette could not be read. 

Back in Kerrville it was fish or cut bait time. Me give up? Never. So I went to the Jungsoft Website and downloaded the drivers. Since my A: drive will not work and I don’t want to use one of the 3-gigabyte hard drives as a slave because this may cause linking problems, I loaded the driver on a CD. Having switched out the hard drives and put the HDD Sheriff PCI card back into the PCI slot, the driver program worked- I could now start to review HDD Sheriff PCI.

The first real question, “what type of installation” should I make, custom of coarse? Well after the reboot, it looked like smooth sailing. But no, the custom install moved the modem info to the D: drive. So I then uninstalled HDD Sheriff PCI driver program, shut down, removed the HDD Sheriff PCI card from PCI slot, and then rebooted. When the computer came back up, still no modem. I tried to use the system restore that is in Windows Me, but that didn’t work. The Kerrville Telephone Company gave a CD to configure a computer to work with their Internet service. That didn’t work either. 

Now I am thinking, do I really need a computer or maybe I should take up fly-fishing?  So I made trip to the phone company to get the instructions on how to manually setup the Internet service. (Fly-fishing is looking better.) Well, I was able to get back Internet service. (Guess I won’t buy that fly rod yet.) This time I tried a typical installation, and it seemed to work and I had Internet service. Now to the Microsoft update page and download some updates. I made two downloads and rebooted each time, but got the updating configuration files message each time. (Fly fishing anyone?). The typical install didn’t place the program in the startup folder like the custom install did. By now I was running out short update files at Microsoft update page.  So making sure that the sheriff was running; I downloaded my last short update. This time when I rebooted, the updating configuration files message did not display. But I thought what would happen if I took the HDD Sheriff PCI card out and rebooted? Yeah you guess it- the updating configuration files message appeared. So updating could be done if someone knew of this bug. Next, I loaded the entire ARRL Handbook CD for Radio Amateurs (144 MB) on the C: drive and rebooted. It too was there. So the HDD Sheriff PCI failed the only two tests I could think to perform on my computer.

In summary, my experience has been that HDD Sheriff PCI failed to live up to its claim on two of its promises- protection from unwanted downloads and protection from configuration changes. It is my opinion that it dose not serve the single computer user very much protection. Using the HDD Sheriff PCI  in school  may be possible, but if the kids learn that by removing the PCI card, they can get by the system protection, then of what use is HDD Sheriff PCI? Given that the diskette was bad, I don’t know how well Jungsoft’s quality control is or how long the PCI card will last. After this review is written, I will take it back to the software checkout- any takers?