Received K9U with single USB cable - HD is not recognized on my iMac

I called Tech Support yesterday. Very friendly, but I heard a grunt/sigh when I told the tech that my K9U was unusable. He started a ticket for me, and I got the email immediately. I responded to the email as instructed, and expected to get a shipping label quickly, but as of now(about 18 hours later) I have not received a response from NI...

It seems to me, based on this thread, that NI has a product that is improperly designed and will NOT work without the "Y" cable... there's no way for one USB port to provide sufficient power to run the drive. My suspicion is that this is a cheap drive designed to work for a short while and then eventually fail, prompting a paid update later down the road. (I'm a cynic, so sue me.)

I imagine that those of us who took advantage of the sale (I got my K9U through a half-price upgrade from vanilla K9) have inundated NI with tech requests and this may take several weeks to sort out. It's my opinion that if NI wants to salvage their good reputation they should immediately put replacement K9U boxes in overnight FedEx to those of us who have defective units. Until then I am going to continue to express my utter disappointment in a company that has been given a lot of my hard earned money.

 

The drive neither works with a "Y" cable nor a powered USB hub. I purchased the Komplete 9 Ultimate back in November and I still have not received a return shipping label.

My guest is February before I can begin installation.

 

I received my Startech y cable and plugged it into a powered hub. I have now gotten further in the install process. The status bar is currently halfway through.

I'll let you know what happens.

 

Did the "Y" cable work without the power hub? Several people say no. Maybe the combination of both "Y" cable and power hub is what needed. After the installation, can you please check for us what happens with the "Y" cable when on/off the hub vs on/off the computer? Thanks!

 

OK...

I was able to successfully install K9U-crossgrade with the Startech Y cable and a powered usb hub. I was not able to get it to work without the hub. I'm still in the midst of the massive amounts of updates. So I haven't been able to test everything yet. But it seems OK.

Here's the link to the cable...http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047AALS0/ref=pe_385040_30332190_TE_M3T1_ST1_dp_1

 

So we need the "Y" cable and the power hub; the both of them together?

 

That's what worked for me. I'm certainly not going to guarantee that it will work for everybody. Good luck!

 

Oh Jesus, mine as well...Just got and expect to play during year-end...

 

My roommate got K9U and he found his y cable in one of the side panels. It wasn't obvious that it was even there!

 

Count me in amongst the disenchanted. Took three weeks and two email prompts for them to finally ship my Komplete 9 ultimate package. Mine actually came with the y cable, but it turns out I didn't need it. Their drive powered and was recognized with just one usb cable connected, allowing me to connect my external drive w/o a hub. I'm on a year old MACbook pro with 10.9.1. The software and plug-ins installed fine, but when I go to install the library content on the ext. drive I get an "The Installer could not install the software because there was no software found to install" message. Everytime. Very annoying, and after reading about all the tech support woes here, I'm not looking forward to the upcoming tech support rigamarole. I was hoping to record with this gear during the holiday break, not be frustrated by it. They really should offer download links for this stuff. So much more efficient and so fewer hardware problems. Happier customers would be the result....

 

Jonnya,

If you haven't already.... Try installing K9U with the "y" cable and a powered USB hub. At least give it a shot before embarking on the nightmarish tech support journey.

Curtis

 

Also try and see if the african drums folder is 0 bytes! if so uncheck that option and see if the rest works.
Seems to be the bad egg in most of the installs.

 

I have a spare USB hot that can be powered. I'll grab a power cord for it tomorrow in the morning and post back my findings.

ridic

 

powered HUB didn't work for me. Gonna have to call NI.. no response from email support yet.

total crap.

I'd ask for a refund if I didnt get it on sale for $375

 

The "Y" cable with the power hub didn't work for me either.

 

right... i tried with Y cable and provided cable.

 

I ran into same issue was able to solve it... but not sure what I did is recommended.

I received my Komplete 9 drive today, plugged it into my Mac and 2 spare PC's and as others have found, the light turned on but the drive wasn't recognized.

So... I unscrewed the enclosure and had a look at the stuff inside. The drive is attached to some sort of connector thing that includes a circuit board... my drive was a little loose and not completely plugged into the circuit board / connector. I plugged it in fully and now it works. Probably doing this voids the warranty so I don't know if others want to try it or not.

 

My "Y" cord arrived and I plugged it in only to discover that it would not work.

I'm pretty frustrated, knowing that NI customer support will take weeks... I took a chance and unscrewed the body of the hard drive and discovered what Nicko29 discovered... the drive was not attached to the connectors in the enclosure. Popped it into the connectors, and eureka! It works. And it's happily humming along right now.

If I was NI I would instruct all users with "dead" devices to do this. It shouldn't void any warranties since you're not actually tinkering with the software. You're only fixing a design defect. The defect? There's a ½" space in the enclosure that allows the hard drive to un-connect from the input circuit board. Easy to fix for anyone with a screwdriver and half a brain.

Again, I cannot recommend that anyone do this... it is at your risk that you unscrew the box. It worked for me, but I build lots of computers for myself and my friends. I am perhaps a bit too fearless. YMMV. Caveat emptor.

 

One final point, once I corrected the hardware problem I did not need the Y cord. A regular cord as provided by NI will work.

 

I once received a bad K9U hard drive and had Sweetwater swap-ship me a new one because the connector was off-center in the cutout of the enclosure.

The replacement disk from Sweetwater had a similar problem, but it was a non-issue because one screw had been removed from the enclosure. This missing screw allowed enough "flex" within the guts of the drive to let me plug the wire in.