Buy.com - Fantom G-Force 1 TB

Customer Reviews

Value	4.9
Performance	4.8
Ease of Use	4.8
Overall Satisfaction	4.8

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5 of 5 FantonG-Force 1TB-Hard drive-GF1000EU 8/31/2010
thaotrinh from Houston,tx

It works fine.I bought 4 of this already from Buy.com.It is good price.

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2 of 5 DO NOT BUY THIS!!! 8/23/2010
MS from Bloomfield, MI

Do not buy this drive!!! Get a seagate or something that is reliable. This one is NOT. Mine broke after 14 months (yes, 2 months out of warranty) and the customer service rep would not help. HE told me that "all hard drives fail eventually," which may be true, but never have I had one fail in such a short time. The problem (and if you google this, it is very common for these FD drives) is that my computer sometimes knew the drive was plugged in, but it could not access it or retrieve any files. I could not re-initialize or reformat. What a waste of money for a small, relatively useless, boat anchor.....

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4.7 of 5 Works for me... 8/17/2010
Neil from SLC, UT

I'm not a techie, so I can't tell you much about this. All I know is that I plugged it in, turned it on, and it worked. Don't try to transfer too much at once or it will freeze. Other than that, seems to work fine. Not a bad option for a good price

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5 of 5 So far so good 8/16/2010
A customer from New Orleans, LA

The drive is pretty compact and easy to move around. It came in pretty quick and works fine with my laptop. Waiting on the rebate.

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5 of 5 Great Hard Drive, Great Price 8/15/2010
Josh M. from Palm Bay, Florida

So far I've had no problems with these hard drives. I own 5 of them and use them as scratch drives for video editing with the eSATA connection and with mostly 720p footage and they work great. Definitely recommend.

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5 of 5 A good buy 8/14/2010
A customer from Arlington,Va.

I really like this back-up drive.It came pre formatted NTFS,All I had to do was plug it into my computer and run back-up.Super Fast shipping,I just hope the rebate come as fast.

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4.7 of 5 Great drives, but it's taken a downturn lately... 8/14/2010
Wes from San Marcos, CA

This is still a great value, but I have several of these, and I was disappointed to see they now use a Hitachi Deskstar. The first one I got of this model had a Western Digital Enterprise drive in it and the second was a WD green drive. Still the price is about the same as a bare drive and they work great both as eSATA and USB. Very fast and quiet.

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5 of 5 Perfect 8/14/2010
HeyYou from Tallahassee, FL

Fantom G-Force 1 TB - Hard Drive - GF1000EU: Worked right out of the box via USB. Quiet, runs cool. I'm using Windows XP Home SP3, and use robocopy (with /purge) to make a copy of important folders on my PC. Does exactly what I expected, and got if for $60 (after $20 MIR). Based on other reviews I also bought the extended warranty ($13.99/3-years). The only con is the blue light is rather bright. but I just dimmed it with a piece of paper (be careful not to interfere with ventilation!).

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5 of 5 Good drive 8/14/2010
A customer from Williamsfield, IL

The Fantom Drive does a nice job--as expected. It initializes quickly and seems reliable. I was surprised by the thinness of the power cord, which adds to its convenience. One minor problem is that both that cord and the provided USB cord are a bit short for my use. I think I'm going to have to find a longer USB.

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5 of 5 Great back up drive! 8/11/2010
A customer from Sandy, UT

It is a wonderful back up drive and the price is fantastic. My brother ordered one too. My only complaint is I paid for 2nd day shipping, my brother got the free shipping and his arrived before mine. We live in the same area. I contacted Buy.com to get a refund of my shipping, I have not heard from them. Grrr....

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4.7 of 5 Good unit, but I hate the rebate with debit card 5/13/2010
Sunny from San Jose, Calif

It is a good external dual interface hard drive. it works good. The only thing I complain is the rebate. It come with a debit card. You can't cash it but only can use to buy things, as other debit card, if the goods you buy is more than the face value, it reject the card. You only can but things under the $30.00 or you can't use at all. At the end you are not getting full rebate otherwise I will give 5 stars.

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2 of 2 customers found this review helpful.

3.3 of 5 Good drive, but hated to reformat it 1/10/2010
Lucinda from California

I've had it less than a year, and back up a lot of video on it... this drive is a small, good compact size, reliable so far, and is a nice little drive. However, I believe when it arrived it was formatted as a FAT drive, and I had to reformat as NTFS...and to my shock, that took FOREVER! I think it was there re-formatting for over a 24-hr day. Crazy. Don't understand why it took so long. Also, I dutifully submitted all the requirements to receive the rebate that I planned to receive and researched in advance...and the rebate NEVER CAME! I think that's really screwed. First time I DID NOT receive my rebate back from a company. Anyway, fine drive, works well, but I think I'll stick with Iomega in the future.

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0 of 2 customers found this review helpful.

4.7 of 5 Get it on sale 12/8/2009
T from Bothell,wa

Over the last year I've bought 2 of these when they come on sale. I have not had any problems using them both as esata and as usb2. The power adapter is a nice slim one.

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3 of 3 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 Works great, got rebate 11/11/2009
Stephen from Arlington, VA

A lot of people seem to be commenting that the company doesn't honor rebates. That isn't true in my case. Granted, it took about 2 months to get here, but I got my $20 rebate a couple of days ago, so it DOES work. Anyway, the drive works great. I reformatted it from NTFS to Fat32 and it took just a few minutes to do. The eSATA connection works great (no problems so far), and the aluminum housing keeps the unit running cool all day. It never feels more than slightly warm to the touch. All in all, a great purchase. Also, Buy.com was offering free shipping and it arrived well ahead of schedule. Thanks!

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5 of 5 Great drive 11/6/2009
from Mesa, AZ

I received the product quickly. I plugged it in. I plugged in the USB and began backing up files. No problems. Easy to use. This drive is very quiet. The only negative is that the blue light is really bright (not a big issue).

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4.7 of 5 Great value for the money 11/5/2009
Frank from Venice, CA

The drive delivers what the description promises.

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1 of 1 customers found this review helpful.

4 of 5 Good product, but do not expect rebate 11/2/2009
from East Lansing, MI

Received the product several months ago. It is nice hard drive for price. Just a word of caution, that this company is well known to not to honor rebates.

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3 of 6 customers found this review helpful.

4.3 of 5 Great Product at an unbeatable price 9/28/2009
from Lee's Summit, MO

There are many features that make this hard drive one of my personal favorites. One, is the material. The aluminum exclosure allows it to act as a heatsink and is fingerprint resistant. If you are like me, fingerprints drive you nuts which is why this is nice. And because it acts as a heatsink, it allows for the fanless design which is such a luxury. It works perfectly and has all of these great luxuries. The only gripe I have is that it does make tick sounds when I am writing to it or read from it, but that comes with every hard drive. Also, I don't like the extra cable needed for power. I wish it could be powered by the USB b/c that would make it much more portable but that also is an issue with nearly all external hard drives. Overall, I unbeatable price per GB and the great features makes this a no brainer.

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5 of 5 Thumbs Up 9/12/2009
from Pensacola, FL

I've been very happy with my Fantom Drives external hard drive. Even with an older laptop, it functions really well.

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1 of 1 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 Best Product For Your Money! 9/9/2009
AJ from Astoria,NY

If you are looking for an easy to use external hard drive, with a lot of space and pre-formatted with FAT32 then buy this product. I bought two of these within like last 6 months, bought one for myself and have been recommending it to all my friends until one of my friends asked me to buy it for him. Both times this product came within 3-4 days and not damaged at all, came with all the hardware which is easy to use. I still have not reformatted this drive since once you format it to NTFS its very hard to format it back to FAT32 and Xbox 360 will recognize it only under FAT32 format. Overall the product is great and easy to use :).

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1 of 1 customers found this review helpful.

4.3 of 5 Good Drive for the money. 8/28/2009
xrayangiodoc from Buffalo, NY suburb

I bought this to backup my new Quad core desktop PC. The drive took about 12 hours to do a full reformat to HPFS. The blue activity light would be very bright if I kept the drive close to eye level but I keep it on the floor so the light is substantially dimmed by the fine perforations of the front bezel plate. The provided Usb cable is rather short at 36". No eSATA cable provided. I noted that the drive case became somewhat warm (not hot)after being on a few hours. Since I am something of a pack rat I had a small fan (37mm) that I had salvaged from an obsolete video card. A few dabs of Gorilla Glue was used to fix the fan to the lower margin of the front bezel and the fan was connected to an old plug type PS. The result was a notably cool drive during a several hours long full backup. I have had personal experiences with drives in non-ventilated cases seemingly fail only to work just fine when an active cooling modification is made. Aside from the lack of an eSATA cable and a too short Usb cable, this is a good choice for backup storage.

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5 of 5 works for me 8/24/2009
prfssr from Monterey, CA

I'm using the Fantom 1TB HD via USB 2.0 to back up my MacBook Pro using Apple's Time Machine software. I used it yesterday to perform a clean install of my OS, which has been giving me some trouble. I've had nothing but good experience w/the Fantom so far. Besides, the price, I bought it for the eSATA interface, though I haven't tried that yet.

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5 of 5 Great TB External for the money 8/22/2009
Esra from Alameda, CA

I just got mine yesterday and it is pretty fast for a USB transfer. It's quiet, I faintly hear a fan on the drive. Very easy to use. Like the box says, just unpack, plug in power & USB cable and viola! you got a drive! It's also great if you don't have a lot of money stash away, it's cheap for the amount of space you get.

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4 of 4 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 GREAT FOR DIRECTV DVR HR20 8/17/2009
Ken from Gridley, CA

These work awesome for this application. We have all three DVR's hooked up to these and so far so good after 6 months. Bought eSata cable off of here too. THIS DRIVE DOES NOT ERASE YOUR DVR INTERNAL HARD DRIVE BUT TAKES THE PLACE OF IT. To regain your internal HDD just turn off the Fantom and reset your DVR. To reuse the Fantom just turn it on, wait for one minute, and reset your DVR. Easy Peezy at an unbelievable price!

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3 of 3 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 Good Performance, Excellent Price 8/5/2009
from Minneapolis

My enclosed drive is WDC WD10EAVS-32D7B1. HD Tune shows a minimu xfer rate of 70KB/sec. I backed up 230GB of desktop in approx 70 mins - same as for a slightly more expensive Cavalry External drive. Drive is quiet. A quick NTFS format took 1-2 minutes.

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5 of 5 Very Satisfied... 7/31/2009
Dipak from Minneapolis

Purchased this product a month ago and never faced a single problem. It's been a great buy compared to other products in the market in same segment. The initial formatting to NTFS took 10-12 hrs. and thereafter I partioned the hard drive. Everything went very smooth. It's SUPER SILENT and transfers data atleast 10-15 MBPS on USB connection but it varies.... I'll post again if anyting else comes up.

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8 of 8 customers found this review helpful.

4 of 5 Decent Product, but no rebate received 7/2/2009
Jeff from Bettendorf, Iowa

Received product and works as described. The blue light on the front is rather bright. NEVER received my rebate, that was about six months ago.

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0 of 23 customers found this review helpful.

1 of 5 i did not receive the item 6/30/2009
from Chicago, IL

although it showed "delivered" in the online tracking and the date of delivery is june 27 2009, which is last saturday. I was at home and i did not get anything, any parcel. where the hell is the hardisk delivered?

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2 of 7 customers found this review helpful.

3 of 5 Didn't work for me 6/28/2009
from Chicago IL

Based on all the good reviews here I bought this one but for some reason it didn't work for me. I put it for formatting to NTFS and after waiting for over 2 hours it failed. Then the drive was not accessible at all and froze my computer many times. I retried formatting it but the same outcome. I'm not sure how well it worked for other folks here but I had to return mine.

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1 of 1 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 Still a great value 6/22/2009
from Chicago, IL

I bought the drive several months ago. I've seen many other drives advertized, but this still remains the best value. I'm glad I've got plenty of space for backups. I forgot and missed the rebate window :-(

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1 of 1 customers found this review helpful.

4.7 of 5 SLOW FORMATTING and data transfer 6/22/2009
Steve from irvine, ca

No one seems to have had this problem so perhaps it was me or my computer. The initial formatting was so slow that I stopped it 3 times before I finally let it run for 10 hours (yes 10 hours) before it finished. Later I transferred a full 80 gig drive to this one and it took 23 hours. Since then it has been flawless. The drive was not shipped, it was beamed over!! I ordered it on Monday and received it on Tuesday (the next day!!) and yes, that was the free shipping. Bottom line, it seems a bit slow transferring large amounts of data. However, I recommend the drive and would buy it again. You can't beat the sale price. It is even less now than when I bought it.

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2 of 2 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 well worth the investment 6/12/2009
from Bentonville AR

Standard free delivery was super good - three days from order to having it left on my doorstep. Installation was easy as plugging it into laptop USB port running Windows Vista Home - shows up as drive F:. Starts and stops as expected. Moved to second PC running XP Home SP3 to backup files without incident; restored files to first PC. Attractive case, silent operation, tiny heat signature, intense "on" light, power switch readily accessible. Price was attractive, rebate was slow to come, but did get here. I would definitely recommend it to another buyer (and have).

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5 of 5 Good deal 6/11/2009
from Denton, TX

It works fine and the rebate arrived in a timely fashion

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5 of 5 Great deal --very happy.. 6/2/2009
Ian from Tucson, Arizona

Bought this drive to back-up files from my old computer for my new system, also wanted to use this to store my music, photos, etc, instead of on my actual computer drive. Very happy, easy install. Don't sweat the reformat, I reformatted before going to sleep and woke up and it was all ready to go.

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5 of 5 Perfect for my needs 5/28/2009
Brandon Moore from Fort Worth, TX

I wanted a drive to store pictures and other files from my wife's laptop and my desktop. This works perfect for that. Wife had no trouble setting it up and using it and I didn't either. Only hassle I had was sending away for the rebate, but its no different than any other mail-in rebate. Great buy.

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5 of 5 A Great Product 5/25/2009
Amanda from Telford, TN

I love my new hard drive. I think that it is a great deal. It works very quickly and is quiet as well. I also like the blue light in the front.

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2 of 2 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 So nice I got a second one 5/20/2009
Brian from Memphis TN

In addition to the price being right, the capicity: huge, the size: small, the absolute best thing about this drive is that it is VERY QUIET. I too had to format the drive(s) NTFS to hold files greater than 4G, and it took hhhhoooouuuurrrrsssssss, but since then it has been great. I am using it on USB2.0, since I have no SATA connections. I realize that this is significantly slower than SATA, but it is significantly better than the EIDE drive that the OS is installed on. I did buy a second one, but will hold out until the 1.5T drives are available at this price point. Should be any day now, as the internal drives now cost about the same per Gig for a 1T or a 1.5T.

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5 of 5 No complaints at all..... 5/20/2009
Matty from Warwick, RI

I've been using this for over a month now and I have nothing bad to say at all.. It's pretty quiet, it's not huge, and it was a great price. How can you beat that ??

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5 of 5 excellent value 5/20/2009
Gabriele from Bonaire, GA

I needed the extra storage space for pictures and home movies, and this drive is perfect for that. I connected it with an USB cable, so it's a little slow on large volume transfers, but for normal file swapping it's great. No problem connecting it to my Vista x64 laptop!

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4.7 of 5 Great external drive - runs quiet and cool 5/20/2009
Ozzie from Oxnard, CA

I bought this external drive, because it has an eSATA interface. It worked right out of the box, but to my surprise, it took over 3 hours to do a complete format. It's quiet and runs cool. Great buy, once I get my $20 rebate.

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5 of 5 Efficient product. 5/20/2009
from South Salem, NY

This is the third fantom I have purchased. Two for Mac ibooks and for one iMac. I would recommend it to those seeking an external drive. I connected it to my iMac; and, it performs efficiently with the time machine.

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5 of 5 Fantom Rocks!! 5/19/2009
from Boulder Colorado

Love this. I skimmed the instructions, plugged it in and away we went! So far, not problems, glitches, bumps or hiccups.

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5 of 5 This is a nice drive 5/19/2009
D Jones from St Louis

This is my second of this model. Have one running with ESATA connection and the latest one is USB. Power switch on back so will not power down with the computer, but that is not a problem. If I dont want to start it with the computer, I can use the power switch and not pull the connecter cable and fumble trying to find the port to reconnect. Blue light is reminder if on. Running one for over 6 months now and no problems. Nice Aluminum case and stays cool. They do have a 'green' model now w/2yr warranty.

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5 of 5 Great value and performance 5/18/2009
from Texas

This is the second Fantom 1TB Drive I've purchased and I could not be more pleased. Compared to other drives, especially this size, the Fantom is quiet, cool, and easy to just plug and play. It doesn't have any software for automatic back ups, etc. but that's really no big deal. I wanted a drive to store photos, music, video and other files and this drive fits the bill. Plug and play and it's part of your system. Excellent performance and costs.

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5 of 5 Fast shipping, works as expected 5/17/2009
from Lewisville, Texas

Ordered on Sunday, received on Friday. Reformatted the drive from FAT32 to NTFS. It worked as expected without any problem. The construction seems solid. The aluminum case feels very sturdy. It is an excellent deal.

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4 of 4 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 Works as advertised 5/17/2009
Carl from Winona MN

Had the drive for a couple of weeks. Have connected the drive to my Win XP Dell Dimension 8400 desktop (4 years old) and it worked right out of the box. I did do a quick format to NTFS. I also bought an eSATA bracket so that I could run the drive as eSATA. My motherboard has 4 SATA connecters (e means external thus external SATA). I connected to #3, changed the bios (F2 on boot) to turn on SATA #3, turned on the drive and it worked. The bracket from buy.com was a Tripp Lite SATA to eSATA transition cable P952-002 and the cable (drive comes with USB cable but not a eSATA cable) eSATA P950-36I. I did only one test backing up My Documents folder with eSATA and USB. The eSATa was marginally faster. The eSATA should be twice as fast (maybe 1/4 with my older SATA) on writes. Have yet to take the time to see if there needs to be changed settings to WinXP to improve performance with eSATA or if the limiting factor is hardware. If anyone does find out please let me know. May also try an eSATA board as I have a PCI Express slot, which is needed for the eSATA board. Keep in mind, if you want to use the external drive on more than one computer than USB 2.0 will probably be your most common connection.

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5 of 5 Nice hard drive! 5/16/2009
Robert from Arlington, TX

Work as charm as soon as received. Low heat generated than previous Fantom Drives. Terrific purchase, love it!

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4.3 of 5 So far so good 5/4/2009
Nissan GTR from North Chili, NY

Worked right out of the box. Take a bit longer to recognize in Mas OS than my other WD drives.

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3 of 3 customers found this review helpful.

5 of 5 Worked great...until 4/24/2009
Anthony from San Diego, CA

The drive worked great when I plugged in via USB. It was about as fast as I expected but I wanted more speed so two weeks later I bought an esata cable and hooked it up. That's when the drive went coo coo! Win2k insisted the drive wasn't formatted. I had formatted with NTFS and loaded 600GB of data with no problems...so all of that was erased somehow. I unplugged the power and the esata cable, hooked the USB back in and powered up. No change. The drive needed to be formatted again, thus erasing my files. After formatting, the drive showed up as 31.8MB (MegaBytes) wtf? I called Micronet and an actual person was there! The tech was very helpful, but concluded with an RMA and $9 worth of shipping out of my pocket. I mailed the drive on April 17th. It's April 24th and my drive showed up on my front porch. I plugged it in (USB) and formatted with NTFS. Capacity 931GB - used 93.5MB Not sure what the 93.5MB is all about, but the drive is working now. The paper work in the shipping envelope stated that they replaced the hard drive. I'm not sure what went wrong with the first one, but I can't complain about their customer service. Friendly, prompt and best of all, FREE. I'm loading files as I type and there are no problems. I would recommend this drive and manufacturer. It's nice to deal with a company that actually cares and stands behind their products. I was going to give 3 stars, but their speedy and effective response changed my mind. 5 stars!!!!! *****

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