Customer Reviews

1TB 7200RPM 16MB Ext HDD

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I've done a lot of research in purchasing an external drive for my iMac and this drive came as my #1 choice.

First of all I would like to address all the other reviewers saying they have problems with this product - please note that YOU MUST UPGRADE product's firmware software before you can use it with Leopard (a small download from WD web site and software installation)! In my product packaging I've had a written notice on this from WD and this was the first thing I did! This is the only con I have for this product, however once your firmware is updated, the drive works like a charm!!!

WD made this model specifically for Macs, the drive is even HFS+ (Apple) formatted. I've also seen this drive being sold in Apple retail stores!

I've had this drive for the last couple of months and I've never had problems with it, I love it! The product is very much aesthetically pleasing, its operation is dead quiet and I love the automated power save feature (drive powers off automatically when not in use)!

The drive features quadruple interface (USB, ESATA, FW400, FW800) - I use firewire 800 and the data transfer is blazing fast!!

In my research the runner up was LaCie Big Disk Extreme 1 TB having similar features as this WD drive, however besides a small difference in price, the major difference was that WD extends 5 year warranty for its WD drive, whereas LaCie gives you only 3 years warranty!

I would highly recommend Western Digital My Book Studio 1TB hard drive, Mac (WDH1Q10000N) to all Mac users, you cannot go wrong with this one! :)

Like it says in the review title, I really WANT to like this drive. Unfortunately, I can't. I don't. And I probably won't. Ever. Why?

I bought a 1Tb drive for media storage, and the 500Gb model for Time Machine. The drives mounted fine on my 24" aluminum iMac, but then the problems started.

The drives would sometimes freeze when they went into suspend mode. Worse, OS X is too stupid to stop trying to access a "dead" drive, so the frozen drive would hang the system.

I figured it was a fluke, so I did a hard restart on all my hardware. Same problems, so I changed cables. No luck. I even tried the firewire 400 and USB interfaces. The drives would still freeze, and still hang the system.

I figured I just had a defective drive. No problem. I already had another 500Gb drive on order, so I sent the first back to the vendor and waited for the second to arrive. I had the same problems with the second drive, so it went back for a refund as well.

The 1Tb drive started giving me the same problems, so I took the mechanism out of the WD case and put it in an OWC enclosure. Not surprisingly, I haven't had a problem since.

So, why do I want to like this drive?

Pros:
- It's attractive
- It's quiet (because it's fanless)
- Quadruple interface (nice!)

Cons:
- It just doesn't work...

WD is my first choice for internal drives, but they have some MAJOR problems with the My Book Studio line. Since other Mac users love them, I suspect that the drives simply don't like the new iMacs.

Check the Apple Discussion Forums and you'll find lots of problems with them.

I had read reviews of previous versions of the WD MyBook series drives being excessively loud. This 1TB (931GB actually) drive is very quiet, just a slight hum to it. I have an iMac with a 1TB drive and I am using this WD external for Time Machine under Leopard with FireWire 800. I have had it about a month and am very pleased so far. The front has a light bar that strobes or flashes depending on what the drive is doing. Some may find that annoying (for example if used in a bedroom). I'm not sure if this can be turned off. I have not tried the backup software that came on the drive.

I've owned this drive for several months and have had a good experience with it. It's attached via the included FW800-FW400 cable to an Intel iMac. A couple of things worth noting, though:

1. While the exterior may look like metal, it's plastic. The paint looks very nice and it's detailed very well. I have no complaints, just pointing it out.

2. The elongated oval on the front is the power / activity light. It's comprised of several actual LEDs (white), and does a pretty good KITT impersonation. :) The light is bright enough to be an issue if you are sleeping in the same room and prefer it relatively dark. Even when the drive is sleeping, the light throbs in a manner similar to the Mac sleep lights, just much brighter.

3. When the mechanism is spinning it produces a noticeable, but not annoying vibration in the desk surface. Placing the drive on a thin neoprene mouse pad reduces this vibration dramatically.

4. The drive automatically puts itself to sleep when you sleep or shutdown your computer, and will automatically wake with the computer as well.

If I needed more storage tomorrow I'd consider buying another one.

I'm a recent switcher from PC to Mac and in the process of moving all my personal 'stuff' (digital pictures, iTunes library, documents, etc.) realized that my 300GB USB drive, while probably sufficient, would always leave me wondering if it was 'enough' for Time Machine. Info online said your backup drive should be 2-3 times the size of your hard drive, so I figured for the 320GB drive in my iMac, I should go with a 1TB backup drive. I wanted FireWire connectivity as well, so I started searching. I found this drive, and although the reviews were generally good, there were some that were scary - and who wants to take a chance with the backup of your irreplaceable memories and creations?

So, I bought it and have to say I'm thrilled. It's incredibly quiet, its aluminum-silver look matches my iMac perfectly, and most of all - it works. Time Machine saw it right away, did it's initial backup overnight and I haven't had any problems going 'back in time' to retrieve files (thankfully, just to test - I haven't had any problems that caused actual data loss).

Peace of mind, good price, easy-as-pie setup (on a mac, anyway), and more storage than you can shake a stick at.

Go for it. If your experience is like mine, you'll be satisfied.

I purchased this drive (from an Apple Store) to be used as a Time Machine backup unit. Unfortunately, I did not discover its' many problems until it was too late to return the unit.

The drive will work normally for a few days, then it will crash the Finder. The only solution is to unplug the unit, then re-attach. A search of the WD and Apple discussion forums confirms that this is a widespread and common problem.

WD technical support is non-existent. I have yet to get through by phone, and no email to technical support is ever answered.

Do yourself a big favor - do not purchase this drive.

This is my third WD My Book Studio Edition. The first two were defective with the familiar freezing problem that WD's technical support pretended not to be familiar with (have they ever heard of Google?). After two bad drives I wanted to have my money back but WD talked me into getting a third one. So far the third works well. I gave the 5 stars to my third drive. My first two drives deserve 0 stars each.

THE GOOD. Beautiful, well made, quiet, not too hot, multiple interfaces, great warranty, excellent and smooth exchange policy.

THE BAD. Too many defective drives.

THE UGLY. Technical support pretends that problems don't exist and I was just unlucky. Yeah right.

NOTE. This is a 5200 RPM drive and not 7200 RPM (at least mine).

This drive has worked great with my MacBook Pro. Other users have complained about failing drives, but WD gives a 5-year warranty on this unit, so I don't see how you can go wrong. Five years is amazing for a hard drive. In my experience as computer technician, I've seen very few WD hard drive failures. They seem to be very reliable units. Most of my customers' HDD failures have been related to Maxtor drives.

I've been using this drive with Leopard for six months and have had no problems.

I have only two complaints about this drive:
1. It takes a long time to mount after I connect it via FireWire 800. Sometimes up to ten seconds before the icons show up on the desktop.

2. The FireWire 800 connection is very sensitive. A slight bump to the computer, the cable, or sometimes even the desk will often cause the drive to disconnect.

In brief, the drive is good enough, providing it doesn't fail in a few years...

But I can only give 4 stars, because the installation instructions aren't clear enough, for mac users at least.

- the format is HFS+, OK, it came like this

- the partition scheme must be GUID when using intel macs, and Apple Partition Table when using PPC macs (otherwise TimeMachine could not work properly, or random failures may occur, in brief, the access to the drive is compromised). It arrived with the Apple Partition, and the instructions (or the web), does not say a word about the differences or importance between using the Apple or the GUID partition schemes. TimeMachine did not work for me, and I had to change to the GUID partition scheme, now TM is working perfectly (4 months, OK).

- the Button Manager does not work with Leopard so, installing the WD software is useless, and probably it is a source of other problems

- there's a new version of Firmware and Button Manager software in the WD web, since february, so check it out. Nevertheless, it says you must install the Button Manager, but it's OPTIONAL, and it should say that it's optional (the drive works great without that). I recommend to install the firmware only, and forget the button software (so, future problems are avoided)

Yes, I read the other reviews (and you should too) warning about the issues with leopard. I proceeded anyway since there were also claims that the firmware update fixed the issues. I've had other western digital drives in the past and they performed well and I had no complaints so I took the chance.

The day I got my drive, I opened the box and it had a notice about the issue ("Attention Leopard (10.5) users"). I then followed the instructions to find the support solution referenced on the notice but I could not find it. After getting a response from western digital support the indicated that the solution had been deleted and the firmware download removed from their website. So the short recommendation is:

LEOPARD USERS: DO NOT BUY THIS UNTIL THE YOU SEE THE FIRMWARE UPDATE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD.

Hopefully by then new drives will just have the right firmware at that point but at least you'd be able to update it in the event it's not.

And in case you were thinking of just using it anyway, take heed for the other reviews with warnings and finally WDC support did recommend backing up the data before doing the firmware upgrade (when it becomes available). Not a particularly useful solution if this was meant to be your backup drive.

How any company can deliver a product intended for use by Mac users that has significant problems with the current version (10.5, Leopard) is mind boggling.