Customer Reviews

Western Digital - 1Tb 7200 Rpm 16Mb Ext Hdd

5 star:		(210)
4 star:		(88)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(68)

 

 

The Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB Hard Drive has great capacity but might not be well suited for this design. I've had great luck with my Western Digital drives, but may have bitten off more than I could chew with this 1 TB model. The bottom line is I now think that 1 TB might be too much capacity for a USB-only connection. Even though it might not be because of the size I did experience a hardware issue with the 1 TB model that had to be repaired. That was the first HD failure I've had with any of these WD external drives.

The larger capacity means that the disk geometry has to work harder for the same form factor. When you consider that neither the speed nor the buffer were improved with this model, it's easier to see why the performance is slightly less than the 500 GB model.

Ultimately I think it might make sense to step down to the Western Digital 500GB My Book Home Edition or the Western Digital My Book Premium 500 GB model instead. If you need 1 TB you might want to look at the Premium, Home, Studio or Professional versions in that capacity. I am nervous because of the negative press some of those have gotten, but the extra and faster interfaces would have to be better than this USB only Essentials version.

For a 1 TB drive, the buffer has to get larger. This guy is still limited by the 480 Mps connection speed of USB 2.0 but gives you only a fraction of that in production.

You can unplug the AC adapter to manually power it down from behind, or it will power down with your computer. The AC adapter helps it perform a little faster than the USB powered ones.

The software utilities should be deleted by anybody but the most novice user. Just do cut and paste backups instead and use some other shareware or NTFS if you need to enable encryption.

Connecting WD drives to different systems has always been a plus, and this drive connected to my Windows XP, Vista or Mac OS X computers.

The only factor that should change whether or not you get this drive or another one would be size and connection type. Obviously, WD makes Pro and other versions of these drives that have firewire and SATA connectors. For most Mac users, firewire 2 connectivity is a must.

I did experience my first drive failure with the 1 TB after only 3 months of use. From now on I'm stepping up to the higher end models for this capacity. Still, I may have just gotten a bad one and you might be luckier.

Pros
+ Works well on multiple platforms: Windows Vista, XP and Mac OS X
+ Nice 16 MB buffer for faster copying speeds is still acceptable
+ New sleek body, more pleasing to the eye
+ Turns on and off with your computer
+ Very easy installation, virtually plug and play
+ Integrates nicely with my growing stable of WD MyBook drives
+ 1 TB truly is amazing capacity in one drive

Cons
- 1 TB capacity is probably the largest you would want for USB transfer with a 16 MB buffer
- Software will only be useful for novice users and is not very good (after several years of these drives being on the market)
- New shiny body attracts fingerprints and dust, may not appeal to everyone
- Transfer speed still limited by USB only connection, must step up for FireWire ports
- Price for 1 TB of capacity not as good as some smaller drives in $ price per gigabyte
- AC adapter for power, not USB powered

Conclusion

This drive is great for those who want a large capacity drive. It's better to get a pair to guard against drive failures and backup your backup. Watch the price and try to get it on sale. Those looking for extra connectors (firewire, SATA) will want to step up to the other models.

Enjoy!

It is very hard to argue with the amount of storage that one of these drives offer. If you have been in the industry for awhile, you can remember when a terabyte of data meant an entire data center of storage!

These drives are quite and they format to NTFS quickly as long as you remember to specify quick format!! I have been pleased enough with the drive that I now own 6 of them. My laptop now has 6 terabyte of storage to work with! Since I do a lot of music and video work, that is important to me. Considering the fact that these drives now run about $229 when on sale, why would you not buy one?

Keep in mind that if you connect multiple drives, you will want to use different controlled ports on your computer; not just a USB hub (the reason is each dedicated port of a USB 2.0 can only work at a total of 400 MB/S. That means if you have multiple drives on the same controlled port that they are sharing that speed (this will really show up if you are moving data from one drive to another on the same hub). Remember, having 4 ports on your computer does not mean that they are 4 seperately controlled ports! Check your users manual or call technical support for your product to see how many seperately controlled ports you really have.

I have now moved all of my video, photos, and music to these drives (3 terabyte) and use the other three terabyte as mirrored drives (fail safe)and it is all easily accessable on my computer and on my network through my computer.

I have had the first drive for 5 months now and have added the others as they went on sale. I have not had any boot issues (mentioned in other reviews) and all of the lights go off when the computer is powered down. I am running Vista Ultimate with all updates and I am using an IBM ThinkPad with current BIOS.

Great drives!!!

My expectations were beyond met when I plugged this in. It amazes me that a 1 TB external hard drive can be so quiet. I had returned a 1 TB older version of Western Digital's external hard drive because it sounded like a jet engine. Western Digital clearly fixed that problem with this model.

The design is sleek and stylish, it is perfectly silent, and it transfers quickly with a 2.0 USB port. I'm not so technically knowledgeable that I can provide speed test, but it has transferred a couple gigabytes within a minute.

I highly recommend this product.

UPDATE: I've had the product for 7 months now and I still stand by my original review. It has never given me any problems or crashed.

UPDATE: I've now had this product (which is no longer manufactured) for over 3 years and it still performs exactly the way it did when I first bought it. I love products that stand the test of time.

I currently have 2 terabytes of storage, 6 do-it-yourself "DIY" external drives housing various sized hard drives, and a MyBook. This review compares their performance. All drives are currently on-line connected to a 7 port USB hub.


In the Box

A black box housing the drive, a brick power supply, and a USB cable are key items. 2 instruction sheets, and a warranty card complete the kit. The My Book is about the size of a bible one finds in hotel and motel rooms.

The drive case, power and cables leave a very clean design. All my DIY drives comes with stands, awkward sized power supplies and cable placements that are not well thought through.

Installation

Simple: Plug the USB cable into the MyBook, and into your PC USB port. Plug in the power supply to AC and the MyBook.

The MyBook has no power switch, and turns itself on/off if the USB port is powered, when the PC is on.

The drive was recognized by WinXPSP2 without a hitch, and re-formatting the drive to NTFS was easy using WinXP built in disk utilities. The drive ships with FAT32 format, which is less desirable if NTFS can be supported. I backuped the shipped "trial" utilities inside the MyBook in case they were useful; they were not, and it was not clear were it was stored: C:\Program Files\Western Digital. I used Western Digital's disk utilities that shipped with my other drives to check partitions and drive status. These programs can also be downloaded free from Western Digital's web site.


Break-in

The drive ran over 1 week for 24/7 for a burn in, and has done a 24 hour long disk encryption format routine. it is currently a month old running 16 hours/day. Its surprisingly silent, and runs cooler than my DIY drives.

USB 2.0 Speed

It has a transfer rate of 10MB/sec. This is not the raw transfer rate, but includes delay from encryption I use. This is about 6x slower than the maximum USB transfer speed of 60 MB/sec but is the same rate as my other DIY drives.

Conclusion:

Excellent bang for buck. The cost to build a DIY external drive today may often be more than buying a pre-made external drive. USB 2.0 transfer speeds suggests the MyBook drive is a decent speed drive. The auto on/off feature is very helpful, given most DIY kits require manual power-down.

Note, there are a number of complaints about the higher end MyBook drives. The simple electronics of the low end 'Essential Edition' maybe the saving grace to this drive's performance, keep this in mind as the display boxes look the same. Further, all drives can malfunction, so a burn-in is a must to insure your drive is not among the few bad eggs.

Design & Portability
I had 2 external HD's, which were 250GB and 150GB. It was in two different enclosures, so where ever I went, it was a real hassle carrying two HD's. MyBook is pretty compact with 1TB platter inside, helps slimming the width. Its piano black enclosure is really slick in HD design. I would give this HD the best design in its category. Very simplistic, no buttons, small slit of blue LED in front.

Out of the box
Everything was packed, there were no mounting the HD inside the enclosure needed, unlike my older HD's. I just had to plug and play, it was that easy!

Performance
I have used this for over a month and its performance is average. The specs is on the HD is pretty fast with 7200 rpm and 16MB buffer speed. I have always preferred firewire ports for external HD, because they pack more power which helps transfer data much faster than the USB 2.0's

I have a XP PC and I cant boot my pc if the HD is connected. I always have wait few seconds before the login screen shows up, then I connect the HD. (But if you use this with VISTA, there is no problem).

Whenever I exit from standby mode, my system recognizes the HD as if it was just plugged in... the autoplay becomes very annoying.

Software
The software which comes it it is completely useless. I would even go as far as to say dont even try it, save your energy! Its just a free trial. Download free back up software @ www.free-backup.info. It is much better than is included with the HD.

Price
I bought it for two-hundred and fifty from amazon. I would expect more ports and features for this price. It does not provide great bang for your buck when competitors like Cavalry 1TB CAXM3701T0 which sells around two twenty, have SATA cable and eSATA bracket (faster data transfer}!

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Recommended:
Yes

Pros
Slick shiny design, Consumer friendly, Compact and portable (1TB platter instead of 2x500GB)

Cons
average data transfer only 1 USB port, average price, software is useless

The Bottom Line
Recommended for the average pc user, if you are advanced.. checking the specs highly advised.

I have had this hard drive for about a month now and have had no real problems with it. It is very quiet and has not had any hiccups. The only thing I have noticed may be a problem with Windows Vista. When the computer goes to sleep (hibernate and off works fine) the hard drive becomes unrecognizable when booting back up. However, all you have to do is unplug the USB port and then plug it back in and it works like a charm. Also, the drive will park itself after a while and when accessing it again it takes a few seconds for it to start running again. Other than that it works like it is supposed to. Running movies off of it works without stuttering. It also looks great. I would definitely recommend this product!

The drive runs very quiet. It powers itself off at times of inactivity. The transfer speed is decent, can't ask for much more from a backup drive. The price is reasonable. It also comes with simple backup software right on the HD.

The only minor issues I have are 1) the included mini-usb cable is about 3 feet long, and 2) when your PC is not shut off, the drive still has its light on even though it's sleeping. This light is very bright in a small room at night. Other than that, it's very easy to use: just plug-n-play.

Setup in 2 mins, low noise, auto shutdown by itself to reduce energy consumption. A+

Being USB it's not going to be blazingly fast, but it is pretty fast for USB. MYbook Drives are great because they power themselves on and off, are silent, and don't heat up much.

It works right out of the box. Just plug it in and go. It's formatted in FAT32 for backward compatibility with Windows 98 and earlier. Takes only seconds to format it with NTFS, which is what you should do for better performance. It's small, whisper quiet, and comes with all documentation on the drive itself.