Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 1TB USB 2.0 (WDH2U10000N)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Bought this external drive to backup pictures and videos from my current laptop. Order arrived quickly.

Pros:
*Raid 1 (Mirror)--feel secure since data is stored on two identical drives, if one crashes, data is still available on second drive.
*Quiet
*Easy to use
*Reasonably priced
*USB 2.0

Cons:
*No Firewire or ethernet support (not important to me, but some might care)

Overall, after much research, I decided to buy this drive because I could care less about firewire or ethernet support and the price was right.

It works as I had hoped it would. It was easy to set up. I love the fact that when I save to it, I'm saving to 2 drives - which gives me great backup. Thus, all I have to do to save a document and back it up at the same time, is click "Control" and "S." I like that it has its own power supply and thus doesn't drain my laptop.

I have had this drive for about a month now and I am loving it. All you have to do is hook it up, pop in the included software, and you are ready to roll. It does not make much noise and has more space than I will ever use. Overall, this is a simple and cost-effective solution for my storage needs.

I'm using a laptop without eSata, so I guess this one fulfills my requirements. I have time to wait data transfer (doesn't matter if it's a few hours) so it's fine for me. Pretty quiet, quieter than my laptop fans blowing. However, it does make clacking sounds. I assembled my own external hard drive last year using Antec MX 1 and a WD5000AAKS, and the hard disk ran very queitly. The casing is plastic, looks good, if you press the top plastic grill it makes squeaking sounds. If you set it up with Raid 1, starts with 465.76 GB, migrating it to Raid 0 is just a few clicks away using the provided software on the CD, giving you 931.52 GB of writable space.

This drive worked great and was my primary backup drive on my Windows XP system for over a year and a half. But a couple of days ago I returned to my PC to find a long list of Windows error messages indicating that delayed writes to the drive were failing. These were unrecoverable errors, the WD Button Manager was flashing red, and Windows no longer even recognized the drive. System restarts and trying different USB ports had no effect other than to greatly delay system startup time. Another review, of the 2TB version of this drive, with a similar problem, mentions that the drives themselves were OK and data could be recovered from them after removing them from the drive housing. I haven't had time to try this yet and will probably do so only if my XP system fails before I get a new backup drive operational. I like WD drives in general, and I was disappointed with this failure, which may be in the RAID firmware rather than the drives themselves.

Many of these mirrored drives on the market only offer a Raid 0 configuration which doesn't really do what you want it to. With Raid 0 you aren't able to save your data if one of the two drives crashes which is why most people buy these drives. This drives offers Raid 0 but it also offers a Raid 1 configuration which makes a copy of the data on both drives. This enables you to just replace one of the drives in the box if one fails and you don't lose any of your information.

We have had this for a couple of months. It is easy to use and I can't believe how much space it has! Thanks!

The first one I ordered had one drive that was inacessable. The second one almost did my computer in. Something in the wiring. My computer flashed and blinked and finally crashed. Maybe it was just bad luck but I will not order from WD again. So I returned another one to Amazon who refunded my money.

Performs as intended. WD backup software is very convenient and easy to set up.

The software installation took nearly 20 minutes. That was the first Bad Omen. Then, with the DC power plug in the unit, the drive's "ON" blue light was intermittant. It seems that Quality Control is not high on Western Digital's priority list. The DC power connection for the unit was defective -- the plug and socket were a very loose fit -- and so power to the unit was intermittant at best. Then, the newly installed software would not recognize the drive. Lastly, calling Western Digital customer support got me a "Your estimated waiting time is 15 minutes." The problem is that in fifteen minutes, the same recording came on and said the very same thing all over again.

Thanks to Amazon.com's refund policy I am only out the ten days waiting for the drive to arrive, my three hours of fiddling, and the hassle of sending it back to Amazon.com.