Amazon.com: Western Digital My Book Essential 3 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive: Electronics

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3.5 out of 5 stars (438 customer reviews)

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257 of 272 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely flimsy usb3 connector design - BUYER BEWARE, June 21, 2011

INGE STUBDAL "Inge" (Oslo, - Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBACW0020HBK-NESN (Personal Computers)

This applies to the My Book USB3 2TB drive.

First the good stuff -
It is a nice fast drive. HDTune showed and average speed around 90-100MB/s when connected to a USB3 port on my Lenovo W510 laptop. That is why I bought the thing, and it works well. I had NO trouble accessing the drive (but then I reformatted it completely and did not see any issues with the CD partition etc..).

Note: I needed to update the USB3 drivers on my W510 to get it to be recognized consistently by Windows 7. That is likely an issue with the Win7 NEC USB3 drivers preinstalled on my Lenovo, and nothing to do with the WD drive.

Now the awful part:
After about 4 months of usage, the USB3 female connector in the cabinet came loose - and was stuck to the USB3 cable when I removed it!

I have owned close to ten different WD external USB drives from ~320GB and up to 2TB drives. I have *never* had any such issue with any previous drive (my only real gripe has been the fickleness of the tiny USB connector which often doesn't need much in the way of movement to cause the machine to lose contact with the drive - rather annoying).

Inspecting the board where the connector was - it seems that on this drive, it is just soldered straight on with 5-6 soldering points - NONE of which go through the board. This is quite unlike their 2TB USB2 My Book where the tiny USB2 connector is supported by two plastic studs that go through the PCB board. And the power connector on both USB2 and USB3 is soldered with pins going though the board and an additional thicker plastic stud.

So if you intend to stick the cable in there and leave the thing stationary - you will most likely not have this problem.

HOWEVER if you do any amount of plugging it in and out, you must use EXTREME CAUTION or you will most likely break off the connector at some point.

The shop I bought it from had one raving review when I bought it from them - but when I went back after my problem, there were 7-8 other people with the exact same problem.

So it definitely looks like a terrible design which should never have been implemented, and can not have gone through any kind of real world testing. I am quite frankly disgusted at the QA process that let something like this go into the retail chain.

BUYER BEWARE!

If you google WD MY BOOK USB3 BROKEN CONNECTOR or similar, you should find people both on TomsHardware and on Western Digitals own community who have experienced this.

---
Be aware that if a hard drive fails, you will most likely not get any help/compensation for your data. They will at most replace the defective unit with a new one. Make sure you have multiple backups.

And I can't really say I disagree with that policy.

The problem here however, is that Western Digital has clearly designed a product which has an extremely weak point - and I hope they will show the corporate responsibility to fix the design and offer to replace the drives. The quality of that connector is quite UNACCEPTABLE and I will surely never buy anything like it again. And I have been very happy with my earlier WD purchases :(

Western Digital: I am looking forward to hearing your response to this post. Show us that you care about your customers.

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255 of 271 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little pricey if you just need the space, but..., November 2, 2010

Jeff Pittman "Jeff Pittman" (Durham, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)

This review is from: Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBACW0020HBK-NESN (Personal Computers)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

There are 2TB drives out there for less money and if all you need is a huge space, you might consider one of those. The value added in this package is the backup software that is bundled with the drive (actually, delivered right on the drive).

WD Smartware is a backup/restore suite that, once installed, boots with your machine. If the MyBook is attached via your USB port, it will constantly monitor activity and make backups accordingly in the background in near real time without any action on your part. It also maintains multiple generations of files (you choose how many), so you can go back to, say, three versions ago if you need to recover a spreadsheet or other data file.

You can also use it on multiple computers. Backups are stored under folders with the same name as the PC they're created on.

I tested on a Win XP Pro laptop and a Win7 laptop and detected no system slowdowns at all. Every now and then the activity light on the drive would flicker; otherwise the backup operations were not noticeable. The drive itself is completely silent.

INSTALLATION

Strongly consider copying the software included on the drive to a CD before you do anything. I can envision situations where you might want to delete everything off the MyBook and if you do that, you'll no longer have the software to install on another machine (the manual has instructions about where to look for it online).

Plug in the power supply, then connect the MyBook to a USB port on your computer, then turn on your computer if it's not on already. The MyBook will not power up until it is connected to a USB port on a running computer, which is actually handy - if you turn that computer off, the MyBook turns off with it, then comes back up when you power the computer back up.

My Win7 machine saw the drive quickly but complained that the drivers could not be installed. The drive worked fine, though - I was able to create folders, copy stuff to it, and delete stuff from it using Windows Explorer.

My XP machine saw the MyBook and started the Found New Hardware wiz. It asked if it could connect to Windows Update to look for drivers. The drive wasn't showing in Windows Explorer, so I said yes. After a long search for "WD SES Device USB Device," it found and installed what it needed to and the balloon said my new hardware was installed and ready to use.

I then installed the software (all of it) on both machines without incident, by running the WD SmartWare executable included on the drive (blue icon). On installation, I was prompted to perform my first backup, so I did. When I was through with both machines I had two presumably complete backups on the MyBook, one for each machine. For each PC you're supporting with the MyBook, this first backup is your baseline and changes to it will be tracked from that point on.

NOTE: these are not drive images. As nearly as I can tell, WD SmartWare doesn't support creating drive images or recovery boot discs, so you'll need to rely on other tools to create things like that if desired. I didn't see this as a flaw since this isn't sold as a system recovery utility. It will save your rear end if you blow a file or folder, but if your whole machine dies you have lots of other problems to solve before you start worrying about individual files. Of course it's a great location to store drive images, but be aware that the software isn't designed to create them.

I am regularly prompted that a software upgrade is available for the MyBook. Like another reviewer, I found that the installation program complains about additional USB devices being connected no matter whether any are connected or not. The drive works well so I just dismiss prompts to upgrade. Maybe I'll struggle with that later, or maybe not.

OPERATION

It just works. I disconnected the MyBook and then edited files, created new files, and deleted existing files on both my XP and Win7 machines. Then I connected the MyBook to each machine in turn. On both machines, a couple of minutes after connecting the MyBook, the new files appeared in the backup and edited versions (2nd generations) appeared in the backup without my doing anything. Deleted files (I had really deleted them, not sent them to the Recycle Bin) were still there in the backup.

Multiple generations and retention of deleted files is a good thing, but it is also going to cause bloat after time on machines that are heavily used. I can see needing to do housekeeping every so often, getting all my machines to a stable point, cleaning off the MyBook entirely, and then starting over with a fresh backup/baseline of each computer.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

This would ideally be connected to a desktop computer and just sit there quietly doing its job. I have three laptops and no longer have a desktop, so for me the advantage of virtually instantaneous file-by-file backup without having to think about it just isn't there because I don't want to be tethered to the MyBook all the time. I will have to remember to connect the MyBook to each laptop periodically to sync the changes on the laptop with the MyBook, but that's not that hard and it's a huge enhancement to the once-a-month (er, maybe) drive image I do now. I need to get off the couch occasionally anyway.

SUMMARY

This is a very well executed software/hardware bundle for those who want to maintain file backups without having to actually do anything - this thing is pure autopilot, and getting back some lost or damaged file that you update infrequently (your will? your online account/password list? your resume?) won't require a complete system restore, which is usually a disaster even if it's actually successful! I'd say it would be of the most benefit to folks who have one computer, or those whose most volatile (data-wise) computer is a desktop that they can attach the MyBook to and just let it quietly do its job, but I am having no problem putting it to use on my primary laptop.

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156 of 180 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive Design And Fast Technology - 5 Stars All Around, October 23, 2010

Sam I Am (los angeles) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)

This review is from: Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBACW0020HBK-NESN (Personal Computers)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

First, the packaging. Western Digital (WD) does an impressive job of securely packaging this hard drive with a minimal amount of waste. There's no unnecessary plastic or cardboard.

This 2 TB drive has to be plugged into the wall socket as well as powered with a USB cable. One of my major complaints about electronics products are the ridiculously short power cables. This My Book Essential External Hard Drive has an impressively long power cable - which is a plus for any experienced tech user. WD figures the customer is smart enough not to accidentally strangle themselves with a long power cord. So many products I buy have a cord that is so short as to make the item almost unusable. 5 stars to WD for trusting the intelligence of the buyers of their products.

Here are the results I obtained after testing out this drive:

The drive did not have to be formatted before I used it. It worked with my Windows XP-based computer right out of the box.

It took approximately 70 minutes to copy 35 GB of data from my old external drive to this one. This is impressively fast. The manufacturer claims it should take seven minutes and 42 seconds to copy 2000 standard MP3 songs onto the hard drive. These times are using the standard USB 2.0 technology. The drive is also designed to accommodate USB 3.0.

I didn't check out or try to install the backup software or the other extras that came with the product - these installation files are located already copied onto the drive. Another 5 stars to WD for not forcing this software onto the computer user with an automatic installation setup. My impression is that WD trusts the intelligence of the consumer to make their own decisions about how to best use the product. A toll-free international help line is available for anyone who does need some assistance with the installation of the hard drive.

The outside of the package mentions that the data on this drive is capable of being secured with a password and also comes with a 2-year limited warranty. There's almost no product literature included inside the package - only a small fold-out booklet which refers the customer to the company's website for a user manual.

A drive with this many features should probably come with more basic literature inside the box - such as, there is a physical cable lock port option - you can secure this drive with some kind of an external lock (the locking device isn't included with the drive) and there are no other clues inside or outside the package to explain this security option.

So this drive was easy to install right out of the box and it worked without any difficulties or technical headaches. I would definitely recommend this product.

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