Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(68)

 

 

BUYER BEWARE....This is a great hard drive, except for one fatal issue. Western Digital includes their backup software, "SmartWare" on this drive. That's normally not an issue, you reformat and partition the drive and it's gone. However, WD included a special virtual CD (VCD) partition as part of the enclosure or firmware, which is NOT accessible to the user. I've tried all the utilities in OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu Linux to destroy this VCD, but no luck. I contacted Western Digital inquiring about a removal utility or firmware flash, and they gave me a run around answer and basically said no, we have no plans to do that.

The VCD automatically mounts on your machine when the drive is inserted, which gets annoying very quickly. I found a workaround in OS X and Windows, to keep the VCD partition from mounting, but it shouldn't have to be this way.

If you've ever had to deal with the horrid U3 software on a SanDisk flash drive, then you'll know what I'm talking about. At least SanDisk provides a utility to remove their software, and gain back the full capacity of the drive. This SmartWare VCD uses almost 1GB of the drive. A drop in the bucket, yes, but I don't like being told how to use my storage space by Western Digital.

Aside from that, it functions and is built quite well. My only other complaint is that the barrel plug for the power adapter, and the USB cable sit pretty loosely in the back of the drive when they're connected and are prone to falling out if you move the drive around too much.

Otherwise, a good hard drive.

If you are just looking to add an additional drive for storage, don't buy this new version of My Book Essential. Especially if you plan to buy more than one (which you of course should unless it's purely a backup drive). You will regret it unless you are a newbie who only wants a drive that will back up your system (and even then you should get a Seagate now instead).

Western Digital is now installing a "virtual drive" software that CANNOT be disabled, ejected (unmounted) or deleted. You will have an extra drive entry for each one of these you install. If you use up to 8 drives, as I have, that would mean 16 separate drive entries. WD has flat out said you cannot remove this functionality. Even reformating won't do it, because the included software is in firmware. If you do use the backup and security functions, they are part of this software, and your drive capacity will ONLY be about 770GB, not the full 930GB that is normal (you can still access the drive directly via another drive letter for full capacity). The software that comes on these drives is not professional level backup software. Neither is the security software. If you are serious about protecting your data, you will buy pro-level software anyway. But you are apparently forever stuck with this software on these drives.

Western Digital's drives have about the same reliability as the Seagates. Both make external drives that aren't fan-cooled, so weaker components from the manufacturing process fail, requiring these types of units to be replaced frequently (that's why you never buy only one, or never keep your only copy of data on it). That's just part of owning these drives for most people. Seagate will replace your drive for free for 5 YEARS. WD will do the same for 1 YEAR. It is virtually guaranteed that 1 or 2 drives out of 10 of these will require replacement. I prefer to have 5 years to do so rather than 1.

I've bought 12 external USB drives, both brands. More of the Seagates than the WD's. I just returned two of these I bought yesterday, and from this point on, there will be no more WD's coming home with me, having discovered that I cannot remove WD Smartware. With the Seagates, I plug it in, the computer sees it as a DRIVE, not software. I delete the software that Seagate puts on the drive, and I start using it. That's how I want it to be.

Update (as of 10/11/09)
=============================

Instead of returning the drive I thought I would do a favor for a somewhat computer-illiterate friend by selling her the drive along with assisting her in installing and configuring the SmartWare software to backup her data.

The laptop running WD Smartware is about three years old and contains a single-core chip. Well, I discovered that this software is a resource PIG. WD advertises the fact that SmartWare is always running in the background to backup any files the moment they changes. The trade-off is that the SmartWare background service routinely spikes the CPU to 95%-100%, bringing a single core Windows computer to its knees. It's just not worth it.

In the end I uninstalled Smartware completely from the laptop (the 1TB drive is still accessible despite the Windows XP Device manager complaining of an unknown device) and built a backup job that runs daily using the free Comodo Backup software.

WD SmartWare is not even good for newbies unless they have current, multicore computers able to handle the hour-by-hour spike in CPU usage from this service. In my opinion WD really stumbled with this product.


Summary (original review)
=============================

In my opinion this device is not meant for any but the most limited-skilled computer user. The few dumbed-down options that cannot be deactivated in their included software combined with the instability of the current device driver (at least for Win7) makes this drive too inflexible and unreliable for anyone looking for an external hard drive to store data and backups from their own, proven backup strategies.


Background
=============================

As an owner of the previous generation 1TB and 500GB MyBook Essential external drives, I needed another 1TB drive to store rolling backups of my OS partition images, my digital media (stills, videos, and MP3s), and software install DVD/CD ISOs. I turned to this drive based on a) my previous good experience with the MyBook models, and b) the hopeful fact that this drive was an improvement in reliability, speed, and power consumption since it was a next-generation of the models I currently have.

As an advanced computer user who developed several automated backup and drive imaging jobs using other, more robust backup solutions I did not need the WD SmartWare backup software that comes with this drive. I would soon learn that this drive does not operate properly without out the WD SmartWare software installed, nor did it operate reliably with the software installed.


WD Smartware
==============================

The WD Smartware is meant to be an all-in-one console for managing the drive settings and health, as well as managing backup/restore jobs. I didn't like the fact that upon creating a backup job that this software was constantly running behind the scenes and backing up every changed file in my backup set immediately after the files changed. This is backup-overkill, in my opinion, but I certainly understand that there are computer users who don't fully grasp the concept of backing up data - again, for this user category WD SmartWare will simplify implementing recurrent backups.

Since the price was within USD $1.00 of the previous generation model I assumed I could purchase this drive and use it without having to install the WD SmartWare software - I was wrong and I am regretting this purchase, for now I have to return it and either purchase the previous generation or another brand.


Cons
==============================

1) As pointed out by the first reviewer, plugging in this drive results in a virtual CD (VCD) containing the SmartWare installation routine and product manuals being mapped to one of your computer drive letters. I tried several different tactics to dismount this VCD to free up my limited drive letters but I could not do so. This is just plain arrogance on the part of Western Digital to assume that they could grab a drive letter with the install software location and not allow the user to dismount the VCD.

For the most basic computer user perhaps this is a non-issue but anyone with a home network, attached media card readers, and USB flash drives will quickly discover that drive letters cannot be kidnapped by a VCD that is not even usable beyond the initial install of the WD SmartWare software.

2) Unlike the previous generation model, this external hard drive's driver must be installed (at least to a Windows Vista or Windows 7 OS) from the VCD. It is not simply plug-and-play for the OS does not have the proper driver to access the device. WD does provide instructions on their website on how to install just the drive's driver from the VCD without having to install the entire SmartWare utility, but the source of the install is that dreaded VCD mentioned in my point (1) above. This means that as of this review date there is no way to install the most current driver WD release, leading to my third CON point:

3) The current driver for this device causes blue screen of death (BSOD) error 0x0000008E in Windows 7 (a moderately rigorous troubleshooting effort by me costing a few hours of my time isolated this driver as the root cause). I am running Windows 7 release candidate/build 7100, which is supposed to be close to the RTM version about to come out on 10/22/09. I was forced to uninstall the driver due to the instability this driver introduced to my Win7 OS environment. With Win7 so close to release, I would have expected a stable version of the device driver to be available to the public but that does not seem to be the case.

(note, I would accept that perhaps this RC version of Win7 might also contain some code that is interfering with the WD driver and that the RTM version coming out in a couple of weeks will resolve this problem, but my first two CONS still make this drive a no-deal for me.)


Pros
==============================

1) For the most basic computer user WD SmartWare will simplify your backup needs and give you a way to quickly establish proper data backups.

This drive is like no other drive I have ever bought. Once you connect it to your system, it FORCES a Virtual CD drive (VCD) onto your operating system that CAN NOT BE REMOVED IN ANY WAY by the user. This is GARBAGE! This drive is going right back. I have never heard of such an insane idea as this. There is nothing on the packaging to indicate that this drive will take over your OS. This feature is burned into the drive's firmware!

WORST IDEA I'VE SEEN IN 10 YEARS.
UPDATE 12-2-09
After removing my drive and returning it. We tried to remove the one on my wife's MAC tower. It took us 3 HOURS of horsing around to remove this WD software which had infected her OS/X system. Even with the drive disconnected, this WD "smartware" was running and dogging down her computer. We finally understood the slowness to be due to this dreadful software which is EXACTLY LIKE A VIRUS running in your computer. It took a LOT of work to remove all this WD software from her Mac. The WD Uninstall left behind many pieces of software which had to be discovered by running the process monitor.

Furthermore, you can not burn a CDROM from files you place on this drive. The entire system will freeze up and you won't get the CDROM out of the drive. All I can say at this point is that it would be stupid to purchase this drive when you can buy the IOMEGA Prestige 1T drive for $96 here on Amazon. I bought the Prestige and it is MARVELOUS. It is robust, heavy, runs like a machine and was setup on my mac in 30 seconds flat. It is a beautiful drive. When comparing the Iomega to this WD crap it is like comparing a Mercedes Benz to a Yugo.

Here are my expectations when purchasing a USB hard drive:
1) Plug it in and it works with the storage driver included with Windows (XP/Vista/Win7) - This means no software needs to be installed
2) USB drive utilizes 1 drive letter
3) Good performance (USB 2.0 speeds)
4) Reliablity/Warranty (the drive should last at least as long as its warranty)
5) Fair price

I've owned a decent # of Western Digital drives and WD is my preferred vendor (I have had both WD drives and other vendors drives fail). However, this drive is the first one with "WD SmartWare" which tries to automatically mount a virtual CD drive (which contains the WD SmartWare software). For me, I need the drive to use 1 drive letter and I absolutely do not need any backup software installed. For every other drive I have, I simply format it and all of the *OPTIONAL* backup software is gone for good (yeh!!!).

WD SmartWare takes a unique approach - by protecting a partition on the USB drive so that it is not removed when the drive is formatted. Also, the default WD approach is that the 2nd drive letter is used by this virtual CD drive (none of this is on the outside of the box when I went to purchase it).

Yes - I disabled the SmartWare partition & extra drive via the process at Western Digital's site: _[...]

NOTE: Even after doing this the drive still tries to download/install a Western Digital driver for "WD SES Device USB Device" with the hwid of "USBSTOR\OtherWD______SES_Device______1032". No other drive I have ever owned had to do this and it should not be required. The USB driver included w/ Windows is fine by me and I'll always choose a drive that does not need additional software (or even tries to install SW). Luckily, the driver did not exist on Windows Update (or it would have installed).

So this drive is going back for either a "Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDH1U10000N" or possibly a MAC edition "Western Digital My Book Mac Edition 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDH1U10000AN" - both install without any additional software and can work w/ a PC.

Message to Western Digital - Great to see you taking a new approach but as you can see from all of these reviews, you need to offer the option to install the drive with the driver included w/ Windows - its that simple. From now on, I'll checking to make sure that all future drives do not have SmartWare or I will be purchasing from another vendor (some actually have a 5yr warranty you know...)

This would be a good drive if it weren't for the Smartware partition which cannot be removed and creates a virtual CD on your machine. I didn't purchase this thing for the software, I purchased it for storage and backup space. Although you can disable the virtual cd drive, you have to do this on every machine you plug it in to. All I wanted was a backup drive. Many external backup drives do include some form of backup software, but at least you have the option of deleting it and using your own software. This software isn't as sophisticated or as flexible as the backup software I use, but I'm still stuck with WD's crappy backup software taking up 500MB of space for no reason. It isn't the space, it's the principle. Why should I have to disable a virtual CD drive and accept the loss of any space on the whim of Western Digital. I will never buy another WD external drive that comes with SmartWare for myself or my clients and certainly won't recommend one to anyone. I don't like any manufacturer that assumes to tell me how to use the equipment I purchase.

I have been using Western Digital drives for many years in my work and own hundreds in various capacities, including a few My Book models. Until now, there has been nothing unique about these drives. Plug them into USB port and you're ready to go.

This unit with its WD SmartWare solution is different from My Book units of the past: very different. Different enough to ruin the day for many people who find that they have something they don't want - an automatic backup system. Thus, this unit must be reviewed from two very different perspectives. One as a standalone backup system - and the other as a standalone external drive. Both merit five stars.

Western Digital blew it on this product line. I guess some MBAs decided that people wanted a plug-n-play backup system. Maybe some people do. But they sure don't make it clear on the box that when you plug this puppy in, it is very insistent on installing its backup software. And there is as virtual CD that pops up and pops up and pops up and pops up: you seemingly can't get rid of it.

As delivered - unless you want a simple backup system - this My Book model is bad news. Western Digital got the message after the marketplace blasted it with reviews running from bad to awful. They finally introduced some software that would update the firmware and suppress the virtual CD function.

So now if you're willing to take the time to download and run the firmware updater and the software manager, in about thirty minutes or so, you'll have what you might have been looking for in the first place - an external hard drive without any bells and whistles.

Western Digital did this one wrong. The advertising and the outside of the box should make it absolutely crystal clear that this is intended as a standalone backup system that can be converted to an ordinary external hard drive.

As a backup system for people who don't want to learn anything about backing up hard drives, it isn't bad. It is simple to use, configurable for default operation and even provides for whole drive encryption. However, it is not a system experienced users will like. It is inflexible and it is WD's backup way or no way. It is, effectively, backup for dummies - and the unsophisticated will probably appreciate it simplicity.

A lot of people, however, are going to buy this unit without reading the current descriptions or the notice of a firmware updater from Western Digital and are going to be very aggravated as they try to get rid of the virtual CD and defeat the backup software.

Physically, the unit is typical of the My Book line. Sleek, no fan and runs cool. One significant design defect, in my opinion, is the use of a "wall wart" power adapter. It is on the large side and doesn't fit conveniently into most power bars. They should have made it inline with a regular power cord going to the outlet. Also, the MBAs have decided the normal convention of putting the USB symbol on the top of the USB connector is too ordinary for them: they put it on the bottom and used a stylized "WD" logo on the top. So expect to attempt putting in the cable upside down a few times. Finally,the sockets for the power and mini-USB did not quite line up with the openings on the case.

For someone seeking a simple backup solution, this is a pretty good idea. For someone who just wants an external hard drive, it works, but only after you remove the backup features. The hard drive itself is a Western Digital product and I have been pleased with them over the hundreds of drives I use in my work.

If you're looking for just a plain vanilla external hard drive, don't buy this unit unless you don't mind taking the time to get rid of the backup features. Otherwise get one without the WD SmartWare features.

Jerry

Wow, I am not sure I can add anything more to SweetDaddy's review!

This drive is embedded with Western Digital's SmartWare virtual CD that will ALWAYS and FOREVER boot to your Mac computer. This Virtual CD cannot be disabled, unmounted, removed, eradicated, or partitioned away - EVERY!!!!! It says so right on WD's website buried in the tech support area, not on the box where this kind of don't buy our product warning belongs.

Western Digital has decided to embed their Virtual CD Smartware into this drive so that you cannot, under any circumstances, disable or remove the VCD. It will forever mount this unwanted intrusion to your Mac (Windows is no better apparently) and their website essentially tells you that you can do nothing about it.

Can you tell that I am upset?!? I am repeating myself. I own seven other Western Digital hard drives and I will not own this one. Nor will I buy another in the future out of fear of getting the same results.

I bought this drive for backup and redundancy purposes, but I have no need for their backup or security software that is nothing but a parasite to this drive. Go ahead and use it and loose a large portion of the usable space on this drive. If I were to buy more of these like I had planned, My desktop would be cluttered with a bunch of meaningless virtual CDs. This intrusion may not annoy Windows users as the Virtual CDs will just clutter up your "My Computer" window; but, on a Mac this type of unalterable intrusion is beyond unacceptable. I cannot believe that Western Digital could not see the alienation of every Mac user on the planet from ten miles away on this one.

Western Digital and other drive makers have, for a while now, put their software install packages onto the external hard drives that they sell; but, it has always been just stored on the drive where it can be deleted or is removed when the drive is reformatted - at worst it was on a separate partition that could be removed. But, not with this new version (version 3?) of the My Book Essential Drives where it is embedded into the drive's hardware and cannot be deactivated. Until Western Digital rethinks their strategy and changes this practice, their hard drives should be avoided and boycotted.

I essentially got this drive for free because of some coupons and I am still returning it post haste even if it means I loose the value of those coupons. I am so disappointed that I would, if it were feasible, return every western digital hard drive I own and replace them with another brand (too bad you can't buy these from REI where I could do just that!)


UPDATE: After returning the Essentials drive, I purchased two of Western Digital's Elements External 1TB Hard Drives; Exactly what I needed in the first place... an external hard drive that is built like a tank and is only what it is supposed to be: a hard drive. No "fancy" value-added software embedded in the hardware to muck up the works on this drive. I highly recommend the Western Digital Elements external hard drives for all of your storage needs!

The software on my drive (purch Apr 2010) does not force an installation of Smartware. There is now an option to not install the software, which then leads it to only install drivers. It does not prompt for the software install after that and shows as a straight drive that I could drag and drop onto. One nice feature is the drive will power down if the computer is turned off or the usb cord unplugged. Then it turns on automatically when the computer is turned back on, or is plugged into another computer.

See below for a way to enable password protection of the drive without leaving Smartware installed.

The virtual CD can be turned off from within the software, or through a separate download from the WD website. It turned off, then back on just fine. Other people mentioned formatting the drive to get full capacity afterwards, but I didn't try that. Instructions for how to do that are at the WD website.

One thing to clear up is the people saying the virtual CD takes up 70 GB. It takes up less than 500 MB. The 70 GB apparent deficiency relates to the way Windows reports hard drive sizes, not the virtual CD.

A 1 TB drive does not show up as 1,000 GB, but rather as 931 GB in Windows. Right click any drive (or even a file) and go to properties and compare the capacity in bytes to the capacity in MB or GB right next to it. They are not the same. I think you have to divide 1 TB by 1,024 to get how many KB it is, then by 1,024 again to get how many MB, then 1,024 again to get how many GB. So 930 GB for this drive is really 1 TB, minus about 1GB due to the file structure and virtual CD. Again, it does appear you can re-format and claim back the space the virtual CD space back, but I kept it for a specific reason I'll mention later.

After I verified it worked as a straight drive, I tried Smartware. The main problem with Smartware is there's no way to selectively backup certain folders or even just pick a different backup interval besides continuous backup. For many people this will work just fine as it is automatic and you can even set how many old versions of files it keeps. But I need more control since I'm backing up more than one computer and would rather not have yet another program running in the background. And Smartware is really slow. It seems to be cataloging the files. Probably gets faster once it is done the first time, but it seemed like it would have taken a day to back up one of my PCs and that one only had about 40GB of data. But I was just trying it out on a portion of my files, so maybe it's faster if just left alone overnight. However it does run in the background, so you could just plug it in and during regular usage of the PC it would finish the backup over some days.

I installed Smartware on another computer to see what it would do, and it correctly identified it was a separate computer to back up then created new backup folders in the WD folder. The drive also works as a regular drive that you can copy to even if Smartware is storing to it.

Now, the reason I left the virtual CD on the drive. I discovered you can turn on encryption in Smartware, set a password, then uninstall Smartware and the drive stays password protected. There is an unlocker on the virtual CD so you can then unlock the drive from any PC. Obviously, to change the password or turn off encryption, you'd have to install Smartware again but it's still there on the virtual CD. Since I bought this drive over others because of the encryption, I'm glad the password protection works without needing to leave Smartware installed. If the drive were stolen, it'll be encrypted. When plugged into a PC, the password window will pop up automatically. If you start the PC with it already attached, you have to click on the virtual CD, then it'll pop up. Without the password, it'll just start up with the PC and show as a drive.

Speed is pretty good when used as a regular external drive. Although it is limited by being a USB connection. When copying my data overnight it ran around 5 MB/second over an extended period.

Music and video playing from the drive worked fine. I played a DVD content off it and once during playback it froze then picked back up later. But otherwise was fine, which is pretty good for about 1 1/2 hour video.

I'm very satisfied with the drive. My data is secure and the speed is very good. If the backup software were more flexible, it'd be better, but security is more important to me. While I was a little worried about all the negative reviews, they mainly were due to the forced software install which is no longer the case.

First, a mea culpa for buying this without checking reviews. I was in a big-box store looking at external terabyte drives and this one looked as good as the next. My luck-of-the-draw selection probably gave me the worst choice that I could have have gotten.

Where to start . . . I can't speak to durability because I owned this thing for all of two days. It didn't work the first two times i plugged it in. I had to reboot my machine, and couldn't get it to boot up with this drive attached. Apparently the BIOS on my HP Pavilion didn't like it. When I finally got my machine to recognize and use this disk, I came to realize three things: this drive has a permanent, unchangeable virtual CD, the software on the VCD is utter rubbish, and any attempt to use another software to back up onto this drive caused my system to hang.

I really did give the so-called "Smartware" (?!?!) a college try and found more problems than I want to mention here. The software is very, very dumbed down with practically no user-configurable settings, no compression and no real encryption. It did allow for a password, which it then forgot. Backup in terms of Kb/sec was very, very slow. The real-time backup, which is supposed to determine when a file had changed and back it up again, slowed my entire system down and didn't work properly.

What was perhaps the worst aspect of this software was the restore feature. Each time I tried to test the restore, the software had to dynamically create a list of all the items backed up. It didn't keep a running tally and didn't do this in the background -- it waits until you are ready to restore. Creating this list took close to an hour and the lists it made were frequently incomplete! So if you need to restore mymail.pst, you wait 50+ minutes for the list to generate, then see if mymail.pst is on the list. If not, you have to start all over again and it might be on the next list you generate! The user interface to navigate the list of files for restore was very, very slow and subject to visual basic runtime failures.

Note that I was using about 15% of the drive's capacity for my backup and getting these ridiculous response times and inconsistent behavior. I'm morbidly curious about how long it would take to generate a list of files if I were using 75% of its capacity. No matter, I will never find out. Western Digital: seriously guys, this product shouldn't have been released.