Customer Reviews

Western Digital External USB 2.0 120GB Hard Drive (WD1200B005-RNx)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

A recent scare (when I feared I had lost the hard drive on my laptop) gave me the sense of urgency I needed to start backing up my entire drive, not just the data files. The thought of having to reinstall all those programs, modify all my settings, etc., was too depressing to contemplate.

I immediately went looking for an external hard drive to back up both my desk top and laptop computers. An external drive would allow me to easily move the HD between the two machines. The USB connection is easy, and with WinXP, there were no driver issues. The instructions with the HD told exactly how to partition the drive, so I set it up with a partition for each PC. I was up and running in no time.

A good value for a name brand piece of equipment. And, I sleep better at night knowing my drives are securely backed up.

I bought this drive last summer and it worked OK for about a year. This month it started making a clicking sound and would not read the drive. I sent it out for recovery and found out that it suffered from a severe head crash where the drive head actually damanged the media surface on the drive causing all of my data to be unrecoverable. I do not backup my primary machine every day so I lost a lot of unrecoverable files that I had since removed from my primary machine.

The main problem with this device is that it does not have a power on/off switch. It is always on unless you unplug it. I use it infrequently and found that sometimes the disk and fan would be spinning when I did not even have my machine plugged into it. I think this fried the unit prematurely. Next time I buy a backup device I will make sure it has an on/off switch and I will isolate it from all of my other devices (do not use with USB hub).

Now I guess I need to buy two backup drives and have a backup of the backup of the backup. After having lost 3 hard drives over the last 15 years, all I can say is that all hard drives eventually fail. Never leave your data on only one device. I am going out today to buy two smaller backup drives instead of one large one. That way I will have redundant backup of my backups.

It is rare that I will use the word "perfect" to describe a product, but this Western Digital 120 GB USB 2.0 external HDD is without any flaws that I could detect. I literally had it set up and running on my PC in about 2 minutes. It installed on my Windows XP system instantly and automatically. No install disk (for us to misplace) is necessary. "Plug and Play" is no longer "Plug and Pray." I use mine for archiving digital photos, and it is perfect for that. Further, it is small enough to take on trips, and its effortless plug and play characteristics mean that you can hook the HDD up to say, a very cheap notebook computer and archive large numbers of digital photos. That's what I do.

Hard Disk Drive technology is approaching perfection, and this very reasonably priced unit is a wonderful value. Before I'm done no doubt I'll own a couple of these beauties.

Just like the other reviewers, my hard drive stopped working after 15 months of use. I couldn't get any of my data off it (there go all my files!) and Western Digital could do nothing but refer me to some unaffordable data recovery service. In all fairness, while it worked it was great! But - I think it's awfully convenient that the drives seem to die a couple months after the warranty expires.

It crased after 13 months. Looks like it has got problem with mounting the head. I called up western digital and they referred me to some service centers where they charge $10 per GB to recover. Please dont buy western digital stuff !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I lost all my data. Its not worth spending $1500 to recover the data !!!

The key is Back Up. You backup so that you don't lose all your data when your drive crashes. Your drive WILL crash. Electronics will not last forever.

That being said, Amazon tells me I purchased this drive from them August 2004. 20 months later, it died on me. After looking around online I found this: Repair is near impossible. Data retrieval is expensive. Warranty only lasts one year.

After spending hours reading message boards online I decided to follow the advice I read in many places and I put my 'broken' drive in my freezer for one hour. I took it out, and after five minutes of delicate power cycling I got the drive running again. I was able to move all 60GB of data onto another drive safely and now I'm using this same 'broken' drive again.

I am not mad that this drive crashed. Hard drives (and all electronics) will have problems, and that's why you're here shopping for a new backup device, right? I AM upset, however, at myself. I used this drive exclusively as my ONLY storage device. If I had an actual "backup" drive I would not have had the scare I had this morning.

So for nearly two years this drive has given me no problems. It's quiet. It's fast. It's got a good capacity. I am very happy with this product, and I will probably end up buying a second one to be my actual backup drive. Shopping around today I'm reading reviews on Maxtor, Seagate, Iomega, etc. and every product has people saying, "I'll NEVER buy from this company again!" But that's the point. EVERY product I've read about has these bad reviews. So prepare for the worst, and have a backup.

My drive failed after 18 months with the same clicking noise that others experienced. I won't buy another WD drive.

died after 14 months with the same clicking noise. lost all my data. hate this drive.

Died after 6 months use with the same clicking noise everyone else seems to hae had. when through thier Product replacement and got another drive which died 7 months later. very unreliable drive.

After almost 2 years of flawless performance, the device just stopped working. There is a faint clicking noise when I plug the device in, but no hard-drive motor (which normally sounds ALL THE TIME the device is plugged in). The computer will no longer recognize the drive.

Looks like I'm starting over again on my music library...