Customer Reviews

Western Digital 80 GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive with Dual Option Backup

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I use the external hard drive to store my MP3's and digital photos. I bought this one as a small back up drive. I did not install any of the software that came with it, Win XP recognizes the drive without it. It worked great right out of the box, just power it up and plug in the USB. Piece of cake.

I have bought 2 of these (both 80GB), and intend to buy a third. Both worked right out of the box for my WinXP laptop. The original is now 2 years of continuous operation and the other is at 8 months.

Some advice on external drives: you should never trust any hard drive for your only backup. Use them only to offload data. I use mine to store docs and for *temporary* backup before I place them on the *real* backup DVDs. A hard drive is mechanical (read "bearings") and will always fail eventually.

Some of the reviews are scary, but so far, the WD 80 gig drive has worked great for me. Easy to hook up, easy to use, so far so good. I don't use it over a network, and I wonder if that may have contributed to some of the negative reviews. A larger and more expensive version of this drive was just top rated by PC World magazine, and they thought that the included backup software, Retrospect 6.5 was the best around.

Unlike "e-pharm's" generic review of every single Western Digital external hard drive, I have owned this 80Gig drive for about 2 months so far and it has worked great. Stackable, super quiet, easy to install, and trouble-free (thus far). Just my experience. I have also just added the 120Gig WD external to add to the stack and use with another computer...very sharp looking as well. With the rebates offered from time to time, you can't go wrong.

Great Aspects:

The Western Digital 80GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive (with Dual Option Backup) is a solid performace storage device that runs quickly and quietly without any needless fancy buttons. Just take it out of the box and plug it into a power socket and hook up the USB to the computer and you'll be ready to go. I've had this hard drive for quite a few months now and it seems to be working fine (no breakdowns or erasures of data). This is a great hard drive for big music libraries or just as a backup to your PC/laptop hard drive.

Downside:

Don't bother to install the backup software included with the hard drive. It isn't worth the trouble and time to get it running correctly and you can just plug-n-play anyways. You should also check the format (NTFS or FAT32) of the hard drive and reformat if needed (based on your computer) before downloading data to the hard drive.

Summary:

This is a high-quality hard drive at a decent price. Don't expect to be overwhelmed by its capabilities but do prepare to get a durable hard drive that's fast and easy to use. Highly Recommend.

The unit has a grey/silver plastic casing, with a blue-lighted power button that gives it a high-tech look. There are no cooling fans but there is sufficient ventilation through the long grooves on the top and bottom of the unit. It comes with mounting stands to keep the unit vertical.

It makes a slight, non-distracting humming noise during use and is silent when idle.

The included software lets you backup important files at a touch of a button. It also lets you clone and create a bootable boot/system restore disk.

All in all, a solid, basic unit that does its job.

I'm writing a follow-up to a previously reviewed harddrive from 2 years ago here http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A35GDM4WI728A9/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-4295722-4476660?%5Fencoding=UTF8

I now own about 6 external drives, all of which are working fine (4 were purchased not long ago). This follow-up is from a Western Digital drive that is also 80 gigs. I must say for the continuous stress I put on this drive it held out well... it finally died after 2 years. I download a lot of material and use the externals to take all the stress instead of the internal drives which stores important system data. I used it for a month straight last month and kept the drive running constantly... then one day the data transfer speed was very slow. I was able to recover about 20% of the drive before it gave out completely. I'm now using a Buslink drive that I've had for about 3 years as it's replacement and that is working fine, although I haven't put a lot of stress on this drive until now (the Buslink drive is actually made from Samsung). I also own 2 250 gig WD externals and two 160 and 300 gig Seagate drives, they haven't given me any problems so far.

I bought this hard drive to backup my four home computers. It came with backup software, but I just copy what I want to save, and put the drive in the closet. A simple easy solution for home backups that don't require the sophistication of a business user.

Great price, under $100.

I bought one for myself and one for my wife.
The only regret is that I didn't buy an internal, which would work faster than USB transfer, but this drive is portable so it is a draw.

I bought this in order to back up my internal hard-drive and to store copious amounts of music and pictures. I was very happy with the "plug-and-play" ability of the unit, until a week later it would not power up. I tried for days and explored evry option until I realized that it was broken. I realized the futility of trying to deal with WD's customer service, as it was not their problem to recover my priceless data. One day, a miracle happened and it powered up, but the USB cable provided with the unit failed, thus no data transfer was possible until I procured such a cable. Of course, I had to leave the unit plugged in, because who knows if it would power up again? After the data transfer, I then did what I should have done upon receiving the package and the whole unit went in the garbage.
Don't bother....