Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Book Home Edition 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

My drive works flawlessly.
It's plugged to an Intel Mac Mini through FW.
It was recognized immediately but I had to do a quick re-format to HPFS
as it comes formated for Windows.
No problem there, just remember to save the Windows tools which are inside the drive if you think you might need them later.

I also love the fact that it doesn't have a separate power brick.
The power supply is a "wall wart" that's smaller and lighter than other drive's bricks and it fits nicely in my overcrowded power strip.

The drive is surprisingly quiet and has a very decent performance.

The "breathing" or scrolling light effects are annoying though.
A dim, discrete LED would have been better.
There are lots of options out there for you to pimp your rig if you like that stuff.
Still, for me it's a no brainer.
Not only I'm considering getting another one as I'm recommending it to my friends.
But I might get the model with FW800 this time.

This drive automatically spins down when not being used, and there is no way to disable this feature. Unfortunately on my computer under Windows, this means that the drive disappears in "My Computer" and the Disk Management tools if I don't use the drive for extended periods of time. The only way to get the computer to recognize the drive again is to power cycle the drive manually by pushing the power button on the back, it will not automatically "wake up" when I try to use the drive.

Western Digital's only recommendation was that I switch to a slower USB/Firewire connection, as their "button manager" software can keep the drive alive. This feature is not supported on the faster eSATA connection, however. (If that's the case, why did I pay more for an eSATA-capable drive?) At least the company did do an RMA exchange of my drive, just in case it was a problem with the drive or other components, but the replacement had the same issue too. This seems to be a "feature".

Their tech support also said that numerous customers have had similar issues if they plug the drive into a UPS or power strip. They recommend plugging the drive directly into a wall socket, but that didn't seem to help me at all.

I have another external eSATA drive from another vendor on the same computer (plugged into my UPS, no less), and it doesn't have this issue at all. I've left it connected for days not using it and the drive doesn't disappear. So it definitely appears to be an issue with this model of drive.

I have have 500 gb model running on OSX 10.5 with no issues. The 1 tb model is problematic with quality. I have already returned 5 drives for various issues (Does not spin up 2x, Spins up but not recognized 2x, and DOA). Did simon says with tech support, swap cables, connected to diff CPU, diff OS (Vista, XP, OSX), diff interfaces, swapped out with existing WD My book drive(500 gb model). Uninstalled and Reinstalled drivers. If you still want to try it make sure you can return it. Because you probably will.

I brought mine home yesterday and it was never recognized by any PC and the light was solid only once. Now the light flashes briefly once plugged in and never returns. I can hear something running in it, but the drive won't come up.

I called tech support, and, after giving them my name, phone number, address, email address, and the serial number of the product, he initially told me it cannot be plugged into a power strip and needs to be plugged directly into the wall. As if this is possible with most computers needing at least two plugs (more if you count printers, scanners, speakers, etc.) With his permission, I wrangled an extension cord and tried it again with no luck. He then had me test a different USB cable and then asked for me to connect the firewire cable. My computer does not have firewire. He said I have a defective unit and to return it.

Disappointing, since I have used smaller versions with no issues. This one goes back to Costco.

OK, from what I've read, you're going to be better off with the Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme. Why? Because from the research I've done, the backup software that comes with the Western Digital My Book Home Edition is only a 30 day trial version. I had a hard time finding thorough reviews of the latest hard drives (October 1, 2008). The Western Digital and Seagate models I've mentioned are pretty equally ranked. However, what sold me on the Seagate FreeAgent Extreme is that it has built-in software (not trial software) for backing up your data. That means no additional expense for the software. The reviews from various sources like PCworld.com, cnet.com, bit-tech.net, consumersearch.com, had good things to say about both the Western Digital and the Seagate hard drives that I've mentioned.

This obviously isn't a full review of this hard drive -I'm no computer guru, but the software package is very important to me and I thought this little bit of information might be helpful to someone else too.

I am an Apple user and bought this drive to put all my family movies on. It worked out of the box for about two days ... then, I got the dreaded "This computer does not recognize the inserted disk." I get the message over and over. I'm going to take it back to Costco today. I had high hopes -- but it's been a huge disappointment. I bought a WD "500" before this, and half the time it is dead as a doornail, and then occasionally it'll snap back to life. Let's just say I don't trust it. I wouldn't buy one again -- both drives are going back to Costco.

I bought three of these drives to use for backups for Macs. Opened one, hooked it up to an Intel iMac (OS X 10.4.11) via firewire and nothing appeared on desktop. Disk utility didn't see it; System profiler couldn't even identify the firewire device (though it saw something) on the firewire bus. I powered it off, tried the usb port and it doesn't even register in System profiler, much less come up. Opened the second drive, same thing: nada. Tried using my own cables, tried opening it on a PPC mini, a G4 laptop (all running 10.4) and a Dell Win XP laptop and no joy. I have had 1.5 TB external RAID6 firewire/usb enclosures attached to these machines with no problems so the disk size isn't the issue. I've built many extern drives via enclosure kits and had no problems (some chipsets wouldn't boot a Mac but they always appeared), so this is a big warning flag.

By chance one (and only one) time, when I tried swapping their cheap power bricks between the two, and magically one (but only one) of the drives appear. I started Disk Utility to wipe it and about halfway through repartitioning it to HFS, it disappears with a warning about it being disconnected from machine. Power cycled the drive, and got a kernel error forcing a reboot of the machine.

I did not bother opening the third drive because I decided even if it worked I shouldn't trust data on a product that had already failed 2/3 times. The drive's powerbrick is a small two-prong box (1x1x2"), that looks remarkable similar in quality and heft as a cheap cell-phone powerbrick. I'd have no problem with with a super lightweight cheap feeling plastic enclosure nor cheap feeling powerbrick if it worked, but it seems like Western Digital has a real lemon here.

Only after I had these problems did I notice the reviews on Amazon (4 out five gave it one star). Add one more warning to stay away from this product...

The Western Digital "My Book" Terra Byte external hard drive is a great value, east-to-use, and solid performer. I am using it on a home network though an HP Desktop (Pavilion 450n) as a group backup device with VISTA.

The easiest thing was setting it up. Plug in the firewire (faster than the USB 2.0) and the power cable, turn it on and you're in business. VISTA recognized it immediately as an external hard drive and it was easy to access.

I am using it for regular (weekly) backups of three computers on the network as a central backup device.

I have found it to be fast and quiet. I am thrilled with it and highly recommend central backup - safe from any single device failing or becoming corrupted. All those wedding pictures, personal photos, financial records, etc. etc.

As another reviewer mentioned that the drive goes power down state and the drive letter in windows explorer just disappear and nothing can bring it back until recycle the power up/down. He also mentioned the reset button does not work.

But actually, the reset button on the back does work. The correct way is to push the button and hold it for a few seconds until you see the front light started brinking again. Then after a few seconds, windows will recognize the drive letter again....

However, I will rate this as 3 stars. The reason is I also encounter the drive goes into 'semi-'standby mode when I watched a movie directly off the drive and then I pause the movie. Then I came back after more than 10 mins. My Windows appeared to be freezed. The reason being I guess the drive just tried to sleep again even while some program is still accessing the drive.

So far, I have use the drive for about 5 months now. Still the drive is working. There are some clicking noise when I access files on the drive which I think.. is normal for any harddisk.

I have this drive and also the 500GB version, connected to two different PCs each running Windows XP Pro SP2. Both drives are excellent although I will mention one caveat below about this 1 TB unit.

I have not experienced any of the problems mentioned in other reviews about booting or DOA. I wonder if the person with the boot problem reformatted the drive as a system drive or had other problems in BIOS setup.

The drives both installed easily and automatically. They come formatted for FAT32 which makes them compatible with earlier versions of Windows although it limits file sizes. Windows Disk Management easily reformats them to NTFS. Although the reformat takes several hours. You can continue using the PC itself, though, while the reformat proceeds.

Something unusual about the USB2 and eSATA interfaces. I tried the USB2 interface on both drives. I also tried the eSATA interface - in one case connecting to an eSATA port through a PCI card (and the PC has a 33 MHz PCI bus, not a 66 MHz PCI bus) and in the other case to a PCIx PCI Express interface. In both cases (!), the USB2 interface provided faster throughput than the eSATA interface. I believe the limitation is inside the PC, and NOT inside the drive. Nevertheless, it transfers about 1.6 GB in about 2.5 to 3.0 minutes. Plenty fast for my use. I now use the USB2 interface.

Note that the fancy although difficult to interpret white LED display in the front of the drive works with USB and FireWire although not with eSATA.

The 500 GB drive is super quiet all the time. The 1 TB unit is a bit odd. After accessing it, some time later it will sometimes make a low-level rapid clicking/whirring noise until the drive is again accessed at which time the noise stops. I actually replaced the 1 TB drive through WD and both drives did this. The drive passes the extended diagnostic test and WD says I am probably hearing a normal noise. I took it off the desktop and put it on top of the mini-tower so the noise no longer bothers me.

I use Acronis software to do disk image backups with these drives and also do simple backups of user folders through Windows. The drives makes this so easy.

I wholeheartedly recommend the 500 GB drive and also recommend the 1 TB unit although be aware of the possible noise.