Customer Reviews

Western Digital 250 GB USB 2.0/Firewire External Hard Drive with Dual Option Backup and USB ( WDXB2500JBRNN )

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I was pleased to see that there is much more to this product than the description on this web page. (The description of the sister product - the WD Media Center - is better. That product is the same as this except with a memory card reader built in.)

I bought this drive because I'd been wanting an external storage option that I could use with my desktop and laptop and the unit was on sale, making it quite the deal. Now that I see what else comes in the package, I think it's a good value at the standard pricing.


First, the big thing is that this is also a USB 2.0 and Firewire (1394) hub! I thought I'd have to buy a separate firewire hub to use this with my laptop and video camera since I only have one port there. But, there's an extra firewire port in the back of the unit. For USB 2.0 - two ports are made available - so you actually gain one when you plug the unit in (it's like a 2 port hub): one in the front (convenient for flash memory keys/etc) and one in the back.


Cables are included! A USB device cable and a 6 pin to 6 pin firewire cable are included! This works fine for my desktop. I need to use a 6 pin to 4 pin cable to connect to my laptop (which I already had).


I tested the unit with USB 2.0 only and firewire only and at least on my Dell desktop, the firewire speed was superior. Copying a folder with 42 image files totalling 273 MB took 20 seconds with my internal WD drive (also 7200 rpm / 8MB cache), 30 to 40 seconds with this external drive and firewire, and 60 seconds with USB 2.0. I was surprised that the USB wasn't as fast as the firewire given that the specs are so similar, but there it is.


So, I've ended up plugging both the firewire and usb cables into my desktop which gives me firewire speed for drive access, and two convenient USB ports within easy reach.


Finally, the package includes Dantz Retrospect Express 6.5 for performing backups - automated or manual. Using this software doesn't preclude using the drive freely as you wish. Retrospect can also be used with CD and DVD burners ... not just this WD drive.


The drive unit has two buttons on it that are linked to scripts (that you define) in the Retrospect software for automatic backups (you set the schedule and what/where) or manual backups (you make the settings, and any time you want to update your backup, you just push the button). This is actually pretty slick. I'd seen this advertised for some time with Maxtor units, but having had so many Maxtor drives fail over the years, I was holding out for WD to come out with a unit such as this one.


I set up my manual backup to create a 'duplicate' of my data drive - which contains 22 GB of info at the moment. The first backup took quite some time ... the speed slows down quite a bit with lots of small files and is blazing for large files. The cool thing though is that for subsequent backups (via pushing the manual backup button), ONLY files changes are copied, so the speed is REALLY fast ... no excuse not to have good backups anymore. Because the format is a duplicate of the file system, the drive can be plugged into any other machine and the files can be accessed normally. (Retrospect has some more sophisticated backup mechanisms and formats that I won't talk about here!)


Looks: I think it looks fine ... but it is definitely meant to blend in with PC designs - with Dell/HP colors (including HP-blue power light). Colors and style might not suit a Mac user.


Sound: I can hear the drive spinning and haven't decided how much it annoys me yet. It is quieter than my tower fan ... but the fan is sort of a white noise, and the drive is a little grating. The drive will spin down after a period of inactivity though (not user-defined).


So: it's a fast, big drive, a USB hub, a firewire hub, comes with USB and firewire cables and backup software. Such a deal.

P.S. After 3 weeks of use, just a few glitches to add: With my Dell XP Pro tower (all updated drivers/BIOS/etc), if I go into suspend mode with the WD drive powered on, then the computer won't wake up again (drives sping, but desktop never comes back). So, I have to be sure to turn the drive off first. Turning the drive off is a little odd. The drive spins down after inactivity. Pressing the power button to turn it off causes the drive to spin up, and then immediately power down. Often, pressing the power button results in a message from the WD driver warning me that I might lose data if I power off ... even though the drive has not been used for quite some time and the cache has clearly been flushed. Either respond 'yes', or continue to hold the power button to shut down. Finally, once you put on the R2D2 legs (which do work well) ... good luck ever getting them off. Be sure you want them before snapping them on! It's not very portable with the legs on.

I've had this thing for about 11 months now, and I am mostly pleased. The 250GB is extremely nice to have around. I have backed up my entire CD and DVD collection on it. I use the automatic script backup system faithfully. Although, I will admit, it can be a hassel to get it going correctly (hence the 4, not 5 star rating).

When I first bought this thing, I copied my entire mp3 collection to it. I then deleted my mp3 collection from my computer. I then proceeded to test the backup script and backup my harddrive. Woops. The script started execution erasing my entire mp3 collection (It erases everything already stored in the backup directory). It took about 10 minutes for it to respond to my cancels and ctrl alt deletes. I was very upset. I eventually figured the software out, and have been pleased most of the time since then. It is definitely better if you can leave the computer you want backed up powered on all the time so you don't have to deal with the software configuration.

I had done a lot of research on external hard drives, and I can say that this was the best overall value I could find. For sheer amount of data this thing can hold, plus the 8-1 card reader, plus the quick backup and the automatic backup buttons, this is a great deal.

Pros:
- Great value for what you get
- Firewire/USB 2.0
- 8-1 card reader
- Automatic and On-Demand Backup
- 250 GB!!

Cons:
- Software can be a large pain to get configured to your back-up needs (don't accidentally erase your mp3 collection!)
- Can be a bit noisy
- The blue lights illuminating the buttons are a little bright (I sleep in the same room as this thing and I have to turn it away from me).
- The stand that comes with it is a joke. Once you put the legs on, good luck getting them off. I would advise not even bothering with it.

Great value at $100 for a 250-GB drive. I've always owned Maxtors but bought this inexpensive drive to back up my new glorious iMac-20".

Got the drive on Monday. Put on the four little feet; plugged in power (no problem with my power-plug); plugged in the included Firewire cable; and, MacOSX 10.4.7 immediately recognized the drive. I reformated and partitioned the drive with "Disk Utility", then cloned a Bootable backup with "SuperDuper" (my favorite backup utility for MacOSX).

Fast, quiet, and inexpensive. I'm very pleased with the purchase of this drive. USB-2 capability is nice, but like everyone says, USB-2 a lot slower than Firewire.

Not one problem encountered using with iMac. Everything works as advertised, so far.

Avoid the WD 250GB drive - google these and be forewarned that WD will NOT honor the warranty because IT DOESN"T EXIST. Your warranty begins with the DATE OF MANUFACTURE... NOT the date of sale! This means that you, AS HAPPENED TO ME, could buy a NEW hard drive that is out of warranty the day you pay for it. And when it fails three weeks after you buy it, AS HAPPENED TO ME... WD will NOT honor the warranty.

If you must buy a WD drive due to poor judgement, karma, a gun to your head, etc... Then buy it retail and LOOK AT THE DRIVE'S MANUFACTURE DATE... if it's not "fresh", return it at once.

I cannot speak to their other drives but you should ABSOLUTELY avoid the 250GB drives manufactured at their Malaysian plant. (I have two of them here. One was mine, another was a co-workers... and both are worthless with WD not having an actual warranty in either case. And forget their worthless customer support - if you get a yawn and a sneer consider yourself promoted to doormat from the generic status of WD Customer.

Buy WD at your own risk.

I guess their hard drives are like bread and spoil on the shelf?

This will be short and simple. The Retrospect product bundled with the Drive saved my over 70G of priceless data and applications. When it was apparent that my existing drive was failing I purchased a new 250G internal drive (Western Digital) and asked the local well-regarded computer store to ghost the drive to the new one. Couldn't do it. Fortunately, I had used Retrospect to back up my stuff and the store tech was able to restore everything, all the data, programs and settings with Restrospect on the new drive. Buy this product! Use Retrospect. It might save your priceless music, pictures, financial data, etc. Happy day!

The first one of these that I ordered arrived D.O.A. but Amazon were their usual helpful selves and soon dispatched a replacement.

Having unpacked everything I saw that a USB cable was included but no firewire despite the drive having a firewire port. The drive works as advertised but it is not exactly fast so anyone looking at this as an add on drive should keep this in mind.

Set to perform complete backups in the dead of night speed isn't really an issue and for this purpose it does its job.

I reason I used the title flakey was that there are several aspects to this package which have not been thought through.

The a/c adaptor connects to the drive with a plug that looks like the old din plugs that were popular for Hi Fi back in the 70's and 80's. This does not form a secure connection to the drive and it feels like it will fall out if someone sneezes near it (near being within a mile or so.)

The "Retrospect" back up software leaves much to be desired.

It prompts the user to register the software via email but everytime I tried it failed to find an internet connection despite the fact that I have been on several occasions browsing the web and have an "always on" broadband connection.

It somehow lost it's schedule and has failed to perform any backups since october 1st. Obviously I will have to reinstall the software or find something else.

Overall as a backup drive this unit will do the job as long as the buyer takes into account the problems detailed above. With a decent power connection and software I would have been more than happy to give it 5 stars.

This hard drive works perfectly and operates quickly and quietly. The only thing I encountered was that the Mac could see it and mount it, since it was Firewire, and it came pre-formatted for Windows. The Mac could read and write to that too with no problem. All I had to do was reformat it for the Mac operating system and it works great.

I bought this unit to back up files from my wife's MAC and my own PC. So far so good. I don't bother with the software that comes with it, it's OK but not great. Works well enough just to drag and drop files here and there.

Comes formatted as FAT, which works fine for my purposes, no need to create a partition as NTFS because I'm only copying over smaller files (<4Gb).

In Win2K Pro, XP Home & Pro and MAC OS X, the dismount/eject/unplug hardware option will not shut down the drive - it always returns an error, so we need to hold down the drive's power button to shut it down.

No lost data as yet. But then even if I did, I have most the stuff on CD anyway...

The unit looks ok, seems quiet enough, transfer speeds with USB1 are slow, but what do you expect. USB2 & Firewire work like a charm. The power cable is not that secure in the back of the unit, so keep your eye on that.

Oh, and... there's a couple of USB ports and firewire ports on this thing. I thought I would try and see if you could access the drive 'two at a time ' - you can't. One connection will run this drive. Plug another PC (or MAC) in, and control goes to that machine. Not both.

When I bought this drive it was only $99, which was a steal! The current price is average.

This is a great drive. It boots my Mac without a problem, and just as fast as the internal drive (if not a little faster).

The drive is blazing fast when copying file. I copied about 2gb in under 1 minute.

It is also very quiet, and does not vibrate my computer desk like another drive I tested did.

Nice looking too!

This hard drive does its job well, it can be connected by USB or Firewire, or both if you'd like the superior speed of Firewire and the USB hub functionality. The only gripe is the power adapter is loose and will fall out of the back of the hard drive if you are back there playing with cables.