Customer Reviews

Western Digital WDG1C3200N My Book Premium Edition 320 GB USB 2.0/Firewire400 External Hard Drive

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I've heard some complaints about this line of external drives, so let me address those first. Yes, there is a slight "hum" or high frequency vibration. But I have several of these drives in different capacities and some hum a little, some not so much. Bottom line is that the noise is neither distracting nor bothersome. Besides, don't you get a little worried when any machine goes dead silent? Okay, now to the good stuff. Though designed as an "archival" device, I have streamed digital video from these drives full screen onto a Mac 23" widescreen monitor with no problems. I've used both USB versions and Firewire and both work fine. I've also run them for tens of hours at a stretch with no problems -- when not used they drop into "sleep mode". I suggest reformatting the drive if you use it on a Mac. This will make it compatible with the Mac's file system. It's easy and takes a couple of seconds. Also works with PCs just fine. The published capacity is misleading -- so what's new in the world, eh? If you buy a 320GB drive and are sweating a couple of gig, well... The obvious caveats: Don't bang or drop it -- especially when it's running. Always dismount it in the proper sequence.

I read a lot of reviews and I thank those who came before me for helping me make my purchasing decision. This is not my first ext. hard drive or similar device. Hard drives works similar, with the same purpose to back-up your important files. What makes the different is the back-up program that comes with My Book. I have a couple of WD ext. hard drives without the program. It's a drag-n-drop to back-up

I would like to expand and share what another reviewer have said about the type of format for the benefit of those who are not computer savvy. My Book comes with file system FAT 32 which has a limitation to save a single file up to 4GB only, in order to over come that, the hard drive should be formatted to NTFS. To check this out, click on Start, click on My Computer, click on Local Disk (C) and on the left panel under Detail see what file system your computer have. I did the research for you, just follow it. If you have save any files to your My Book, back it up somewhere. Close any open programs.

To convert file system FAT or FAT32 to NTFS, do the following: First copy this portion to Words or any similar program and print. It is easier to follow. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management. Click the plus sign under Storage, click Disk Management.

On the right panel under Volume, your computer drives will appear and one of them is My Book. Right-click My Book and click Format. Select the options you want, both is just fine and then click OK. When done, open the WD Backup icon on your desk top. You will be presented to select which folder or files to back-up, when done, click OK. Seat back and relax, it will take a while.

Looking to the future, if you have a lot of pictures, music, videos, get the largest hard drive you can afford. With the size of files and programs of today, they will go fast. Whatever gigabyte sizes you choose deduct 20GB and that's the real hard drive capacity. To learn more, read about conversion type base 10 decimal vs. base 2. In closing, the Premium edition is better (two rings) than the standard edition but higher price with extra Google program. That's my personal view.

Update:
With regard is hard drive capacity, we can called it false advertisement. A good example is we can describe how fast we drove our car over the posted speed limit of 55mph by say I was doing 78, but we left out the fact that it was kilometer per hour. Actually it's 55 mph. One reason they can do this is because whatever conversion they used, the measurement is called bytes. To make it sound non-technical decimal numbering system is used(1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes) but in true computer measurement it's 1 MB = 1,024 kilobytes). Therefore, whatever the hard drive size you have in bytes, divide it by those numbers and one will be smaller. If they use apples as measurement, they should describe it as apple, not orange.

As for the hard drive itself, I'm quite impressed. It is very fast and behaves just like another hard drive.

The difference between the Premium Edition and the Essential Edition is about $50 for which you get the WD Backup software. The Backup software needs some significant improvements to compare to other products like Acronis True Image, which just so happens to cost $50. While WDBackup provides scheduled backups, encrypted backups, incremental backups, and advanced backups (select exactly which files/folders to backup), the following deficiencies are not acceptable:

1. Cannot view or edit an existing scheduled backup. You have to delete it and create a new one.

2. Cannot backup networked drives.

If I had to do it again, I would have bought the Essential Edition and purchased a much better backup software package.

While this drive ends up formatted at less than 320GB that's how hard drives work. But it's plenty big and at a great price.

I plugged this baby into my intel Imac and it popped right up. It was formated FAT but a quick trip to disk utilities and it was reformated to Mac journaled. It's very silent, although I did give it only 4 stars becuase there is a bit more vibration from the drive than I expected.

All in all a great product though.

I bought this external drive for my G4 iMac when video editing bogged down its memory. The My Book is very easy to set up and use. I plan to get another for my office.

This hard drive is superb, its extremely fast for an external, especially when I use the firewire connection. The reliability so far has been great and the actual HD design is flawless. Its compact but sturdy and also runs whisper silent. I will definitely buy another if need be.

I received it initially as a gift, having lost info to LaCie and AcomData drives. Installation was very easy and it copied files pretty quickly.

And the best part, it is really quiet. Not quiet as in "I can bearly hear it." When I say quiet I mean quiet as in silent. The sound does not increase very much when it is working hard at saving things. And its compact design it is easy to keep on my desk among items.

I put 4 stars because I haven't had it long enough yet. Not pessimistic, just cautious.

Picked this up here on Amazon from J&R Music for $108 after shipping. I could not be happier. The price was fantastic and the product works great. I reformatted to NTFC because I needed support for 10+GB movie files (there are step-by-step formatting instructions on the Western Digital website for those of you who -- like me -- may be novices). No problems with that. No problems with the USB or Firewire interfaces either. Both my desktop and laptop detected the drive without a hitch.


Buy it at this price before they're gone.

No hassles for me. This drive just works!
First we set it up with USB 2. Worked great. However, we needed to remember to change the computer BIOS to disable booting from USB, or it assumed the WD was a boot disk.
Then we transitioned to Firewire. It has worked perfectly between 2 computers. So far, it has stayed cool and quiet on fairly light use.
I was delightfully surprised at how small and how attractive it is. I run it flat on the table top. Glad to have the metal casing.
Couldn't be happier with it! Looking to get another one for another system.

If I could give it a half star I would. I bought this drive at BB during their labor day special and returned not one but two. The first drive I brought home had both FireWire ports DOA. It worked fine using the USB but I prefer FireWire so back to the store it went. I thought that maybe it was a fluke so I opted for an exchange. The second drive seemed to work fine using the FireWire port so I thought cool, now let me integrate it into my FireWire daisy chain. Oops not a good idea, none of the other drives I attached after the My Book mounted. I thought it was strange so I unmounted the My Book drive unplugged it from my computer and plugged it in all alone using the other FireWire port. No worky. I plugged it in using the first FireWire port I tried and it was good. So the second drive only had one functional FireWire port. Back to the store it went since I need to daisy chain multiple drives and I ended up getting a full refund. That was two out of two drives that were flawed. I am not buying another WD product. Fool me once...