Customer Reviews

Western Digital WDG1T5000N My Book Pro Edition 500 GB USB/Firewire Triple Interface External Hard Drive

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

This is my fifth My Book I've purchased in the past few months (and first triple interface Pro model). Haven't had any trouble with any of them. It's very fast and very quiet. And they look amazing when stacked next to each other! The Pro models features a plastic case (like the Essential model) and a rubberized edge (like the Premium model). I haven't tried the backup software that ships with it -- a previous drive I had backed up with Restrospect didn't restore fully when I my laptop crashed. I now opt to use the better Super Duper to clone my drives.

Just a couple notes. When formatted on Mac OS X, you end up with 465GB of storage (which is to be expected with any formatted drive). Also, the photos make out the drive to be iPod-like pearly white, which isn't correct. It's more like metallic plastic -- similar to the aluminum case of Powerbooks/Mac Book Pros.

Last year, I puchased a 250mb Lacie d2. When I found out about all the reports discussing its failure rate, I couldn't afford to take a chance, so I started looking for its replacement. After researching for a couple of weeks, I decided to purchase Western Digital's My Book Pro. It offered the most options and the largest capacity for the money, but more importantly, everything I've read has stated that WD makes very reliable hard drives.

I not only use the external HD for backing up files on my computer, I also store all of my digital music it, since I have more than 100gb of it. Because of this, I use the HD all the time and its reliability is extremely important to me. There might be cheaper options out there, but I am willing to pay a little more for safety.

Pros:
-Very small and light.
-High capacity for the size and price.
-Really great looking... it matches the look of my MacBook Pro (if looks matters to you).
-Clear rubber on all edges makes me feel comfortable to place it anywhere.
-Triple interface allows you to connect to computer in multiple ways and allows for easy daisy-chaining.

Cons:
-Takes longer for hard drive to show up on my desktop than other hard drives I've owned (especially when connected via USB2).
-Small spurts of vibration are emitted every once in a while. Can by annoying depending on where you set it.
-The front lighted gauge doesn't seem to work correctly, even though the software was installed correctly (I haven't done much trouble shooting with this issue, so it might be resolvable)

Overall, I think this is a great product at a fair price. I would recommend it to anyone who needs a reliable external HD with a large capacity drive.

Overall, this hard drive does everything it promised. It's small, quiet, sleek, and holds a ton of data.

Considering that this disk is marketed to both Mac and PC users, it's no surprise that WD went with the lowest common denominator in terms of formatting. The device is formated as Windows FAT32 out of the box, which works on all systems, but is generally not ideal. I have a Mac and I wanted to take advantage of journaling and the HFS+ filesystem. Re-partitioning the drive took less than five minutes using Apple's Disk Utility. Doing this erased everything on the disk, but all the bundled software is also included on a CD.

I have the disk hooked up my Mac mini with firewire 400, and it's great. All the lights work (including the capacity gage), and the drive goes to the sleep whenever the mini does. (Make sure to install the drivers to get this functionality). The only slight annoyance is that the drive takes an unusually long time to mount when plugged into the computer. Whereas an iPod or LaCie drive will show up almost immediately, the My Book takes 30 seconds or more to mount. This doesn't affect performance at all, and it's a small price to pay for all of the other excellent features.

When looking for a 500gb external drive for my Mac PowerBook there were a number of choices. I have used Lacie with good success in the past but the lower price and good exterior design of the My Book prompted me to give it a try. While the drive works well it has one major problem, extreme sensiticity to line voltage. After several "crashes" of the drive I called customer support. They said this drive REQUIRES a dedicated electric outlet (you can't plug it into a strip). It has worked well sense that change but who has many available dedicated outlets near their computer?. It also has a power sensing firewire connection so that it trys to turn on and off every time your computer goes to sleep. This also prompts warnings (improper removal of an external device). Western recommends not using the sleep mode with your computer when the drive is connected. This makes it impractical if you leave you computer on most of the time and like your drives always connects. Not very practical. Also since this drive is designed to work with both Mac and PC you have to reformat the drive to save more than 100gb from a Mac.
Bottom line: it looks well made but it is too finicky for me. I'lll stick with Lacie next time.

Purchased this device for the firewire 800. Worked great right out of the box with the lacie firewire 800 card. Liked the drive so much I purchased a second one. System could not recognize the second drive. Thought it was bad until I disconnected the first drive. Then it worked fine. Tried several variations, both connected to the lacie card, daisy chained both directions, nothing worked. Contacted WD. After 4 emails with them with some suggestions to solve the problem, they finally told me it was an existing problem they are aware of and that there is no fix for it. They suggested using one drive as a firewire 800 and the second one as usb 2.0. It has something to do with a GUID. Seems all the WD triple interface drives use the same address and it makes it impossible to have two drives connected via firewire 400 or firewire 800 at the same time. I could have saved a few dollars if I had known that only usb 2.0 can work with a firewire drive for WD.
For a problem they are aware of it seems they don't seem to be telling people about it. I would have returned the units, but I had the first one for a few weeks and it was a month by the time WD told me it was 'A known issue'. And with over 400gb each of data stored on them I didn't want to take the time to back it up somewhere else. Turned this one over to PCWorld and they sent it to their On Your Side editor. I think it should be on the Consumer Watch column.
So if you get one be aware it will be the only firewire drive you can use. I read that the Maxtor drives don't have this problem. Try them instead.

This is my 6th firewire drive, and my 2nd firewire 800 drive. Of all the drives I now own, this is the most quiet and quickest drive to date. This drive has been tasked with the daily backup duties for a recording studio and has performed without complaint. For the price today there is not a better deal out there for 500GB of quick storage.

I'm a Mac user and own two of these drives and one 500GB My Book Premium ES. I like the drives, and they have all worked well for me individually. Unfortunately, unlike the claim in the Product Description, I have not been able to daisy-chain any of my drives together or these drives with drives from other makers; in fact, when I try to daisy-chain with these drives, my Mac won't recognize any of them at all! After researching this issue, I discovered that the problem seems to be some sort of conflicting IDs with these drives. Apparently, Western Digital is aware of the problem, but has not yet issued any kind of fix (and doesn't even mention it at all on their Support pages).

So, if you are a Mac user considering buying this drive and don't care about daisy-chaining, then this may be the drive for you. If you think that you'd want to daisy-chain with these drives, then you should check out this issue.

This is a great drive and met all my expectations apart from one thing.

I bought two identical drives for backing up one to the other.
Daisy chaining them together was what I expected to do, but it just won't work. What did work however, is connecting the drives to the computer individually. In my case, one drive with Firewire and one with USB. This is inconvenient and, more importantly, very slow transfer.

The response from Western Digital Customer support regarding my problem:
"You have a known issue and unfortunately, we have no fix. I recommend you use one drive with USB and the other with FireWire."

Not great. You might wanna consider this if you plan to use them the way I intended to.

First, I am not affiliated with WD or Amazon. Just a happy user. Amazon sent follow-up mail asking me to review my purchase, and I'm so satisfied that I did it.

This WD My Book Pro 500GB drive is my third WD USB drive in the past 1.5 years. They "just do it". I have had nothing but success with them, while I've had two other USB drives fail.

I am a high-end technical user and I push this and all of my drives hard. I do development of large-scale data systems that use this USB drive as the data platform and I am very happy with its reliability and response. I have several 20-50GB images that perform well and stay consistent on this drive.

I admit that I don't use any of the "one touch" backup features or ease of use things, so I don't know how they stack up. In fact the included Retrospect backup utility is designed to not work on Windows 2003 Server, so I guess that's a minor negative. But for raw performance and reliabilty, I can tell you that I am very happy. Check out other reviews for analysis of the creature comforts.

I love this harddrive. Triple interface, including FireWire 800 is lightning fast. The included EMC software is much better than the Google backup included with 500GB premium drive.