Customer Reviews

Western Digital WDG1T7500N My Book Pro Edition 750 GB USB/Firewire Triple Interface External Hard Drive

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I have Seagate 750GB FreeAgent drive, but since I bought my MacBook (which has FireWire 800 port) I wanted to have same interface on my external HDD for some extra transfer speed. After reading many reviews I chose this drive - as it seemed to be designed for Mac and I was hoping that it will be done with the same attention to detail as Mac is. However as of now - after having both the WD and the Seagate on my desk I can clearly say that WD is far behind in terms of quality of materials, attention to detail and not the least - noise! Although in many reviews people say it is not a noisy disk, having it running next to Seagate it is much more noisy. Still, keep in mind that as other reviewers noted - this model of WD is quite / not noisy as majority of other external drives with bigger capacity. Still Seagate is less noisy compared to WD, so if noise is a factor for you - you might take this into account.

Another point is that the quality of the material is somehow "cheap" :( Everything is plastic (and not the best looking one, although it looks quite good on the net picture). Just for comparison - the Seagate drive has solid / metal casing, and the quality of materials is a state-of-the-art, compared to this one. Again - there is nothing wrong with the WD drive, it is just not as sophisticated and "state-of-the-art"-ish as you would expect, assuming it was designed to go with your Mac.


The Good:
* Interfaces - it has FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0;
* Software (?) - Comes with backup software for both Mac & Win, however I can not comment on this as I use Apple's Time Machine. (Giving it just as comparison with Seagate, which comes with backup software only for Windows)

The Bad:
* Noisy (compared to Seagate's competitor model)
* Feel of quality / materials being used

I have three of these: a 320GB Essential (the first one I bought about 2 years ago), a 500GB Premium and (lately) a 750GB Professional. (I avoided the 1TB version due to the universally bad reviews it received). Their different colored lights help me keep my files separate and organized - and always backed up.

I have mostly good things to say about all of them: they are stable, silent enough to operate at home and can be formated to either Fat32 or NTFS to suit one's needs. I formated to NTFS before using it (but make sure to back up the contained files and utilities first).

My only complain is that when more than half-full, it takes some minutes for my PC to verify all the files contained and be able to use them. Utilizing the FireWire only slightly improves the time delay.

Regarding the complains about crashes and data losses: there is of course the possibility of this to happen to any data storage medium. Had I not had a flawless experience with my previous MY BOOKs, these concerns would had prevented me from expanding my...library. However, keep in mind that this is NOT a PORTABLE External HDD. It does not contain a solid-state flash drive, but instead a regular HardDisk Drive. So, moving it from place to place, shaking it (and even carrying it in a backpack) may not be the best way to ensure smooth operation.
On this note, can anyone trust any delivery service or company NOT to shake or drop it during shipment?

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