Customer Reviews

Western Digital WDG2TP10000N My Book Pro Edition II 1 TB USB/Firewire Triple Interface External Hard Drive

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Received WD hard drive this afternoon. Installed Retrospect Express and RAID Manager the software that accompanies this hard drive. Backed up the 39 GB accumulated on the Imac G5's HD... 2.5 Hrs. The fan came on twice while I was in the room with it. The noise level was well within acceptable limits. I have the new hard drive setting about 3' from my right ear.
Western Digital has gotten some bad reviews in the past for loud fan noise. If this hard drive is an example of the current crop of WD HD's, then they have listened to the people's complaints and solved the problem.

The issue of overheating has also been mentioned in past reviews. To satisfy my curiosity I used a digital thermometer to record the temps around the outside of the well ventilated HD case. The range was from 81.1 to 96.2 taken over a two hour period. Most of the time the temperature was in the upper reaches of this range. The fan did not come on during that time period. As a comparison, the IMac G5 ran a maximum of 114.5 for the same period and its fan did not come on either. What this paragraph signifies: GIGO*.
Your estimate is as good as mine. Time will tell if these temperatures are within a range that insures long life to these hard drives.

A side issue is Retrospect Express: After the above backup was completed I had a window showing some execution errors between the originals and the copies. I went through the help menu they provided (CD based).
I will admit that I made a few reading errors; however, the relationship between their suggestions and the windows they provided for action (repair files) were confusing and awkward to use. Eventually ( I won't say how many hours) I stumbled my way to success. Could I reproduce the sequence that was successful? I doubt it. Suggestion: use the toll free support line and let them walk you through the procedures.

*Footnote: GIGO = Garbage in Garbage out

I unfortunately had a very bad experience with my Western Digital MyBook RAID device. One of the two drives failed after around 2 months. That would be understandable, but I've contacted Western Digital two times now trying to figure out how to get a replacement drive and get no response.

Also, the MyBook RAID configuration software is lame at best. The drive was getting intermittent problems for a good 4 weeks before it finally died, but the configuration manager was telling me that everything was fine.

Overall, a poor product.

This drive is what I was looking for as I shopped for a device to use as a Time Machine backup for OS X. The Firewire 800 is what sold me, and I am satisfied with the purchase. I have the drive set up in mirror mode, and it works fine. I've had a few system hangups, but that's due to OS X accessing the drive rather than the drive itself. I installed the software that came with the drive, and it's a simple solution to set the drive in RAID 0 or RAID 1. I did download the updated device manager from WD's web site, but it installed a menu bar icon that really seemed to do nothing, so I restored the original software. There is a firmware update available from WD, but I've read some horror stories about it and have decided to leave the existing firmware in place. If any drive does fail, I'm really happy about the drive being user accessible. Hopefully, that's a feature I won't have to learn more about, though.

Other than that, so far great drive and a great price, too.