WesternDigital 250 GB 7200 RPM Firewire/USB 2.0 Hard Drive (WDXC2500JBRNN)

by Western Digital

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4.7 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009YW7Y
• Item model number: WDXC2500JBRNN
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #140,400 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 28, 2004

Product Description

Western Digitals FireWire/USB 2.0 Combo Special Edition external hard drives make it easy Western Digitals FireWire/USB 2.0 Combo Special Edition external hard drives make it easy to add instant, high-speed storage to your PC or Macintosh. With capacities up to 250 GB and an 8 MB buffer, you can quickly and easily make room to store your growing digital photo album collection, transfer large digital video movies, or back up valuable personal data. Designed with a contemporary, clear, light-up case and a built-in WD Caviar Special Edition 7200 RPM hard drive, this external storage solution combines a high-tech look, with high performance, reliability, and the versatility of dual interfaces.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Works, but it's 230GB not 250GB and glows pink and purple, July 31, 2003

By 

Bob Carpenter (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: WesternDigital 250 GB 7200 RPM Firewire/USB 2.0 Hard Drive (WDXC2500JBRNN) (Personal Computers)

This is simply a standard Western Digital 250GB(*), 7200RPM, 8MB cache hard drive in a cheap plastic case. At this time, this is the largest drive available. I find the 250GB to be misleading, hence the asterisk; Western Digital takes the non-standard convention of 1GB = 1 billion bytes rather than the more standard base 1024 number of 1.07GB (sometimes this interpretation is written "gB" to avoid confusion with "GB"). So I feel cheated on the most distinguishing feature of this drive, it's size.

The nice part about the drive is that I just dropped it in and it worked in Windows XP Pro. I used Firewire at home and USB 1.0 at work. Even with Firewire, it took about 2 and a half hours to fill up the drive with my music backups, which is why I got it. That works out to about 20MB per second, or 160 megabits per second, so it's likely to be faster than your network, but not nearly as fast as an internal drive. And it's surprisingly quiet; the drive is insulated with little rubberish pads between the drive and the case.

I really disliked the "special" case, which is the only one in which it's available. It is transparent, so you can see the fairly low quality construction of the enclosure, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be removable or reusable with another drive in the future. But the worst part of the case is the rather bright glowing LEDs, which are filtered and run through light sticks to emanate a ghostly pink and lavendar that nearly lights up a room at night. This competes with the standard green and red LCDs on the front of the case, to make the whole thing look a little less than inconspicuos.

There's no power switch, so at least with Windows, the drive must be "ejected" before being removed, as explained in the manual. Otherwise, there's a risk of losing any buffered data and causing Windows to send you a bunch of snippy messages about external drives being removed.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Reliability & Ease of Use, November 11, 2004

By 

kakistocracy "kakistocracy" (Omaha, NE United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: WesternDigital 250 GB 7200 RPM Firewire/USB 2.0 Hard Drive (WDXC2500JBRNN) (Personal Computers)

I have had four of these drives for nearly a year. They are quiet and give off little heat. When initially connected via firewire or USB 2.0, Windows XP recognizes them without difficulty, which is not something I can say for other brands I have used. When connected via firewire, they can be chained together since two firewire ports are provided on the back of each unit. There is no on/off switch, which may be inconvenient if you expect to shut down a drive frequently. The neon lights are fairly subdued, even in near darkness. Personally, I think they look good, but that is not the kind of feature I would base a purchase decision on anyway.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best external drive., July 21, 2005

By 

MikeM "MikeM" (Newport News, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: WesternDigital 250 GB 7200 RPM Firewire/USB 2.0 Hard Drive (WDXC2500JBRNN) (Personal Computers)

I bought this drive in August of 2004, never had a single problem.
PROS: Very fast data transfer, hi-tech looking, real plug-N-play, very quiet.
CONS: This drive does get warm to the touch, no power switch on the drive.

I will be buying another WD external drive in the next few days.