Western Digital - 1Tb 7200 Rpm 16Mb Ext Hdd
by Western Digital
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List Price: Our Price: $121.54 You Save: $148.45 (55%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital - 1Tb 7200 Rpm 16Mb Ext Hdd
Customer Review: Plug and Play External Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
I currently have 2 terabytes of storage, 6 do-it-yourself "DIY" external drives housing various sized hard drives, and a MyBook. This review compares their performance. All drives are currently on-line connected to a 7 port USB hub.
In the Box
A black box housing the drive, a brick power supply, and a USB cable are key items. 2 instruction sheets, and a warranty card complete the kit. The My Book is about the size of a bible one finds in hotel and motel rooms.
The drive case, power and cables leave a very clean design. All my DIY drives comes with stands, awkward sized power supplies and cable placements that are not well thought through.
Installation
Simple: Plug the USB cable into the MyBook, and into your PC USB port. Plug in the power supply to AC and the MyBook.
The MyBook has no power switch, and turns itself on/off if the USB port is powered, when the PC is on.
The drive was recognized by WinXPSP2 without a hitch, and re-formatting the drive to NTFS was easy using WinXP built in disk utilities. The drive ships with FAT32 format, which is less desirable if NTFS can be supported. I backuped the shipped "trial" utilities inside the MyBook in case they were useful; they were not, and it was not clear were it was stored: C:\Program Files\Western Digital. I used Western Digital's disk utilities that shipped with my other drives to check partitions and drive status. These programs can also be downloaded free from Western Digital's web site.
Break-in
The drive ran over 1 week for 24/7 for a burn in, and has done a 24 hour long disk encryption format routine. it is currently a month old running 16 hours/day. Its surprisingly silent, and runs cooler than my DIY drives.
USB 2.0 Speed
It has a transfer rate of 10MB/sec. This is not the raw transfer rate, but includes delay from encryption I use. This is about 6x slower than the maximum USB transfer speed of 60 MB/sec but is the same rate as my other DIY drives.
Conclusion:
Excellent bang for buck. The cost to build a DIY external drive today may often be more than buying a pre-made external drive. USB 2.0 transfer speeds suggests the MyBook drive is a decent speed drive. The auto on/off feature is very helpful, given most DIY kits require manual power-down.
Note, there are a number of complaints about the higher end MyBook drives. The simple electronics of the low end 'Essential Edition' maybe the saving grace to this drive's performance, keep this in mind as the display boxes look the same. Further, all drives can malfunction, so a burn-in is a must to insure your drive is not among the few bad eggs.
Customer Review: Perfect for use with Dish Network DVR 722 receiver
Summary: 5 Stars
This Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB drive deserves every one of those 5 stars. I have used this drive for 2 purposes: One for the usual purpose of backing up information from a computer and also as an external hard drive extension for the Dish Network DVR 722 receiver. With both of these uses, it worked flawlessly.
I am going to focus on how it works with the Dish Network DVR because more and more people are buying external hard drives for this purpose and not many (if any) had reviewed this particular size when I purchased mine a month ago so I was unsure of how it would work. Dish Network states that the maximum external drive size that will work with their receivers is 750GB. That is typically true, except in the case of this Western Digital My Book. The reason for that is simply because most 1TB drives actually have 2 drives within one case. The MyBook only pulls from one drive inside of its case that does hold 1TB. The DVRs can not recognize 2 drives at one time, hence the reason anything that uses such technology isn't usable. I have now been using this My Book 1TB drive with the DVR for over a month and I have had zero problems sending recordings to the hard drive or from the hard drive back to the DVR. You can also access your recordings on the hard drive and play them from there, delete them or do anything with them that you would normally do on your Dish Network receiver. You will notice a very slight delay when accessing recordings on the drive due to the fact that it has to process information much like a hard drive on a PC would. Hooking this drive up to your receiver and getting it to work is very straightforward and simple. All you do is connect the USB 2.0 cable into the back of the hard drive and then into the back of your receiver. You will be prompted on screen to setup your new storage device and from there you just follow directions. Do keep in mind for those of you interested in expanding your DVR storage and purchasing this external drive that there will be a one time fee with Dish for $39.99 to activate service allowing you to use such storage.
This drive, whether you're using it for your PC, Linux, Mac or your DVR is extremely reliable, quiet and fairly quick at processing information. I highly recommend this drive to anyone who is considering it! I hope this review helps you.
***Update*** I have now been using this external hard drive for over a year and it still works flawlessly. I am so thankful I made this purchase since a couple of the Dish Network DVRs have failed but I had backed up any recordings that were important to me on the MyBook so nothing meaningful was lost. I could not recommend this purchase highly enough.
Customer Review: Great, Classy Drive. Bad Ju-Ju mimeo Software
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me preface this review by stating that I have been using computers at work and at home since 1986, so am no beginner. My Western Digital 80GB External Hard Drive--purchased in 2003--was acting a bit wonky lately (red activity light going on frequently, at random, locking up certain programs), so I queried Western Digital Support, and they said it may be going out, and to definitely BackUp my Data. I chose the WD My Book 1Tb because it had plenty of room, was aesthetically pleasing, and had good reviews. After a week of heavy usage I can report that the drive is Super--Treatment is nicely done, and it is very quiet. Some people don't like the Blue Light, but it is the same Blue color that is inside my SONY 400 DVD Changer, so I am used to it, and actually find it calming.
Now, for the Bad Ju-Ju mimeo Software. I installed it the first day, and liked it. Not much slowing of the Computer operation, and it seemed to work as advertised. I liked how it worked in the background, and was easy to set up. That was last week. Yesterday, after six day's usage I opened Quicken and my last two weeks of activity had disappeared. I had to re-enter it all again. What a hassle. I also printed a check and the printing was very small. I checked my settings, and they had not changed. The next time I opened Quicken it would not open at all. I removed it from the mimeo AutoSync Program, opened it from inner Quicken backup files, and all was well again. I just wasted a frustrating hour repairing a program that had given me no problems in 23 years of usage and many variations. So mimeo AutoSync was definitely to blame. Today I tried to open an important Spreadsheet that I have had for 6 years, and Windows said it no longer existed. It didn't. Poof! It just disappeared. It wasn't among the program's files, and it wasn't in the mimeo BackUp folder either. It was in both places yesterday. Today...Gone. Searches of all drives could not find it. I checked all my other Spreadsheets and an even larger and more important Spreadsheet was also gone. Poof! I cannot afford to lose data like this. I spent many hours rebuilding those two spreadsheets, and I know it was the mimeo Software that did it. I told them so when I uninstalled both programs, and it queried me on their site. All is smooth again with my computer, and I will be researching other BackUp Software.
In short, the My Book 1Tb USB Hard Drive is a beautiful Dream to behold, but the mimeo AutoBackup and AutoSync programs are Nightmares to avoid. Buy this Drive--you won't be sorry. Use the mimeo Software at your own risk.
Cheers,
DannyOh
Customer Review: This has been way better than my other hard drives
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought a 2TB version of this at my local Best Buy about 8 months ago and I am very happy with my purchase. For one, I have never installed any of the software on it (and I've actually deleted the folders containing that software) and it works basically like a plug and play. It ejects fine (unless I have Windows Media Player open, as my library is based from the hard drive, in which case I have to restart my computer...minor issue), it works well and it does exactly what I want it to do.
Pros:
*Works without the software that's included
*In 8 months I've never had a problem adding or deleting anything
*Works with Vista, XP and 7 (so far that's all I've tested)
*My favorite thing: It's formatted as Fat32. That means that any movie, t.v. show, music or photo that put on there is viewable/listenable through an X-Box 360 or a PS3 via connection through a USB port on the system. It even plugs into my parent's HDTV and you can watch things from it. I really like how compatible it is.
Cons:
*The unit is pretty heavy for a hard drive but the outer case is made of plastic. I don't feel like this hard drive would take traveling well. However, I do not intend on traveling so it's perfect for me.
*It's hard to keep clean as dust will make it into the vents on the top. I use an air duster to get in there but I know eventually it'll cake so bad I won't be able to clean. I hope this doesn't mess with the electronics inside.
As for the firmware, I haven't had any problem with it so far and my laptop has run the gambit from XP to 7. I have had no freezing problems, ejection problems, it only created one drive slot in My Computer and the unit stays relatively cool. It gets a little warm if you leave it running and working for awhile (I can watch about 3 hours worth of t.v. streaming videos from the X-Box before it gets warm enough for me to want to turn it off) but it's never been alarmingly hot, even after 8-9 hours of continued usage.
If you're looking for a simple back up hard drive that's compatible with all things Windows (I haven't tested on a Mac yet so I cannot judge there) that's reliable and worth the money, I'd get this item. I've got the 2TB which isn't available here on Amazon but if you need one that big, I'd suggesting finding one of these that is that big. I've got over 1TB of movies, music and t.v. shows and I feel safe and secure in leaving them on this hard drive (although don't get me wrong, I do keep a back-up :D ).
Customer Review: Very Satisfied
Summary: 5 Stars
Hello!
Okay. I've had this external drive for 6-7 months. I have had absolutely no problems with it. What needs to be addressed is responses to the negative reviews:
This is NOT a primary drive, external or not. It is a backup drive. If a consumer uses an external drive as their primary storage, they are asking for problems. Primary storage should be on your internal drives -- everything important should be on your computer, not an external drive. If your computer's HDD isn't big enough to hold all your data, your first step needs to be to buy a bigger HDD, or a second HDD, for your computer. All of your files, pictures, videos, etc. should be stored on your computer.
Then buy this 1TB drive and use it to back up your computer. Not your files, but your entire computer. Do not use the provided software ... rather, purchase a third-party backup program. Then back up your entire system to the external drive, and set it to back-up regularly.
For example: My system has 750GB of hard drive space (with two hard drives). EVERYTHING is on my system. Every night at 12:01AM, my system backs up to the external drive. I use Acronis True Image software for this. I must repeat, do NOT use the external drive as a primary storage system; all external drives should be considered to be secondary (i.e., backup).
Now, witness: one of the primary hard drives in my computer failed. I bought a new hard drive, and installed it. Then I performed a full system restore from the external drive. System was then fully functional with not a single file lost. They key here is that your computer and its drives are the primary storage. The external drive is for full / incremental / differential backup. This is called redundancy, which is critical to data preservation.
This drive saved me and all my data.
Just some words to the wise.