HARD DRIVE, 500GB MYBOOK COMBO EXT
by WESTERN DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of HARD DRIVE, 500GB MYBOOK COMBO EXT
Customer Review: So far so good...
Summary: 5 Stars
My first hard drive was a 20MB mech I installed in a homebuilt 20MHz 80386 box. It could hold every floppy I owned. Wow! At that time we talked about terabyte devices holding the Library of Congress. Now, terabyte storage is well within reach for the average user. How times have changed.
I'm happy with the "WD My Book" and haven't had any problems so far. It connected easily to my laptop and desktop. The case is attractive and the front LED is surprisingly informative. The book-oid design actually works, and the rubber feet (integrated into the "cover" of the book) keep it from sliding around. For best performance use Firewire or USB 2.0! I'm limited to USB 1.0 on one box and it's actually slower than my network. In any case, if you're backing up your big ol' 120GB drive expect to run some overnite file copy sessions. I plan to use it for a media library, but haven't had time to read the blogs on the latest Linux Media Server release.
Customer Review: Won't awaken after PowerMac G5 sleeps
Summary: 2 Stars
The drive has one important problem. When a PowerMac G5 goes to sleep the drive, connected by Firewire, loses contact. When the Mac wakes a dialog box appears saying that a device has been improperly removed. Since there is no on-off switch on the drive, it is necessary to unplug-replug it. (It doesn't appear to have this problem when connected by USB.) Western Digital does not seem to have implemented Firewire so that it is wholly compatible with Apple products.
Update: Other people are reporting sleep problems with these drives, but resetting the PMU on the Mac seems to have fixed it for me. However, the drive too frequently goes to sleep, and there is no way to control this. It is annoying waiting for the drive to waken.
Second update: The drive problem has resurfaced with Apple's update to 10.4.9. I'm also having fatal problems with Western Digital's Passport drive. Beware this company's current drives with Macs.
Customer Review: The child of this one 1TB not a happy one
Summary: 2 Stars
After reading good things here, I bought the 1TB version. Yes easy to install, copy the provided progrmas to a backup CD and reformat to ntsf. But then the problems start, especially with Vista. WD warns that their WD start software has to be restarted due to Vista stopping it, no problems here. Set up your back-up using their software, ok easy to do. Frist backup is good. NOW you come back a day later, the drive is off line, autobackup is waiting on the drive to be online. You have to MANUALLY bring the drive back up, the supplied WD software grabs 1/2 of your ram, and starts to verify what is on the drive. YOUR PC starts to crawl even tho the setting is set to let other programs run first, it does not release the memory, in my case 1GB ram. I find that autoback up never works because the drive is never active when it needs to run, like at night. STAY away from this VERSION WD is misleading the public with the 1TB drive and software!Customer Review: YOU WILL BE SORRY IF YOU BUY WD PRODUCTS!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
When I started searching for a high capacity hard drive this was one of toppers in my list. I decided to go for it after reading great reviews on Amazon. I was extremely happy when I received it as it was my first 500G drive. It was fine for the first six months, it started acting up after that. It would not be recognizable unless I reboot my computer and then finally died on me on one fine day!
Just imagine if I SUCK at my job, how would I be able feed my family?!?!? You would think you rely on a company which ONLY specializes in hard drives. How could you let us down? That means you REALLY SUCK at your day job! Thankfully I have been using computers long enough to understand the risk and make multiple backups. But think of those who believe in companies like these.
Hey if you think about it, it is better for the company isn't it? One HD lost is one HD bought! Pathetic!!!
Go for IOMEGA or LACIE instead.
Customer Review: Don't Bother.
Summary: 1 Stars
A year ago, I bought my first 500gb My Book. I was so happy with it I bought two more for video/picture/sound storage. Three months ago, the first drive failed and would not spin up, just made a repeated clicking noise. It was still under warranty and Western Digital support went back and forth with me about the issues I was having until the warranty expired, then they failed to help me saying the warranty was void! They failed to offer any help besides a referral to a service I could use to get the data off the drive AT MY EXPENSE! Within the three months, the other two drives have failed, the most recent one this week. The second refuses to let XP access it. If I try on another machine the drive gives me multiple errors. The third I get an error saying data can't be transferred. Meanwhile, other external drives (Seagate, all of them) work just fine. I will never buy another Western Digital product as long as I live.