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,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of HARD DRIVE, 500GB MYBOOK COMBO EXT
Customer Review: No More Western Digital For Me
Summary: 2 Stars
I've had two Western Digital My Book Premium 500GB drives connected via Firewire to my Mac Book Pro for a few years now, and they've given me more trouble than any other current piece of equipment.
Actually, I don't think it's the mechanics of the drives themselves, but rather the company, its philosophy, and its software.
The drives came with almost no documentation. It seemed to me that the attitude of the geniuses at Western Digital was: "We've engineered this so well that it works all by itself! It will read your mind and do what you want it to do!"
Fair enough. My Macintosh usually works that way--intuitive. Problem is, Western Digital is not Apple.
First problem: there is a circular button on the front of the drive, but no info on what it is, or does. On-off? It has blue lights around it that glow, or stay on. What do these signals mean? If I press or hold the button nothing happens. If I want to power the drive down, I have to---get this---reach around to the back of the drive and UNPLUG IT! Even after unplugging, the blue lights glow. What is this, 1985?
The drive worked often enough at first, showing up on the desktop often enough to be useful, so I bought another WD drive, only to find that I could not get both drives to appear on the desktop at the same time. It was always one drive or the other, never both. After days of head-banging and Internet searching, I finally discovered that every Western Digital My Book Premium uses the same identifier. My Mac was not seeing two drives because they had identical identifiers. Two drives, but only one number. Wow! Geniuses at work! Western Digital's engineers had decided that no one would ever buy and connect two of their drives! I wish they had been right!
There was a software patch on the WD website, but it didn't work.
Eventually, they issued a patch that seemed to work, but now, several years into use, I'm again having trouble with the drives not showing up. I reboot. I unplug and re-plug. I try every permutation. I might as well sacrifice a beast and explore its entrails. I'd probably get more info about the problem that way.
Western Digital seems to be a company that produces good hardware, but lousy software, and even worse customer support. They're too smart for my own good. I can't trust my back-ups to such people.
Customer Review: Unbelievably Unstable
Summary: 1 Stars
I have owned and loved Western Digital products for many years. Unfortunately, they should have remained in the IDE and EIDE market and stayed out of the USB market, at least until they figured out how USB works.
I installed this product several weeks back and was hoping I could make the quirks, kinks, and overall instabilities go away, since I've been a huge Western Digital fan for many years. Alas, this is not possible. And my e-mails on their support site go unanswered. I simply get automatic e-mails, telling me that I need to try solutions that I've already tried...several times.
I've downloaded and updated the latest of every piece of software and every driver available and unfortunately, this wonderfully huge hard drive, that I would love to depend on, simply goes into la-la land at least once a day. At first, it appears in Windows Explorer to be there, but clicking on this drive will do little more than attempt to make me believe there is nothing on it, even though I have put over 100 GB of files onto it. That is, the content portion of the Explorer is simply blank. I reboot countless times to no avail. When I reboot, the drive simply shows the same results -- no data at all -- or the drive doesn't appear at all. When it doesn't appear in Explorer at all, I go into the Device Manager to find an "Unknown device". Uninstalling it and re-installing does little more than cause more frustration.
I know I should probably try the Firewire interface. However, I spent a lot of money to buy this drive; buying more hardware to, hopefully, simply satiate the needs of this particular piece of hardware, doesn't make fiscal sense to me.
I'm sorry, Western Digital, to give you a bad review, but please please please figure out how USB interfaces function before you produce another drive available and tarnish your good name any further. At this time, I can't even get my data off of your drive and I won't return it until I figure out how to do so. I will probably have to spend more money to figure out how to erase the information, simply so I can return it. We depend on companies like you to hold our valuable, personal information. This experience has been a very sour, disappointing let-down.
Customer Review: Worthless drive----when in the case.
Summary: 1 Stars
I've had my drive for two years, always has worked great. I even tote it around the country so I'll have my file system with me. About a month ago the drive suddenly stopped connecting via USB. The drive appeared, but all folders were empty. By coaxing the drive... or voodoo magic... quite frankly just jostling the usb cord in the casing, I managed to get the files off, though they would occasionally reappear as good as new. The files are still there, I know, but half the time inaccessible, and eventually the drive stopped being recognized altogether.
Now I am going to try taking the drive out of the casing (who cares now about warranty, since it only lasts ONE YEAR) and mounting it, which I have heard is very successful for other users who want to recycle a dead MyBook (a common occurance?--mounting the drive internally may circumvent some of the known problems with the USB and Firewire control board copping out. My feeling is that the files are still on the drive, still intact, but the casements which are extremely poorly made and fail.
Western Digital should stick to internal drives until they can learn how to make a lasting USB product with a SATA drive ---- I have a WD Passport that still works brilliantly, so I have a feeling these myBook casings are the real culprit. Which is hilarious, because the drives have a 3-5 year warranty if they are NOT in a case provided by WD, but when you buy the package altogether the warranty is mysteriously reduced to a year. Avoid myBook at all costs if your data is important to you... which we must assume it is, since these are made as backup systems. Hah.
To those who still have this drive (and gave a five star review).... please just make sure you are saving your data somewhere in addition to your myBook, or you may be coming back here and editing your opinion in a few months or a year!! To those who have not had the misfortune (idiocy?) of paying premium for junk, seek other brands, Western Digital has no pity for your file losses and will merely refer you to data recovery systems raking in $[...] a pop... which actually sounds a bit like fraud, to me, but I digress.
Customer Review: The best at this price range... or higher
Summary: 4 Stars
I've gone through a lot of hard-drives in the past few years. I tend to burn them out pretty quickly. I transfer every movie I have to them, so All I have to carry around is tiny hard-drive, instead of 500 DVDs. They also look better then a rack of messed up DVDs laying next to your TV.
A few years ago I converted all my CDs to MP3, and then after a disgruntled roommate swapped a bunch of DVDs with the wrong boxes before leaving, I figured it was time to go Digital with my movies as well.
Anyway... When dealing with lots of video (stuff I shoot, stuff I rip from my DVDs, stuff I Edit for Friends in Movie Production) and video storage, You need something that is reliable. I had the iOmega Black Drives for a while, but they are flakey, do not have a hard shut off button, and loose data (sometimes). But they were the best I could find for the price. Must people assume they will pay about $.50 - $1 per GB. I like the companies who try to push that bottom line, and still give you a good product.
Western Digital has been reliable. I have taken it on several trips (plane, auto, sent in the mail) and it holds up. Never had a problem with them. They work with PC and Mac, and have a 500GB storage for under $250. It's small, looks cool, are linkable, and have a very quite fan motor. They go to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity, and power on if plugged into a computer.
I constantly add, delete, and transfer data on these things, and have had no corruption as of yet.
Right now, I have 3 500GB Western Digital My Books. I am waiting for the 1TB book to get smaller, then I pick one of those up as well. I am SO happy with these things. I don't think I will ever go back to iOmega.
The one problem I run into is the ocational non-detection when dasy-chained. The second or third drive will not show up on your desk top every time. And they will go to sleep, but not shut down on their own if dasy-chained. If you are using just one, it will always be detected, and will shut down if not used for 20 minutes. Even the Blue light will shut off.
I still love them, and will continue to buy more.
Customer Review: Please Read, Warning
Summary: 1 Stars
I just want to write and let the world know what kind of company this is. I have owned 3 Western digital (WD) hard drives. All 3 have not lasted longer then 2 years, the most recent has only lasted 1 yr.. 4 months. But the kicker of this situation is the external hard drive WD make have a warranty of 1 year. but the internal Hard drives that are inside the units have a 3-5 year warranty. So I called WD because the hard drive inside the case went bad. So this is how the call went.
The phone rang, and I got contacted to someone over sea's and could barely speak english. I told him my problem and he said sorry it's out of warranty and there is nothing he could do. So i said the hard drive inside the unit has a 3 year warranty. he said well you bought the external hard drive so you only get a 1 year warranty. I was going no where with him so I asked to speak to a manager.
Mind you it's bad enough I lost all my info, but now I couldn't get a replacement. so the manager comes on and says there is nothing he can do. I said to him because I buy the complete package the WD makes I get punished. and if i went out and bought a internal hard drive and put it in a case i'd get a 3-5 year warranty? he responded back, yea. I said dont you think this is a little unfair? and he said sorry. So then trying to be slick I said ok so what if I take the Hard drive out will i get the 3-5 year warranty? he said no you'll void the warranty because they marry the case and the hard drive as 1 unit so they know the hard drive came out of it. But his way of solving the situation he said is they offer a service to recover the data, I asked how much does that cost. he said about $3k. I asked to talk to his manager and he sad it would take 48 hours for them to call me back. (still waiting)
Long story short, if you are interested in buying a western digital I recommend buying a internal hard drive and putting it in a case which are very cheap. Just search external hard drive case, and tons will pop up. by doing this you'll get a real warranty.
I hope this helps others from getting screwed. Good luck