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 issues out of the box....of course, time will tell....
Summary: 1 Stars
Originally rated as 5-stars.
This unit bricked after 17 months of use.
Unsatisfactory...period.
Two stars for the 17 months life span.
Details from before it stopped working follow:
The ever-increasing size of full resolution digital photographs have rapidly expanded my external storage requirements. This device replaced a 2 year-old 200 GB WD external drive that performed flawlessly (and was never powered off) for over two years.
Obviously the test of a hard drive comes over time, and I've just started using this....but here's the "out of the box" experience:
-Under a recent install of Windows XP SP2, it was immediately recognized by the OS and assigned a drive letter.
-I copied the included utilities and backup software to my desktop, and did a full format from FAT32 to NTFS. This was to accommodate some video files greater than 4 GB in size.
-After reformatting, I moved the included Google desktop, backup software and "power button/capacity gauge LED" back to the new WD HD.
-The included backup software, EMC Retrospect HD v 2 is OK. I was already using a different program that I'm already familiar with [...] "Second Copy 2000", and that I think SC 2000 has a slightly better interface. But: the important thing is to use something!
-The Premium edition's capacity gauge is cute, but of course your OS is going to tell you how much free space you have anyway...
-The drive is very quiet, and I love that it powers off and on with the PC.
WD has a good reputation for hard drives. Any vendor can sell you a lemon though.
Works just fine off of a power strip too...
100-day update (May 26)
This drive handles various daily and weekly backups (full and differential) flawlessly. Excellent value for the price.
Customer Review: Attractive enclosure, some issues
Summary: 3 Stars
I own a 250GB WD Dual Option drive which has worked well for me over two years so when I needed more space for backups I purchase this WD 500GB My Book Premium Edition. I reformatted it immediately to NTFS and did not let the autorun installer install its software. Using the USB port, the My Book has worked fine on every computer the Dual Option did (8 Win2k and WinXP PCs) except one WinXP machine, which says it does not recognize the drive. I'm still debugging that problem, and I'm hesitant to blame the My Book at this time [later edit: this turned out to be a cable issue]. The Firewire worked fine on the one WinXP machine I tried.
The My Book PE enclosure is quite nice. The finish is matte, which resists fingerprints. The edge (the book's "cover") is rubber so whichever way you set it, it's sitting on rubber so less noise is transferred to the tabletop and the drive is less likely to slide around. The LED ring is also a power button so you can turn the drive off completely if you'd like, although this operation does require holding the button with some force [edit on June 25, 2008: Whatever was behind the button requiring this force finally broke. The button is now pushed in about 2mm and isn't parallel with the surface but it and the LEDs still work and it is easier to operate.]. So, compared to the budget My Books I've seen lately with the same capacity, the extra $50 for the Premium Edition does give you a lot (Firewire, matte finish, rubber, power button).
This drive makes more seek noise while idle than when I'm backing up to it. Luckily the drive spins down after being idle for 10 or so minutes. I've looked for answers to the seek noise issue, and the unrecognized issue on Western Digital's forum but their forum is more a waste of time than a valuable resource. I'm baffled as to why they host it.
Customer Review: Great Short Term Storage
Summary: 1 Stars
My first and last WD product.
It worked great out of the box, no setup--plug and play.
It started being unstable after a few months. Sometimes would fail to mount, then started 'losing' files.
By six months it would unmount spontaneously and erratically--would disappear from the desktop. Turning it off and on would bring it back. A few months later it started making screeching noise and before I could order a replacement and transfer 400+ Gigs of files it died.
Will not mount even with Disk Utility or Disk Warrior. Recovery software such as Data Rescue cannot find catalog so can only recover fragments of files.
In other words I have 400 gigs of data that is intact but inaccessible due to a catalog error on the drive.
No information I can find has been able to tell me where to look for the catalog info on the drive.
WD said that they would replace the drive. Whoopee! What about my data.
We are constantly reminded to back up our data and to digitize our precious photos and old record albums. When the data is as fragile as it was on this HD I have now learned that digitizing precious data is the least secure way to keep it.
I still have the WD drive in a box hoping that someday I will figure out how to recover the 400+ gigs that may or may not still be hiding in those magnetic domains on the disks.
It is safe to say that I will never by a WD drive again. I'm sticking with Iomega, Seagate, and Hitachi. They have not let me down yet, but I advise anyone to back up your precious data as many places as you can afford. Multiple redundancy is the only safe data storage.
Oh, and keep those old record albums even after you digitize them if you care about the music.
Customer Review: Western Digital: Horrible Customer Support
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased this drive in March 2007. The drive itself worked fine, but with two problems: 1) The "fuel guage" does not really perform as advertised, and I was not sure at the time if this was a flaw with my particular drive or not, and 2) My computer (running XP) would not recognize the drive using the Firewire connection; it worked fine using USB. Neither was a huge deal for me, but I wanted to talk to WD to see what I could do about it.
Now, almost one year later, I have still not been able to talk to anyone at WD. I have spent numerous afternoons on the phone on perma-hold, usually for 45 minutes to an hour at a time, waiting to talk to a representative. I eventually give up and try again when I have time. I have also filed a support ticket through their website (don't get me started about the website), which to date has never been answered. My out of box warranty will expire shortly, and then I guess it won't be an issue any longer.
If it all works like it should, this may well be a good drive for the money, but if you have any kind of problem with it, you might as well forget about getting anything resolved through WD. For that reason alone, I'd recommend staying away.
UPDATE: I was eventually able to return the drive to WD, and they replaced it with a refurbished drive. The refurbished drive arrived with the outer case showing scratches, gouges, and significant general wear. I don't know what this means for the product inside or how long the drive will last, but I am incredibly dissatisfied with how Western Digital took care of this. I bought a brand new drive that had some problems, and after battling with them to get warranty service, they replaced it with something that looks like it's been run over by a truck.
Customer Review: Unreliable piece of trash!!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
Western Digital WDG1C5000N My Book Premium Edition 500 GB USB 2.0/Firewire External Hard Drive
I just got mine today. I have spent the last 3.5 hours trying to back up my computer. I am so disappointed! I hooked it up and half way through it crashes. I followed the directions to the letter. The help is less than helpful. The website is also less than helpful. It backed up less than half of my data then crashed. I tried all the "help tips online" and none of them worked. I usually don't have too many problems with computers and making them work with miscellaneous products.
I have tried to back it up about four times and it keeps disconnecting from my computer for no reason. The software that comes with this piece of junk is just as bad. No where in the paperwork did it say that I had to format my new hard drive. It went thru the entire process of "backing" up my hard drive. Then when I went to look for the data it wasn't there, NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP. Can you say frustrating? So I figure out that I need to format it. I do and that and proceed to back up my information. That was when it starts disconnecting randomly while backing up and I start getting error messages.
For a product that is supposed to work right out of the box it didn't. I am going to be returing mine in the morning. I will find something else that will actually work as advertised (right out of the box).
DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!!! Unless you like being frustrated for hours on end. Please excuse any spelling or grammer errors, I'm too mad to worry about that right now.