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: For Mac Users: Works well after format.
Summary: 5 Stars
This drive is a solid feeling drive with fast read and write. It is quiet and runs cool with good ventilation around the edge to keep it cool and therefore have a long life. The drive is also quite quiet. The case is rugged, made of a sturdy plastic, and edged with a rubber rim. The package looks nicer than the pictures portray. It also can be stacked with additional units for really massive storage requirements.
If you have a Mac system: the drive should be reformatted to make it compatible with the Mac OS X operating system. To do this open up Disk Utility, a program found in utilities. With the drive plugged in the firewire port you will see the drive. (You might have to press the button on the front of the drive which is in the center of the big blue rings to wake it up if you remove and reattach it.) Select the Partition tabs and then create your partitions. In particular, create at least two partitions. One will be for the Time Machine backup utility. Make it about 20% larger than your computer's drive plus other partitions you want Time Machine to back up. On my system I have a Time Machine partition, a partition to back up work files over the internet, and another volume for scratch mass storage. Time Machine is set up to only back up the main disk. The scratch disk will be used for temporary use in video editing projects.
Setting up this way allows a full partition to be allocated to Time Machine (which time machine needs), have additional volumes as you need, and allows you to decide which of those partitions you want automatic backups done through Time Machine.
Recommended.
Customer Review: EXCELLENT DATA STORAGE!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have three of these: a 320GB Essential (the first one I bought about 2 years ago), a 500GB Premium and (lately) a 750GB Professional. (I avoided the 1TB version due to the universally bad reviews it received). Their different colored lights help me keep my files separate and organized - and always backed up.
I have mostly good things to say about all of them: they are stable, silent enough to operate at home and can be formated to either Fat32 or NTFS to suit one's needs. I formated to NTFS before using it (but make sure to back up the contained files and utilities first).
My only complain is that when more than half-full, it takes some minutes for my PC to verify all the files contained and be able to use them. Utilizing the FireWire only slightly improves the time delay.
Regarding the complains about crashes and data losses: there is of course the possibility of this to happen to any data storage medium. Had I not had a flawless experience with my previous MY BOOKs, these concerns would had prevented me from expanding my...library. However, keep in mind that this is NOT a PORTABLE External HDD. It does not contain a solid-state flash drive, but instead a regular HardDisk Drive. So, moving it from place to place, shaking it (and even carrying it in a backpack) may not be the best way to ensure smooth operation.
On this note, can anyone trust any delivery service or company NOT to shake or drop it during shipment?
RECOMMENDED!
Customer Review: Not reliable-Poor support from WD-Model #WDG1C5000N
Summary: 1 Stars
I ordered 2 of these drives, luckily with the intention of doing mirror backups of the data. The first drive started to have mounting issues within about 1 1/2 months and now the 2nd one is having the same problem (purchased both in late July 2007). I switched from using USB to firwire and the problems still occur.
The drives were originally connected to my G4 dual 1 gig tower. After having problems with the drive mounting I started getting random crashes from my machine (the big grey box telling me to reboot kept coming up). The crashes stopped as soon as I disconnected the drives.
I ordered a replacement drive from Western Digital and it lasted all of about 2 hours before it started having the same problems. I have since sent over 15 emails to Western Digital of which I have only got a couple of responses back.
I contacted WD by phone to see if I could get a upgrade to the drives as I believe these do not have a reliable power source (I had them plugged directly to the wall). I mean the fact that I have 3 of 3 that are bad does not look good for this model. I have had internal WD drives for years with no problems.
In effort to get my data recovered, I moved the drives to my G5 iMac and still had the same problems (not mounting and grey reboot dialog box NOTE: my iMac has never crashed until now).
Customer Review: BUYER BEWARE!
Summary: 1 Stars
Maybe my experience is an isolated incident but here's what happened:
My drive came with a bad Firewire cable - WD knew about a bad batch of cables and told me they'd send a replacement which took a month getting to me because they sent two cables to the wrong address even after I corrected the address w/ customer service. Okay this happens - that's not the real issue.
I bought my own Firewire cable - still had issues w/ "Found New Hardware Wizard - Buttons and Lights" issues every time my PC rebooted. I could access the drive but always got the Wizard. (USB worked fine but I bought it for the Firewire connection.)
Called WD tech support more than a dozen times - they couldn't correct it. After a month, they sent me a replacement drive which was the wrong model so I sent it back.
They sent me a second drive - the wrong model again. Two months after my initial purchase and long after my store return policy expiration WD sends the right drive and I'm still having issues w/ it that WD cannot correct.
I'm planning to use the drive for a music recording project so obviously this would be a lousy choice as stability is my major concern.
Just letting you know this could happen.
Check some other reviews and do some research before purchasing any WD gear.
Customer Review: Substandard Vista Support
Summary: 2 Stars
The drive works, but it's hardly ideal. Nearly a year after Vista was released, the documentation says nothing about Vista, and the website doesn't have much more to say. I can see why. The drive turns on every time I power back up after Vista has gone to sleep, no matter how I turned it off beforehand -- Vista's sleep button or through through the WD tray icon. This is a nuisance; I want it to act like my Firewire Seagate drive, which goes on and off when I want it to. Also, the drive makes much more noise than my older Seagate 320GB drive. I don't care about the built in backup software as I use Vista's backup utilities, but from what I read they don't work under Vista, either. None of these problems are showstoppers for me, but I expected more -- and got less.
Addendum: 5 days later. I finally reached a knowledgeable support fellow on the phone at Western Digital. He really knew what he was talking about. Apparently the problem of the drive powering up every time the computer sleeps or is re-booted isn't unique to Vista; it's by design. The drive itself does go to sleep after about 10 minutes of non-use, so the noise level isn't constant and eventually goes away. I'd still prefer to be able to control how the drive sleeps and wakes up on my own, but I do see how some folks might be perfectly happy with this arrangement.