1TB 7200RPM 16MB Ext HDD
by Western Digital
(Click here)
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: Western DigitalAudio: English (Original Language)
Format: CD
Platform: Mac
Model: WDH1Q10000N
Product features:
- This drive is formatted and the pre-loaded software is designed for a Macintosh operating system
- Hitachi HUA721010KLA330 1000GB Hard Drive
- Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS
- LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/FireWire 800 Desktop External Hard Drive 301199U
- Case Logic HDC-1 Medium EVA External Hard Drive Case (Black)
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of 1TB 7200RPM 16MB Ext HDD
Customer Review: Too Hard to Live With
Summary: 2 Stars
I've have several external hard drives tethered to my various Macs throughout the years, but none has tested my patience more than this Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 1 TB. I purchased it primarily to hold my Time Machine backups. The fact that it was designed and formatted for the Mac was one of the major selling points for me. I have never had a WD drive before. I bought it on my daughter's recommendation but I wont hold that against her. Apparently, hers works well with her PC. I started having problems on day one, even after installing the recommended software updates. The fact that I had to even perform this initial update should have given me pause. Other drives seem to work right out of the box. The auto-off feature has never worked. When I power off the Mac, the drive still stays powered on in a standby mode. I have to physically switch it off at the end of the day. The power switch is no simple on-off affair either. One has to hold the power button in on the back of the unit, for what seems to be an eternity, before it will cut off.
To add insult to injury, the drive will, at other times, shut off entirely on its own. It will dismount and disappear from the desktop and the finder at the most inconvenient times and completely shut itself down. I have contacted WD support on two separate occasions with no resolution, only a laundry list of things that could be causing the problem. Suggestions include changing the connection method (from Fire Wire to USB or a different Fire Wire cord), making sure to plug the drive directly into the computer (no hubs allowed), making sure to plug the power cord directly into a wall socket and not a power strip, downloading the latest OS updates and drivers, resetting BIOS, etc. The question that bugs asking, is why is this hard drive so darn temperamental? No other internal or external drive I have ever used required this amount of coaxing in order to work properly. Generally, I plug then in and they just work. That's why I say that this unit is very hard to live with. It has way too many idiosyncrasies to deal with. I mean, the fact that it requires to be plugged into it's own dedicated wall socket. Come on. Who has a free wall unit at their disposal just waiting around for a WD drive to plug into her? With the number of computers, monitors, peripherals, accessories, printers, scanners, that I and the average person has these days, most available wall outlets were surely maxed out years ago. I mean, my power strips have power strips.
I have no doubt that I'll be going back to LaCie, Maxtor and Seagate drives in the future. This WD drive does not impress me at all. Even the case has a cheap look and feel to it. You can land planes by the brightness of the status light on the front of the unit and the heat that it generates ought to be cause for concern. There are much better hard drives out there. I wont fall victim again to WD's hype regardless of how many "My Book" drives they have sold.
An update (8-8-10). After continuously having the issues described above, I finally decided to ditch the Firewire interface and switch to USB. Since then, I have had no problems with this drive.
Description of 1TB 7200RPM 16MB Ext HDD
Speed is what you need for video editing, big design projects, or managing photo shoots and that's what this drive delivers with FireWire 800 and eSATA connectivity. With our automatic backup capability your creative masterpieces will be backed up the minute you save them.Digital Cameras & Photo Categories