Western Digital - 1Tb 7200 Rpm 16Mb Ext Hdd
by Western Digital
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List Price: Our Price: $74.99 You Save: $195.00 (72%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days 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 Western Digital - 1Tb 7200 Rpm 16Mb Ext Hdd
Customer Review: One of the better ones around...
Summary: 4 Stars
Design & Portability
I had 2 external HD's, which were 250GB and 150GB. It was in two different enclosures, so where ever I went, it was a real hassle carrying two HD's. MyBook is pretty compact with 1TB platter inside, helps slimming the width. Its piano black enclosure is really slick in HD design. I would give this HD the best design in its category. Very simplistic, no buttons, small slit of blue LED in front.
Out of the box
Everything was packed, there were no mounting the HD inside the enclosure needed, unlike my older HD's. I just had to plug and play, it was that easy!
Performance
I have used this for over a month and its performance is average. The specs is on the HD is pretty fast with 7200 rpm and 16MB buffer speed. I have always preferred firewire ports for external HD, because they pack more power which helps transfer data much faster than the USB 2.0's
I have a XP PC and I cant boot my pc if the HD is connected. I always have wait few seconds before the login screen shows up, then I connect the HD. (But if you use this with VISTA, there is no problem).
Whenever I exit from standby mode, my system recognizes the HD as if it was just plugged in... the autoplay becomes very annoying.
Software
The software which comes it it is completely useless. I would even go as far as to say dont even try it, save your energy! Its just a free trial. Download free back up software @ www.free-backup.info. It is much better than is included with the HD.
Price
I bought it for two-hundred and fifty from amazon. I would expect more ports and features for this price. It does not provide great bang for your buck when competitors like Cavalry 1TB CAXM3701T0 which sells around two twenty, have SATA cable and eSATA bracket (faster data transfer}!
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Recommended:
Yes
Pros
Slick shiny design, Consumer friendly, Compact and portable (1TB platter instead of 2x500GB)
Cons
average data transfer only 1 USB port, average price, software is useless
The Bottom Line
Recommended for the average pc user, if you are advanced.. checking the specs highly advised.
Customer Review: warning! please read. bad company policy
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
Customer Review: I'm calmer now....but what a pain in the neck
Summary: 2 Stars
First some context.....15 years ago when I worked at MCI, MCI spent >$150m to set up a data center with 1TB of online storage to support customer invoicing. Today, I have a 1TB hard drive that cost $120 sitting on my desk and I'm pissed about the difficulty of setting it up. So, I know I'm sniveling....but here are my faults with this drive.
1. It comes formatted as FAT32 not NTFS. That means it cannot store individual files >4GB unless you reformat the drive. Given that WD positions this as a video storage device, and as 4GB is about 30 minutes of standard definition video, why the hell didn't they ship it in NTFS format so you can put large videos on it?
2. WD has extensive help on their website for reformatting their drives to NTFS. Apparently this problem is not new to them. Hint to WD...if you have all this help for folks to convert to NTFS....start shipping them in NTFS and save us all a bunch of trouble.
3. Among WD's instructions are special instructions for Vista users...unfortunately, the screen shots are for XP, not Vista....hello!!!!
4. In order to get support, you need to register with a serial number. The serial number on the drive is DIFFERENT from the serial number on the BOX. Care to guess which serial number is the right one???? Yup, the one on the box!!!! Not the one on the device....even though WD's instructions for where to find the serial number are for how to find the serial number on the device. This is nuts.
5. There are two slips of paper in the box that are useless...I'm not even sure what they're for...although they are in 24 languages at 2pt pica font. WD should insert a third slip of paper that says in English, 18pt Arial, "If you intend to use this for storing video and expected the drive to be formatted in NTFS, then you should either (a) immediately throw this through the window and buy from another manufacturer, or (b) bang your head on the table as you are about to spend 12-24 elapsed hours figuring out first how to reformat this drive, and then reformatting it."
Customer Review: Large capacity, poor performance
Summary: 2 Stars
August 15, 2008
This external drive was purchased for the large capacity it provides. The hard drive is enclosed in an attractive two piece plastic case. One piece mimics the cover of a book and is attractive glossy black. The other piece looks like the pages of a book and provides ventilation for the drive. A bright blue LED is located on the front of the drive. It is divided into two sections that blink in unison or alternately depending on function being performed. Overall, it is a very attractive unit.
Unfortunately, the case of the unit I received was not fitted together correctly causing one corner on the bottom of the unit to stick out slightly. This caused the unit to wobble. In additon to this problem, the performance of the drive was lackluster. After formatting the WD unit as one large NTFS drive (which took over 4 hours), I compared the WD unit with another external hard drive unit I own. The other drive consists of a Nexxtech USB external case housing a WD 200gb ATA/100 drive. The comparison consisted of performing a 7gb file copy from the local PC hard drive to each external hard drive. The copy consistently took approximately 6.5 minutes for the WD but only 4.5 minutes to the Nexxtech.
At this point, I have returned the unit due to the case defect. I have not decided yet if I will order a replacement due to the poor performance or look for another model on Amazon.
As always, Amazon customer service was excellent!
August 24, 2008
Decided to order another one since performance was not my #1 priority (though important). New drive just arrived and has a small scratch on cover right above LED which is annoyingly noticeable because of the shiny cover. Is it too hard to expect a product to arrive without cosmetic defects? Bought this unit because of the price but may end up getting an internal drive so that I don't have to worry about cosmetics (not to mention better performance since internal drive will use SATA connection).
Customer Review: Another disappointed customer
Summary: 2 Stars
Like many on this forum, I am disappointed with the 500gig My Book because it died after 14 months, and the warranty lasts only 12. Turned on the computer one day, heard a hard clicking sound and - poof! it was dead. And to make things even more disconcerting, this is the second WD drive I have had fail on me within a few months. One of the two WD 500 gb drives in the RAID array inside my main PC died as well about a month prior. (Thank God I was smart enough to have purchased a RAID array on my main PC or I would have lost everything.) I have a strong feeling that the WD 500 gig models were not built well. (Don't know about the 1TB models.)
Also, as others have noted, besides the 12 month warranty there is no separate on/off switch which makes it harder to turn off the drive. (The blue botton in the middle did not work reliably for me.) My new drive is an Iomega 1TB model that has this feature. Hopefully, by powering off when I am not backing up, it will extend the life of the drive.
Because the My Book was intended for use strictly as a backup device, there was no data permanently lost. But I strongly recommend not buying a My Book or any other single drive solution to hold precious photos, quicken files etc. Only use it as a back up device. If you need to add additional storage that will hold precious data, do yourself a big favor and buy a home office NAS device like the one from NetGear or Cisco - and make sure you have 2 drives in the device. (Many come with 1 and you have to buy the second one.) Yes, it will set you back $400 or more dollars but that is nothing compared to the tragedy of losing irreplaceable photos, videos, music etc. As an IT professional, I can tell you that hard drives are the most fragile part of the PC and can die at any time without warning. That is why all important servers in a business environment use RAID (multiple hard disks) to ensure redundancy. Do the same for your home PC.