WD My Book 1TB External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 File Backup and Storage

I got this drive the 3TB version for $129 which was a great deal. Performance over USB 3.0 easily beats the speed of the internal drive on my Asus Netbook that I also use as a media center. Size footprint is fine for me and the case looks great and has a simple white LED instead of some ultra bright blue. Pros- Large and fast 3TB drive that is barely audible. Cons- WD software likes to constantly inventory to the point it can create more IO requests than Windows 7 kernel. Can cripple the performance of slower machines. Last I checked there was no option in the software to stop the WD software from doing this. No big deal except the software is needed to set the drive to not go to sleep. Other thoughts, since the disaster in Japan HDD prices have started to climb and will continue for quite some time. Now isnt the best time to buy any HDD and hopefully soon the prices will fall back to where they were.

I got this drive mostly because of its energy star rating. If it werent for that I would not have bought it due to the many complaints about its USB connectors being easy to break. I like that the drive turns on automatically after a power failure which makes it great for backups. It does have soft power button that will turn the drive off if necessary, and of course it goes into power save mode if its not in use. I dont like the hard drive activity light which is just a white LED buried somewhere deep inside the housing. You can only see it if you look carefully and at the right angle, or if the room is completely dark the inside of the case lights up faintly. Many reviewers complain about getting bad drives, but I see as many or more bad drive reviews of every brand these days - manufacturers just dont seem to care about quality anymore. So I ran both of these drives through at least 16 days of testing using Ubuntu and a spare computer. Unfortunately I dont have any USB 3.0 systems and writing a repeating bit pattern of 0x55 to every byte on the drive followed by reading it back again takes around 55 hours. I let it write and read 0x55 and 0xaa and then aborted the test before it wrote/read 0x00 and 0xff. I started using that drive for backups and tested the second drive, which I let get through all four tests (0x55, 0xaa, 0x00, 0xff), and then I had it do a random write/read test where it writes random data to the drive and then reads back the data it recently wrote. This forces the heads on the drive to move back and forth a lot. The second drive passed all of these tests which took about 10 days total. If you want to test your own drive, first back up the software thats on the drive because these tests will erase the drive. Download any version of Ubuntu (free), burn to CD or USB flash memory, and you can boot your computer from the CD/USB without making any changes to your regular hard drive by choosing to Try Ubuntu. Once booted, open Applications > Accessories > Terminal, and type this command: sudo fdisk -l Find the line that says Disk /dev/___ 3000.6 GB and note what the value of ___ is. In my case, the 3000.6 GB drive was /dev/sdc but yours may be different. Now type the following: badblocks -vw /dev/___ Replace ___ with the correct device name on your system. BE SURE YOU USE THE CORRECT DEVICE NAME SINCE YOU ARE GOING TO COMPLETELY ERASE THAT DEVICE WITH THIS TEST. You can also run badblocks -v /dev/___ which should prevent erasing the drive by re-writing what used to be on the drive as it goes along, but the test will take twice as long. The tests have very little in the way of progress indicators but theyll tell you when they start writing each of the four sets of bytes and when they start reading those bytes. They will also tell you when the whole set of tests is done and if there are any errors. If you want to perform the random data write/read test, run these commands: dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/___ & dd if=/dev/___ of=/dev/null These tests will always erase your hard drive. While the test is running, you will just see a flashing cursor on an empty line. When the test is done, you will see the $ command prompt again. If there are errors, youll see them, but it wont tell you anything on success.

I am a compulsive media hoarder and have been running out of space for my digital library. I also wanted something portable to take on road trips or when visiting friends and family. I bought a 1TB MyBook back in the day and it was everything I needed so I picked up this 3TB since the price was excellent for the amount of storage. Ive moved over just about everything I have over to this drive and it is extremely satisfying to see how little a dent that has actually made in its total capacity. Also the speed of the data transfer is pretty impressive for a traditional hard drive, I managed to get everything on it much faster than I had anticipated. The only problem I have with the device is that the small light on it blinks when I have it hooked to my computer and put it to sleep. Im usually do this when I go to bed so its a bit distracting. Easily solved by unplugging the USB or turning the drive off, just seems like an unnecessary step.

Drive very fast w/ USB 3. Comes w/ cable that will connect to USB 2 or 3. Included software for continuous backup works well. Easy to configure. Only downside is that when I tried to make an image backup with Windows 7s backup utility, I got an error. To correct this you have to reformat the drive, which means you have to dump everything off it and put everything back on after reformat. Troubleshooting and doing required moving set me back about 3 hours. Heres the solution if anyone gets error when making image backup, and note then that it wont be usable with Windows XP: Error: 0x8078002A occurs when backing up to a 2.5 or 3.0 TB drive in Windows 7 Backup and Restore Problem: When using Windows 7 Backup and Restore with a 2.5 TB or 3.0 TB drive, the backup fails with an error code of (0x8078002A). Cause: This problem is caused by an issue with the Windows 7 Backup and Restore utility when using drives with 4K Logical sector sizes, which are found on WD 2.5 TB and larger external drives. This is different from an Advanced Format (AFD) drive which use 4K physical sector sizes. AFD drives should not cause this problem. Solution: It is still possible to use a 2.5 TB drive or larger with Windows 7 Backup and Restore, as long as you dont need to use the drive with Windows XP. Using the WD Quick Formatter tool, select the Factory Default configuration to reformat the drive. Warning: This tool will erase all data on your drive, so take the necessary precautions. After formatting the drive to Factory Default mode, the drive will be usable in Windows Vista and Windows 7. However, the drive will not be recognized in Windows XP. This is the only way to get Windows 7 Backup and Restore to work correctly.

This drive is almost unbelievable. While my system did not initially come with a USB 3.0 connector and I was forced to purchase an external card, once installed it runs very fast. Im using this drive on a Linux web and media server. I installed a Syba USB 3.0 SuperSpeed 2-port PCI-Express USB adapter - PCI Express 2.0 x1 (uses the short white NON-VIDEO PCIE motherboard connector). This controller uses an NEC chipset fully supported under newer (2.6-32+) Linux kernels so installation went without a hitch. I mounted the drive using its default format (NTFS) and it worked perfect from the moment it mounted. I am most impressed with the overall speed of this drive. Using a gigabit network I am able to copy data at sustained rates exceeding 110 mega bytes per second, In some cases as fast as 140 meg for short periods. Compared to the USB 2.0 drive that transferred at around 40 meg per second this drive is a dream! I can copy digital movies, pictures, raw camera files, even rip Bluerays in minutes. The drive is a bit large compared to their Elements series. The Elements lies flat and is only 1.5 cm high whereas this drive stands upright, is larger in all dimensions and appears to want to be operated in the upright position based on the position of the feet. It comes with an external power supply (unnecessary?), a good quality albeit short cable and a large unfolding quick installation guide. Because it is an external drive it would be difficult to use it as a bootable system disk but with an appropriate motherboard supporting alternate boot methods this drive could be configured as a system disk for either Linux or Windows but would require more than the average understanding of computer hardware to make it work. Speed, a reputable company and large storage capacity make this a perfect choice if you already have a media server and want to increase its storage capacity. I upgraded from an Elements 2 tb USB 2.0 drive. If you dont have an existing media server you might want to check out Western Digitals NAS (Network Attached Storage) drives that come with built-in network sharing firmware eliminating the need for a separate server. NAS drives have an RJ45 connector (TCP/IP) and function just like a Windows or Linux file server.

At the time I purchased this 5 yrs ago I thought I got a good deal. It was a good price and I HAVE gotten service out of it for 5 years. The reason I only gave it 2 stars though is because it now has several issues that started at least a couple years ago. It works fine with Vista, Windows 8/8.1 but did something funky when I upgraded from 8 to 8.1 and got strange shortcuts to nonexistent drives like CD Unlocker which Ive just ignored. Now its doing something funny again for no reason seemingly and has changed from my H drive to my I drive. Maybe thats just something I dont understand, no big deal. All this is only present when its plugged in and running and Ive always got access to the drive. Major issue now is it stopped automatically powering back on when I reboot the computer while its plugged in (which is 24/7). I used to just have to unplug the power cord and plug it back in, or do the same via USB connection and all was fine. Now a new problem on top of that has almost killed it. Theres a short at the power plug in the rear of the drive. I have to unplug and plug it in repeatedly, sometimes until my hand gets very tired and just wait and hope it catches and boots up. So far been lucky. Its now obviously on its way out, and I wont be purchasing another one of these. Ive accumulated a lot over the past 5 years and now have to purchase another drive at a time when I cant exactly afford it.

Amazon had a very good price and the shipping was free with the Super Saver Shipping. Even though it was shipped for free, it arrived in three days to my surprise. Ive used the Super Saver Shipping numerous times and have had very good experiences with it, never any problems. So I highly recommend the purchase be made through Amazon. As far as the hard drive, although the price has dropped some since I bought this item, I am still pleased with it. The price with the free shipping was as competitive as every other company. The reason I bought the WD hard drive was for the drive space and it was one of the few that has password protection. This is important due to the sensitive nature of job-related material. So the password protection application was necessary. I found that not all hard drives have this feature. The software it contains is already installed and all you have to do is download the desired portion onto your system. The on/off switch doesnt operate until a particular program is downloaded, this was new for me. The only draw back was that the instructions which came with it werent very helpful and it took me some time to navigate through them. Since I have no formal training and am basically self-taught on my PC, it took longer. If you have any familiarity with such items, you will have no problem with that. Overall, I am very pleased with this purchase.

For some reason most of the reviews shown to me when I select the 3 TB drive are for other smaller versions of the drive. Heres a review thats actually about the 3 TB model. Ive got two of these 3 TB drives and am close to adding a third. A lot of video data is taking a lot of disk space, and there really arent many 3-TB drives available at this point. Id like to add an esata drive to the mix, but Im only aware of a couple of 3 TB esata drives, and theyre twice as expensive as this unit. I started out using these drives on USB 2. Of course data transfer was slow. I subsequently switched to USB 3 on a new laptop, and added a USB 3 hub to expand the use of that single port. No problem with two of these and a Seagate 1.5 TB GoFlex on a single hub. Inerestingly, I havent noticed a slowdown in the transfer rate between a single drive direct in the USB 3 port and three drives in a hub. While its not exactly instantaneous to move 10-100 gigabytes around at a time, the data transfer rate is reliably about 5X faster than USB 2 was for me, and I can see it burst sometimes at outrageous speeds. You might ask, why dont I just get an array? I started out with one, actually, from a company which shall remain unnamed, but it failed me utterly. Two different arrays (after the first was exchanged) lost all my data three times. Fortunately I didnt trust it at all after the first time and had 100% backups. Its not easy to keep backups of terabytes of data, though, so thats why I ended up with the first of these Western Ditigal drives. At this point, I dont trust desktop RAID setups. So Ill just split my data between these drives, which isnt hard for this particular application. I had no serious problems getting these drives to work with Windows 7 64-bit. The OS initially failed to see the second one, which is a quick fix in Disk Manager, Ive seen this before with other identical drives where it seems to realize there are two separate drives but somehow considers them the same drive as well, and you have to click online to solve this strange little problem. So that happened. I also noticed that one of the two drives has a tendency to not be seen by the OS until I unplug it and restart it, upon reboot. I havent seen this problem for awhile, so I suspect I solved it as part of a general issue with too many powered devices hooked up upon startup (I have a lot of stuff hooked up to three USB hubs, and now I just unplug one of the USB 2 hubs during initial boot). The software that comes with this drive is both terrible and unnecessary. Its unnecessary because Windows 7 sees the drive without it, and I had trouble even understanding what some of the other reviewers were complaining about, like the guy with the catch-22 about not being able to get to the advanced drivers. I dont know what advanced features one would need with this drive. I plugged it in, it shows up as a drive, I put data on it, the end. But if those advanced features are the backup software that comes with it, I agree with all the other reviewers who urge you not to install it. I installed it and had a problem which I havent seen in these reviews but which was all over the WD forums, namely that one of the background utilities has a tendency to run your CPU up as time goes on, apparently analyzing your files for the next backup or something. Totally unnecessary and very problematic. I immediately uninstalled the WD backup software, might as well just use the one that comes with Windows or any of the million others out there. It was also annoying that the latest WD software doesnt work with older WD drives, so when I had smaller, older WD drives mounted, there were two completely separate sets of WD utilities running at once. I used those utilities to update the firmware on all my drives, then uninstalled them and am the better for it. I have some smaller seagate drives to take on the road and I like the GoFlex system a lot. But I dont really trust seagate drives, theyve always been the least reliable in terms of the actual drive hardware throughout my career, which began before hard drives even existed. I mention this because the 3 TB Seagate GoFlex drives are just about the only other 3 TB USB 3.0 drives out there right now. So far these WDs have been working fine for me. So I rate the drives 5 stars and the software 2 stars, not 1 star because heck, it probably actually works as a backup program if you installed it and suffered through the CPU cranking problem (the solution last I checked: frequent reboots). Ill never know, because Ill never install it again. But I run the drives 16 hours a day, and no problems yet. I dont know what the guy meant who thought these drives feel cheap. Theyre professionally designed and built, and solid enough for plastic enclosures. Itd be nice if they were in metal cases, sure. If that jacked the price up $100, Id probably risk the Seagate. Id pay $50 more for metal, though. So now I have to decide whether to get another of these or the G-drive esata. Im a little afraid of putting four drives on a 4-port USB 3 hub, and esatas as fast as USB 3 in real terms on this machine, per my unscientific testing. Maybe Ill get one of each. It chaps my hide, though, to pay twice as much for the same capacity in a pretty metal case with a deadended technology interface. Thats more of an Apple fan club kind of move.

Ive purchased about 8 of these (1 tb, 2 tb and 4 tb) and all work perfectly and quickly except for one. About 7 years ago I was getting some messed up files (pictures, out of tens of thousands) on a 1tb I had used for 5 years maybe, and then slowly, week by week, month by month, more and more were getting messed up until I finally had to move over as many as I could save to another drive. (That was a PAIN!) But the other 7 of this My Book have all worked perfectly and with no problems with cords or anything else. I love them, thats why Im buying another today, my sons is full, and he backs up his laptop every few weeks. I like this huge size more than the small ones, as they cant be brought along in a backpack to classes with ease, so they stay in the room and dont get lost or fall out! Mine just sits on the side of my desk and never moves, and I use it every day.

When it comes hard drive, what I usually look for is the size and whether it retains heat while exchanging files. This is a great drive from WD. I like WD since many years ago and it continue to produce great hardware. The drive itself is a 2tb drive and it is very fast. I cant believe that usb 3.0 is so much better than 2.0 usb. this drive comes in a sleak black color, shinny it is. has vents on sides that help to keep the drive cool. I bought this drive mainly to get it to store files and play on my playstation. Since playstation has a limit on 2tb, this is great. Formatting to Fat32 is a breezed. It came with a formatter as well. So for those that needed to format, you have everything in the drive, although you need to copy that formatter.exe file to your computer before you format. as for the durability, i say its great. I like for that fact that it feels solid and strong. When you hold it, you feel like it is made from a well made strong and quality material. Some drives you buy cheap will not have this feels. One thing I dont like about the drive is that not about its performance but rather maybe the black shinny outside shell tends to collect dust or maybe its black and it is easier for me to see. I clean it and later I see dust on it again. Although it does not affect the drive performance but it does look dirty if look at it close up. overall the price is decent. it isnt cheap or expensive for a 2tb drive. however, because of the brand I think you get it for a very good drive for backup.