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

This would be an awesome hard drive, with a very large capacity, decent read/write speeds, and USB 3.0, except for a very annoying problem of constant disk overload errors. Yes, I have updated to the latest firmware and whatever software they bundle (which is thankfully very customizable in terms of which features to install from it, since the only really useful one for people who have good computer sense and can find better alternatives for the others is the password protection), but this did not resolve the problem. I am hopeful that future firmware updates will, but until then, this drive really deserves no more than 3 stars. When one plugs it in, it works fine for a while. Then, once it is in use for no more than 30 seconds, the disk becomes overloaded and ceases to read or write for a couple minutes. While not a critical problem, it hinders all use of the drive for a while with every restart or resumption from standby. If it didnt last so long, it would be fine, but it does this (every single time, mind you) for around 5-10 minutes (for a more accurate estimate, it has been overloaded for the entire time Ive been writing this review). My other WD hard drive has no such problems, and since Ive had that one for over a year with no disk failures, Im confident in the longevity of this drive, but the disk errors are a major, central flaw that should have been resolved long before shipping this product.

After reading the reviews, on ([...]) I was skeptical, I prefer Seagate drives. Since the unit will be in a static position as a storage for music on my Squeezbox, the connector issue didnt seem something as a problem. to date (about a month) it has run flawlessly. The one thing that bugs me is the constant flashing light when it is off?.....hmmmm doesnt seem off if the light is working.....not too sure on the power saving issue here! hence 4 stars. (It also seems to take forever to spool down but that may be not be entirely its fault.) Overall it is fairly quiet and seems to do as intended- store stuff for access, in my case .wave and flac files, lots of room, none of the junky compressed files ie mp3 etc. I bought it as a friend said that it worked well (better than some other units both WD and others) with the Squeez, and so far it does. the Squeez likes it, however I have not tried any other drives. cost wise I think it should have been about $20 less than the $81 that I paid however I suppose it is a fair price. Overall I am fairly pleased.(less the darned flashing light! btw if the LED light is constant on it is in use) good luck and hope this helps. RJ

I had trouble and problems getting this drive working. It seemed to install fine, though it took several minutes for Windows to install the correct drivers, but it still didnt show up or appear in My Computer, though it was visible in Add Devices and Disk Management. In trying to troubleshoot it, googling had me at a loss and I started to think it was a bad driver, so I got lost down that rabbit hole for awhile, but I was mistaken. I finally resorted to calling WD Tech Support who were actually quite helpful. They didnt dink around and zeroed in on what is apparently a common problem for Windows 7 : drive letter collision. Im listing it here since I didnt find this solution on my own so maybe it will help someone else. Click Start. Right click Computer in the right column. Click Manage. This should open your Computer Management window. On the left, you should see Storage, and under it: Disk Management. Click this. (If you cant see Disk Management, click the arrow next to Storage to expand it.) After a second it should display at the bottom all your drives, probably Disk O, Disk 1, and CD-ROM 0, or something similar. One of these, probably Disk 1, should say Basic Online, and the drive size: 931.48 GB for the 1TB drive. This is your WD drive. Under the blue bar is should say the size again, NTFS, and Healthy (Primary Partition) Right click on the blue bar for this drive. Click on Change Drive Letter and Paths... In the next window, click the Add button. In the next window, the top radio button for Assign the following drive letter: should be selected. On the right, click the dropdown and select a letter for your drive which you are sure is not in use elsewhere in your system. M is a good bet. Then click OK. Under the blue bar, the drive should now be properly identified as My Book and in My Computer it should appear properly. You should now be good to go.

This 2TB hard drive workds great to extend the memory on my DishNetworks ViP 722K recorder. This price of $109.99 is less than the 1TB WD for $119.99 recommended on Dishs Website. After connecting the power and usb connections, this hard drive needed to be formated. I went to Menu, then multimeda, then it asked me if I wanted to format the harddrive. It took around 15 minutes or so, then the DVR recorder had to find the signal again. After all was said and done, total time was less than 30 min. total setup to get everything up and running. I did call dishnetwork to talk me through the formating part. Just didnt know where to find it. Movies take about 13-15 min to transfer over to the harddrive. One thing I like is that once I copy what I want to the harddrive, when I go to MY RECORDINGS, MY MEDIA comes up at the top of the list, so it is easy to find.

The 2TB WD External Hard Drive (EHD) arrived a couple of weeks ago and it was a snap to attach to my computer. It is USB 3.0-enabled, but it is USB 2.0 compatible, so it attached quickly and easily to an available USB 2.0 port. It is REALLY DIFFICULT to find the best EHD (or anything else, for that matter), since one tends to see lots of pro and lots of con reviews. This particular EHD seemed to have a reasonably good ratio of pro to con, so I ordered it. So far, it has performed well -- i.e., it has not failed (as did my Seagate -- which the WD replaced -- very early in its career). However, the WD-provided backup software is a major drawback. Pros: * Attaches easily to an available USB 2.0 or 3.0 port * Starts up when the computer is started up * Operates silently and transparently * Good capacity for the $$ Cons: * The included backup software is very, very poor -- in fact, it is worse than useless. It does not allow one to choose specific files or folders to backup; instead, one is forced to choose the type of files one wants backed up to the EHD. This is sort of like picking up pennies wearing boxing gloves, i.e., awkward and frustrating. But it is actually worse than that -- the WD-provided software does NOT actually back up all of the files of the selected file types. Consequently, utilizing this backup software is a really bad idea if one is serious about reliable backups. The software included with my defunct Seagate drive (Seagate Manager) was significantly better. In any event, I have acquired third-party backup software as a work-around. * When the computer powers off, the WD EHD sits and flashes its light. It SEEMS as if it has spun down, but it would be nice if it completely powered down -- as, once again, my defunct Seagate used to do. (To be fair, I suppose I should give it 10 or 15 minutes to see if it eventually completely powers down......)

Bought this product as backup mainly of photos. The installation on one USB 3.0 port of my PC was done in a matter of few minutes - a very simple an reliable process, the backup software installation also went smoothly. The drive is very silent, you hear nothing even when files are written on the disc. The file transfer seems very quick. The hard disc case stands securely as shown in the photos, it cant flip easily. Main con I have observed so far is a missing on/off switch (most external hard discs dont have one unfortunately). As other reviewers mentioned, for some reason the WD software only switches this drive to sleep mode (with blinking LED light) when the PC is turned off. You can remove the drive from the USB port with the WD software before you power down the PC, but then the drive is not being recognized when the PC is turned on next time. You need to unplug and plug in again the USB cable to activate the drive in this case. I found a pragmatic and simple solution for this problem: just plugging the power cord of the drive into a cord with on/off switch. Now I can manually turn on the drive when needed and turn it fully off after the PC is turned off. Since many described this problem of not getting the hard disc turned off when the PC shuts down even with older external WD drives, I wonder why the WD software still was not updated in this regard. This cant be so difficult to do! This issue made it loose one star in my rating.

I have spent all day (literally) trying to get this bad boy to work on my system. As of the end of October many manufacturers have updated their USB 3.0 Drivers. I have intel 3.0 usb hubs on my pc, running in win 7, 64 bit... I followed all of the instructions available to update my equipment (bios included) to be ready to to use this WD drive. I figured all these 1 star reviewers had to have missed something, or not had these new drivers to make this hard drive work. I was wrong. I am a very competent pc guy. I have never run into an issue like this. All the research Ive run across as of Nov. 6th 2012, all the drivers, all the instructions (even checked my bios, made sure my power settings didnt let usb drives sleep)... If YOU have a 64 bit system, vista, 7 and EVEN 8, stay away from this nightmare. Save yourself some time. Go with a usb 2.0 drive. Im printing up my return and sending this back to Amazon. I WISH WISH WISH this would work. Just FYI to tell you what happens.... Plug in the drive. Windows installs the drivers. One driver doesnt install, but its no biggie cause its included on the drive. Install that. The drive SHOULD work now (no NEED to install their software, but Ill get to that in a sec). Once you copy paste something into the drive it starts to do what it should. Then, after about a gig, the drive is no longer recognized by windows. It disappears. Then reappears and asks you if you want to open the drive. Of course, what you are copy/pasting is now incomplete. rinse repeat, same results EVERY TIME. If you are not moving data, you will not get a disconnect. Now, if you install the software that comes with the drive, you will see this connection and disconnect every few seconds. This is because the software will constantly check to see if the drive is there. And since it is doing this connect/disconnect all the time you will get the pop-up window every few seconds asking if you want to open the drive. Very annoying. I usually dont use software like this anyway, but I tried it out as a last resort just in case Im forced to go back to my old WD my book from years ago, a 500gb drive.... I need MORE space, but it still works fine. Which is why I went with WD again with my eyes closed.

I like the tiny white LED dot on the front. Just the right size and brightness for me. Some other drives have LEDs that are simply way too bright and annoying for use in my bedroom. USB 3 is fast on this drive. I dont have the numbers on me. If you are interested, leave a comment and I will get the numbers for you. I have the 2 TB model using an MBR partition and I havent had any issues using this drive 24/7 over the past aprox. 1.5 years. Though I have heard a fair amount of people having issues with multiple brands of drives that are 3+ TB using a GPT partition. I have found data recovery to be pretty reliable with MBR partitions, but I have had poor luck with data recovery of data on GPT partitions. The main lesson for people is that a backup is only a backup if the data is in multiple places at the same time. So if a drive fails, you should have the data somewhere else already so you can simply replace the drive by warranty or buying another one; and getting the duplication going again. I have had people bring drives to me for recovery because they were storing a single copy of the data on their external drive. That is not the purpose of an external drive. Or at least that is not the ideal purpose. If you are doing that because of internal space limitations on your device; then make sure the data is duplicated somewhere. Again, I love this drive. Simply case, large vents, great white LED indicator that is the right low-brightness for me. And fast USB 3.

I recently purchased from Amazon two of the new 2TB My Book Essential hard drives to expand and upgrade my external file storage, consisting largely of nearly ten years of digital photo files. I have used Western Digital external drives for several years, and have had absolutely no reliability or quality problems with them. One of these two new drives is my fire safe backup, and the other is the on duty storage for all of our past years digital photos. These new drives are very fast and quiet. I would have given these new drives a five star rating, except for two issues, which may be very important for other people to know about. I hope my review will save the readers many hours of frustration, which I went through. The first issue that you may experience is a well known problem (just do an internet search of the problem) which causes your computer to take about TEN TIMES longer than normal to boot up. This is due to a conflict with the BIOS used by some manufacturers. (Both of my computers have the same initials as High Power) One is my one year old laptop, and the other is our two year old desktop, both with all current updates installed. There is some hope that you may be able to avoid this problem by making some changes to your BIOS setup, but such was not the case for me. Talking with technical support people from both Western Digital and computer manufacturers plus an on-site house call by a very experienced local/independent computer specialist confirmed this. So at present the ONLY way we can avoid this problem is to leave the new external drive disconnected until after the computer is all finished with its whole start up process. (I do this by having the power supply for this new hard drive plugged in to a separate switched power strip which I then turn on only after the computer has completed booting up.) -you can do the same thing using the USB cable, if you wish. The second issue is with the Smart Ware software that comes with these new My Book Essential drives. After many hours of working with it, and trying to like it, I finally un-installed it. For many people who do not currently have any type of real-time backup implemented for their system, it may be just fine. But for me, I hated the lack of visibility and lack of easy accessibility of the specific backed up files. And for some people these new on line automatic file back-ups may work, but the transfer rate time factor for a large number of large files is not to my liking. For years I have used a very simple and inexpensive real-time automatic file backup program, which in my opinion is totally user-friendly and user adjustable. (the image that come to my mind is of a little hamster running in his wheel automatically backing up my selected file (and folders)) that I will continue with. (-BTW, they are a USA company (in the state of Utah) with excellent customer support.) So, I am happy using these new external hard drives as generic external storage. As usual, I purchased from Amazon, and their price and delivery was perfect!

This is the 4th WD external storage device Ive bought...as the newer, larger capacity ones were available, I purchased the new one and gifted the older one. Never a problem with the smaller capacity devices. Then came this one and for first couple of years, not even a hint of a problem. A few months past the warranty, the PC can no longer access the data. Mind you, every thing important to me is stored here, eMails, purchase info going back over 7 years, banking, thousands of photos covering over 50 years, a huge music library, several databases...no software, only the records of my life. Ive never used this to back up my computer, as my computer does not hold the data...only the software. The ONLY reason I use an external storage device is to store my life and protect same from computer crashes. Im no guru, but Im not a dummy, either. Everything conceivably possible was tried, including the purchase from WD of a new connector cable. Nothing helped. The light was on, the PC showed the software intact, the device was seen by the PC, the disc could be heard spinning. Finally caved and put in a call to WD...no real person ever came on line, so hung up after 53 minutes. Later that afternoon, called again with same NO RESPONSE. Yesterday, my professional computer guru made a service call and after over an hour, he gave it up and took the thing to his shop where he had software that MAYBE would work. This morning, hes taking it to a data retrieval service, a pricey solution if that even works! I understand that any technological device can (and does) fail. My angst is with the totally unacceptable level of Western Digital non-customer service. For shame, Western Digital...you have just lost a long time customer. So, bottom line is if you want to store important information on an external storage device and expect the manufacturer to be available in case of failure, stay away from WESTERN DIGITAL. My replacement will be with a different manufacturer.