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

I ordered the 2tb version. I average around 60MB/s. Whereas hooking this same drive via SATA to my PC, I average around 78MB/sec. I was using a usb 3.0 nec pci-e card. I suspect this is a limitation of the usb 3.0 standard, though theoretically it should not be a problem. And to address my biggest issue with this hard drive is that there is no way to turn off the encryption for this hard drive. I thought this to be an option, so I didnt mind ordering this over similarly priced alternatives. This bothers me because if for whatever reason you remove the drive from the case to install directly into a computer, you will not have any access to the stored data. You will be prompted by your computer to initialize, which will pretty much guarantee recovery will be impossible. In my case, I did not have a usb 3.0 card at the time, and the 2.0 speeds were ridiculously slow. So I removed the drive and hooked it up directly to my computer via SATA in hopes to transfer >1tb data much faster than usb 2.0 speeds. However, I had zero access to my hard drive when installed directly to the motherboard. Computer would not recognize the drive. If I initialize when prompted I would be able to use the drive in Windows just fine. BUT when I put the drive back into the external enclosure, the computer would no longer recognize it again, because the hardware controller is decrypting data that is already not encrypted, so its just scrambling the data up. This was before I installed the wd software. So I installed the software hoping I could disable it. Lo and behold, it was already disabled. So whats the point of enabling it? You can set a password to the drive to access it. Buyer Beware! edit 12/13/13: Just saw the many thumbs down on my review. :( The point I was trying to make, was that if the enclosure breaks for whatever reaason, ie the usb port or power port breaks, then unless you can fix these problems (ie. resolder a new port on a circuit board), there will be no way to recover the data on your hard drive without paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to a professional. You would normally be able to remove the hard drive from the enclosure and buy a new generic enclosure (or even use a same brand/model enclosure) or hook up the hard drive directly to the computer to access the files. HOWEVER, all data using the stock enclosure is automatically hardware encrypted, whether you set a security password or not! And the encryption is unique to each device, meaning simply buying a new model and switching out the hard drives will not work. Your computer will not be able to access any files on the hard drive at all, and will insist on formatting the drive to something it can recognize (making professional recovery even harder). You can search the reviews for encryption, and you will see that people have already ran into this problem.

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.

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.

This is my second Western Digital My Book Essential and 3d or fourth external hard drive. Ive had this for about one month, so I cant judge its reliability. Ive had another WD drive for about 18 months, which has worked fine. It was easy to set up out of the box, just plug and play. It differs from the prior generation of WD My Books in that this supports USB 3.0 instead of eSata. My computer doesnt have USB 3.0, so I cant tell how this performs. The new version has improved the software in at least one material respect. The prior generation of WD My books go into sleep mode after 10 minutes. This is fine for a back up drive, as it saves power and probably extends life, since these generate heat when operating and most home external drives have inadequate internal fans, leading to failures. However, the sleep mode was not adjustable by the user, so the transfer rate would be affected if you were using this when it was asleep. The new version allows you to adjust the sleep mode, which is how this feature should work. The Drive also comes with back up software that automatically backs up files for you. I use different software for this function (Norton Ghost), and cant say how well it works. From the documentation, it looks like this will back up regular files, but probably not system files, so this may not work to allow a full system restore. This didnt bother me because I am not using that software.

Ive been working with computers since 1974, back when there were no personal or micro-computers. Back when a 300 baud modem was hot stuff. My first 60MB hard drive cost $600 (back when $600 actually meant something) and measured about a foot long or more, about 8 inches high and six inches wide. So you can imagine my delight when this little 2TB drive showed up. Its no more than a tenth of the size of that first 60MB hard drive. Imagine, two thousand gigabytes. Theres an old saying in computing (or at least those old enough to remember it) that, no matter the size of your hard drive, youd only have about 1MB of free space. Well, not no more. Given the performance of our other Western Digital drives, Im pretty confident that the My Book drive will last until, well, until we dont need to preserve our professional, historical files anymore. Now, before I buy things like terabyte drives or printers or laptops, I always check PC Magazines Editors Choice collection, and this one was highly recommended. Its speed, size, and simplicity make it a real standout. Furthermore, weve been using Western Digitals drives for over ten years and have been very pleased with them. Unfortunately, though, Robins Rule #2 is: all drives fail eventually, as do computers. (Robins Rule #1 is: never pass a law you cant enforce, but well skip that one here.) My sturdy old Pentium 4 Micron computer is finally dying, after putting in several years of hard service, so its time to move on to the laptops, especially now that were retired and Im no longer doing interface or other design work that really does need a large monitor. And moving to the laptops means its time to transfer all our historical, professional data off the old machines, which is why I bought the My Book drive. The real beauty of the Western Digital My Book isnt just its thundering capacity, its the size and portability. Using a simple USB cable, I can move my main development data from one computer to the next in less than five minutes (Gee, just like the old days of moving SCSI drives on the Macs). So now every one of our computers with a USB port can become my main development and writing computer. Just as soon as I transfer that 1.5GB of old emails from clients and contact information for everyone I know (I used to use Outlook Express, but now I just let Yahoo take care of the mail), and things like my book-selling database files. The total data transfers have now taken up barely a fraction of the My Books space. Out of a readable 1.81TB, I still have 1.78TB left. And that represents over fifteen years of developing database applications for clients like California state agencies and medical research projects. Meanwhile, the My Book drive just sits quietly in the background, taking up almost no space and storing our entire professional history of database development. Yes, its a ridiculously huge drive for a small company, but all those historical files are critical and, what with the recent tornado warnings (tornadoes in California? Really? Weird.), its nice to know that all I need to do is unplug this one little drive and our critical data is safe. Or, at least, it will be safe just as soon as I finish transferring the data from the other computers sitting around here. Thats an awful lot of reassurance for about $130.

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.

Does a great job backing up, using Acronis.

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.

This is my second 2Tb My Book Essential USB 3.0 external drive from Western Digital. I wanted to have redundant backup for video and photo files. These take up a lot of disk space - more than can fit, uncompressed, on a DVD. This second 2Tb installed just as easily as the first... attach power and plug it into a USB port. Windows 7 recognizes it and it comes on-line in a few seconds. Im not using the WD software to do backups (I have other solutions for that) so my comments are related only to the hard drive. I find a definite speed improvement with USB 3.0 over the previous FireWire MyBook I had been using. My only, minor, gripe is that the disk enters standby mode when not accessed for 30-60 minutes. THen, when I want to access it, I must wait 5 seconds or so before data transfer starts. Neither this one (which Ive had a few months) or the prior one, which Ive used for about a year, have given any trouble at all. They have been working great.

Were in kind of a weird situation at the moment: The WD MyBook Essential external HD (2TB) is selling for thirty dollars less than a bare 2.0TB hard drive (WD Caviar Green)! I think its just because a spike in HD prices hasnt caught up with the old inventory price for the MyBook, but heres an opportunity to make a few bucks-- strip out the drive and sell it on eBay. You may not want to though. The one I bought failed after nine months. Im not sure if its the drive, the connector (see other reviews here for broken USB 3.0 connector woes-- I dont think thats the problem with mine), the cable, or something else; but Windows 7 hangs whenever the drive is connected, and eventually reports that the drive must be formatted. An attempt to format it always fails, whether from the dialog it presents or from Windows Disk Management utility. On the other hand, it saved my bacon more than once while it was alive, so I cant give it fewer stars. Three seems about right. The first thing I did was to make a system image onto the drive using the Backup & Restore control panel, and have automatically updated that once a week. This system image helped a great deal when a buggy ATi video card driver update hosed my whole system. It often fails when done automatically, so when I remember I do it manually. If I get a replacement, I think Ill shut off the automated backup utility (SmartWare) and just use the native backup tools during times when Im away. I never recovered a file using SmartWare, but it seemed to chug along efficiently and not get in the way (until the big failure, of course). Im using it with a USB 2.0 port and the speed was neither impressively fast nor torturously slow. Ive submitted a support request and hope WD will honor it, either with a refund or a replacement. UPDATE 5 Dec 2011: After a few weeks of back-and-forth, they did indeed send me a new drive. I installed the firmware update and SmartWare update without problems, and now we see whether this one can outlast the previous model. Cross fingers. I *do* like WDs products-- most of my system builds have used their HDs-- and I can see that the occasional lemon gets released.