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They're your photos¿your music¿your videos¿your important files. Make extra room for them, back them up, and keep them safe on YOUR book. WD's My Book Premium is the perfect external hard drive for all your precious digital assets.
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Technical Details
- Convenient dual interface (USB 2.0 and FireWire) offers maximum compatibility and speed- 500 GB capacity, 7200 RPM, 16 MB Cache
- Capacity gauge shows you at a glance how much space is left on your drive
- Smart design takes up less space on your desk and stacks horizontally
- Intelligent drive management features ensure optimal operation
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By David C. Cobb (Los Angeles, CA)
I bought two of these in mid-2007 and less than a year later, found many of the same problems reported all over Amazon and other review sites -- overheating, powering down with no warning (even in the middle of data transfers!), intermittent unmountability. They were used in an average home office with typical usage, with plenty of air circulation to keep cool -- but they routinely glitched, crashed, and became useless not only for daily data use, but even occasional backups.
I ended up buying two new WD Elements drives to replace them, and managed to transfer all the data to the new drives. Those seemed to work great, and they were reasonably priced, so I bought two more Elements drives for additional project archives and music/photo media. Meanwhile, while all four of those were in use, one of the MyBooks completely died and wouldn't mount (after sitting unused for months, mind you), and the second became so glitchy it was pretty much unusable.
But then something downright infuriating happened. ALL FOUR of the new replacement WD Elements drives ended up having problems, too! The power supplies on ALL FOUR of them died within weeks of each other, right after the one-year warranty expired. And get this -- WD wanted to charge me twenty dollars per power supply for replacements (not including shipping!).
Thankfully, it's just the power supplies that are faulty -- the actual drives still work, and my data is still on them, so I bought *one* new power supply, and am now transferring each of those drives to a new Drobo with four 1.5tb Seagate drives inside. After they're transfered, I will wipe them clean, crack open all of the cases, and maybe try to salvage the internal drive units with other aftermarket cases. Ironically, it seems in all of the reviews I've read elsewhere, WD's basic internal drive products are fine -- it's the external cases they make that have problems.
THE BOTTOM LINE: SIX WESTERN DIGITAL DRIVES BECAME UNSTABLE AND UNUSABLE, ALL WITHIN A YEAR OF PURCHASE.
SIX drives, folks. Not just one or two. Over six-hundred dollars spent on totally, completely unreliable products in just about two years. I've heard that second wave of re-engineered MyBooks currently on the market are a much better product -- but I'll never be buying WD drives ever again after this experience. Not only should Western Digital completely get out of the external USB hard-drive business, they should have a class-action lawsuit brought against them.
By Delany Allen (St. Louis, MO)
I've had my drive for two years, always has worked great. I even tote it around the country so I'll have my file system with me. About a month ago the drive suddenly stopped connecting via USB. The drive appeared, but all folders were empty. By coaxing the drive... or voodoo magic... quite frankly just jostling the usb cord in the casing, I managed to get the files off, though they would occasionally reappear as good as new. The files are still there, I know, but half the time inaccessible, and eventually the drive stopped being recognized altogether.
Now I am going to try taking the drive out of the casing (who cares now about warranty, since it only lasts ONE YEAR) and mounting it, which I have heard is very successful for other users who want to recycle a dead MyBook (a common occurance?--mounting the drive internally may circumvent some of the known problems with the USB and Firewire control board copping out. My feeling is that the files are still on the drive, still intact, but the casements which are extremely poorly made and fail.
Western Digital should stick to internal drives until they can learn how to make a lasting USB product with a SATA drive ---- I have a WD Passport that still works brilliantly, so I have a feeling these myBook casings are the real culprit. Which is hilarious, because the drives have a 3-5 year warranty if they are NOT in a case provided by WD, but when you buy the package altogether the warranty is mysteriously reduced to a year. Avoid myBook at all costs if your data is important to you... which we must assume it is, since these are made as backup systems. Hah.
To those who still have this drive (and gave a five star review).... please just make sure you are saving your data somewhere in addition to your myBook, or you may be coming back here and editing your opinion in a few months or a year!! To those who have not had the misfortune (idiocy?) of paying premium for junk, seek other brands, Western Digital has no pity for your file losses and will merely refer you to data recovery systems raking in $[...] a pop... which actually sounds a bit like fraud, to me, but I digress.
By P. Crann
Why are external drives so unreliable? I have never gotten more than 2 years out of one and they are prone to data corruption and outright failure. I have given up on them completely.
By Mimi (Pacific Northwest)
After a year of use, My Book Premium failed to complete backups. It failed to be reformatted, it failed the diagnostics program which came with the drive. Western Digital support failed to give useful advice. I would never buy another WD product, and in fact just purchased a one TB drive from Seagate for $149 - the purchased of which was based on the extended warranty the company offers and ratings I found on line.
By Kenn Brodhagen (Roswell, GA USA)
I have had a terrible experience with this Western Digital My Book. The original failed approximately 3 months after I got it. I called Western Digital and had them RMA me a new one. I really had to push hard to get them to cover the shipping on it. They wanted me to pay to send the faulty one back. I asked to speak with a supervisor and he quickly arranged a UPS preprinted label to be emailed to me.
The replacement model has now failed in a similar manner approximately 1 year after I got it. I'm not going to bother trying a third.
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