How good is this 500gig WD mybook? Are there reliable products?
202443
JUNK! read the failure rate of WD products. Search some of their products on amazon and you will know. Worst, usually die after warranty. But warranty is useless bcos no one will send in the drive with personal info in there. when you send in for warranty, you usually get a refurbish back (someone's problem drive that they fixed)
926434
Although I don't own this particular drive, I am here as I am looking to buy this one also to add to my two other Seagate 500gb Freeagents that I already have that have been working flawlessly for me for over 12 months now. I honestly think that your experience was most likely caused by a faulty unit. Without knowing your computer configuration (windows, mac or linux) it's hard to say if any extra steps would need to be taken to set it up, but for a windows or linux based pc it should be simply plug and play in my experience. As you see on this site, there is only one bad review of the product. If you think about how many of these must get sold every year, one bad review is pretty good as almost everybody will take the time to complain, but very few will come back to write a positive review as a working product is what most people expect. So I guess the short answer from me is yes, I would give this drive a second chance, but then again, i may be biased by my great experience. I hope that this is of some help to you..
1395868
So far, for almost two years, it runs very well with Win7Pro and SSD with 16GB RAM and two 4TB drives (one internal and one external by USB 3.0) to serve as my network file server as well as my VMs (Ubuntu 12.xx and 14.xx) for computations. I never encounter any failure for this MB. Remember to install two different USB drivers (get them from ASUS driver download site) when you set up Win7/8 for enabling all the USB ports.
1120024
I have a "very old" External Hard drive...not this make/model...I turn it on once/quarter to backup recent files...it's probably over 3 years old. Recently, I bought one of these WD Elite 500GB models...my plan is to backup on two externals...in case one fails. I know this seems lame, but it is the only way to ensure everything sticks around. Seems like its worth the extra $100.
311960
I have used a 4TB WD MyBook successfully. I made the mistake of connecting that 4TB drive to an old Windows computer which mangled it, then even after a reformat, the DVR crashes every time I connect the drive. Somehow only the original factory format could work.The DVR can use a large FAT32 drive but formatting a 2TB+ HD as FAT32 results in 1.6TB capacity.
949493
Well, I did buy this and am not having any issue so far. I use it as a backup disk and carry files. It works fine for me even if I connect it to a USB Hub. I have used it with different Dell Laptops with NO issues.
811418
Just as KrellSteel said, works fine once you use Disk Manager on it. I have a 4TB drive, a WD40EURX, and gave it a GUID partition with NTFS, and drive letter for convenience, and it's copying files like a champ as I type. Copying 200GB of data (5% of it's capacity) takes about 40 minutes.
1568946
i am running maverick. my os is 10.9.3. the hard drive works fine. quiet and fast. this is my second my book externalhard drive. th first one i use with a windows 7 computer, it is around 5 years old. i love it. never fails me. thatis all i can tell you.
919443
Sorry, I run Windows, don't do "I" products, the actual available storage is slightly less than 500GB's, so if you need 500 I'd go bigger, there is a 750 & a 1TB on Amazon
473964
The drive you have selected here might not fit what you are looking for; this is a portable usb HDD with no external power--everything is done through the USB cable. I can figure out the RPMs, but I am pretty sure it is much lower than 7200 since its USB powered. Take a look at the WB MyBook Studio: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QGXOP2/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 -This should better fit what you are looking for in a drive. I have one of these, and it works great. The firewire is so much faster than USB 2.0--probably on par with 3.0, I don't have any 3.0 ports or devices. If you have Thunderbolt, they do make Thunderbolt variants, but they are far more expensive--thunderbolt is the fastest connection you can get, but HDD won't use the full speed bandwidth of Thunderbolt; firewire or USB 3.0 should do just fine for HDD. The only reason to get SSD is speed, and you better be prepared to spend a lot of money #1) SSD is more expensive than HDD: HDD is $1 per GB while SSD is about $2.5 per GB 2) the real catch is unless you get an external SSD with Thunderbolt connectivity there is no point in having SSD because the speed will be bottle-necked by the USB or Firewire connection--you won't get the full speed of the SSD. Thunderbolt will also drive up the price as well. If you let me know exactly what you are planning to use this drive for I could give you a better recommendation tailored to your uses, but I hope this helps you find something that will meet your needs.
459093
Yes, correct. After my purchasing this unit, my colleague has bought two. One unit failed within a week. The other has been working well. I must say that after upgrading my laptop's BIOS the issues have gone. So, most likely the drive itself is not really unreliable. So, my advice to anyone experiencing problems is to check for BIOS upgrade, especially if upgrading to Windows 8.
79878
I actually have the WD My Passport for Mac 1TB and it is functional with OS X Yosemite (version 10.10.1). I back up my MacBook Pro approx. every ten days.
969338
my longest lasting external is an iomega..i do keep it on its side dont use a stand usually its on the floor..it has had stuff spilled on it..cats vomit on it..dropped ..kicked..its still going..the main thing with an external in my experience is keep it on 24/7..my larger capacity WD external went out this year as and that one i dont keep running day and night..
1392534
Amazon have been sending me the WD20EARS-00MVWB0!If you do buy it, please buy it thru my Amazon Store, its the same price and I get a small kickback from the sale.http://astore.amazon.com/brisperpag-20/detail/B002ZCXK0IGreat drive btw, use this for my main data partition and for an external backup drive on many servers.
1085868
It all depends whether you need a drive that will last well with repeated use - from my experience, the SATA card which links the hard drive to the power/data transfer port that your USB lead plugs into is poor quality and too flimsy, meaning that it fails reasonably quickly if you're using it on a daily basis like myself. The unit looks great and the case is very robust, but functionality-wise, and as recommended earlier, I'd go for the Buffalo Mini Station Extreme which is proving far more reliable for regular use.
2231216
Definitely. I could easily backing up all my HD with 125 GB of data files, just following the default settings for the WD SmartWare backup.
2080494
The best answer is that my WD unit liked it. If you have a newer model/version - then I can not answer but I know they would not want to mess with something that is working for now. Besides, it is cheep and if it doesn't work your only out a few bucks.