Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 1TB USB 2.0 (WDH2U10000N)

List Price: $229.99 Discount Price: $206.99

Features:

• The safest place for your data
• Automatic backup software
• Automatic backup software
• Automatic backup software
• Capacity Gauge

Customer Reviews:

External RAID 1 (Mirror) to backup pictures [Posted on 2008-07-28]
Bought this external drive to backup pictures and videos from my current laptop. Order arrived quickly.

Pros:
*Raid 1 (Mirror)--feel secure since data is stored on two identical drives, if one crashes, data is still available on second drive.
*Quiet
*Easy to use
*Reasonably priced
*USB 2.0

Cons:
*No Firewire or ethernet support (not important to me, but some might care)

Overall, after much research, I decided to buy this drive because I could care less about firewire or ethernet support and the price was right.

Not bad, suits my needs [Posted on 2008-08-07]
I'm using a laptop without eSata, so I guess this one fulfills my requirements. I have time to wait data transfer (doesn't matter if it's a few hours) so it's fine for me. Pretty quiet, quieter than my laptop fans blowing. However, it does make clacking sounds. I assembled my own external hard drive last year using Antec MX 1 and a WD5000AAKS, and the hard disk ran very queitly. The casing is plastic, looks good, if you press the top plastic grill it makes squeaking sounds. If you set it up with Raid 1, starts with 465.76 GB, migrating it to Raid 0 is just a few clicks away using the provided software on the CD, giving you 931.52 GB of writable space.

Solid Performance [Posted on 2008-08-11]
Performs as intended. WD backup software is very convenient and easy to set up.

A Bad Idea [Posted on 2008-09-11]
The software installation took nearly 20 minutes. That was the first Bad Omen. Then, with the DC power plug in the unit, the drive's "ON" blue light was intermittant. It seems that Quality Control is not high on Western Digital's priority list. The DC power connection for the unit was defective -- the plug and socket were a very loose fit -- and so power to the unit was intermittant at best. Then, the newly installed software would not recognize the drive. Lastly, calling Western Digital customer support got me a "Your estimated waiting time is 15 minutes." The problem is that in fifteen minutes, the same recording came on and said the very same thing all over again.

Thanks to Amazon.com's refund policy I am only out the ten days waiting for the drive to arrive, my three hours of fiddling, and the hassle of sending it back to Amazon.com.

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