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Western Digital WDG1C2500N My Book Premium Edition 250 GB USB 2.0/Firewire400 External Hard Drive | List Price: $229.99
Discount Price: $99.99
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Brand: Western Digital
Binding: Electronics
Features: - Store and back up your music, photos, videos and important documents with this external hard drive
- Easy to set up and use with built-in installation software
- Dual interface features FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connectivity
- Device holds up to 250 GB of data and is built with an easy-to-read capacity gauge
- Measures 5.55 x 2.25 x 6.71 inches (WxHxD)
The pains of progress [Posted on 2007-11-03]
Like other reviewers, I had sporadic, and then slow, success with the firewire connection. USB was more dependable but with Leopard far from a sure thing. The drive would generally do all right if it shut down and started with my iMac. But there are frequent times when a connector loosens in a hub, causing communication to be disrupted. Unlike other devices, this one can't simply be plugged back in to re-establish a connection. You have to do a time-consuming restart to coax it to reappear on your desk-top, in the meantime amusing yourself with the flickering blue light of its iris-shaped "on" button. When I see all of the negative reviews for drives--from external storage drives to DVD players--I'm about to establish a company that uses nothing but magnetic tape reels. If operations like Library of Congress, NASA and the CIA are dependent on information stored on computer hard drives, heaven help us. It's a good thing that most of us who keep trying out new drives really don't have anything that's all that essential to save. I can replace an MP3 collection anytime. As for the photos and movies, who's got time to watch them? I'm too busy replacing hard drives.
Firewire Flaky, USB solid [Posted on 2008-01-02]
Still going strong - I was an "early adopter" of the MyBook Premium, and it was up and running quickly.
After plugging it in (if Autoplay is enabled) it will run its preinstalled script and start the setup process. It comes bundled with Mac/PC proggies and drivers, but if you accidentally wipe everything, you can redownload them all from the WD site simply by providing the product SN.
I've stopped using the Firewire Port - it was nice that they bundled a cable, but the transfers were too flaky - not sure if the problem was on their end or my pc's, but my other PC doesn't have FW for me to check out.
Anyhow, with nothing installed, and USB, it's still plug and play and going strong after two years. Slow, yes - it's USB, which eats up CPU, versus Firewire, which does not - I'd prefer the firewire, but it would frequently be dysfunctional on my PC, requiring a reboot.
I make a lot of use of the "button manager" to turn the device on and off (it's software driven), which may be the culprit behind the FW problems, I'd either have to go into hardware manager and "rescan" or simply reboot if I powered it down. That's not the case with USB tho. The button manager isn't needed tho - it's fully functional (just can't be powered off by pushing a button). Shutting the PC down will shut it down at the same time, button manager or not.
All that angst aside, I dropped the (faster for big transfers) FW for the USB, and it's working just fine. No fan means it's quiet. It does get warm, but not hot.
My other complaint is the black paint is "oily finger" unfriendly. My fingerprints are "etched" onto it now.
Trivial, but the cooling vents are actually cut in morse code (dots and dashes, with spaces) for something (I've not decoded it yet, lol). This is true for all the MyBook series.
Bottom line: It's still running fine after nearly 7x24 usage, for 2 years.
Almost exactly 2 years. [Posted on 2008-06-07]
Over the years I have purchased 3 external hard drives from Western Digital, which I thought to be a reliable company.
Unfortunately two of the drives have crashed almost exactly 2 years after I have purchased them, and Western Digital only offers a one year warranty, meaning they will not replace your defective product. I would advise others to stay away from this company, I've wasted a lot of time, money, and lost a lot of data dealing with them.
This 250GB Mybook drive is the second that I have purchased which crashed on me, the first being the 500GB Mybook.
Stay away from this drive! [Posted on 2008-07-12]
I had this drive for a year and used it maybe 4-5 times to store large backup files. One day I couldn't access half of my folders on the drive, with error "can't access folder". I did a google on it and found that I was not alone. Lot's of people having same problems. Called western digital tech support and they confirmed that Mybook is having this problem! They also suggested to remove drive from enclosure and use it as stand alone. I did that but the problem was still there. I reformat the drive and it works for now, but lost all the data. So here is the lesson for the rest of you do not rely on the backups 100%, especially by western digital.
Does not recognize Firewire ports [Posted on 2008-09-10]
My book's firewire port was recognized by a cardbus adapter (I-O gear), but a firewire express card (Startech-2 port ) did not recognize the drive. Any suggestions?
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