WD My Book Pro Question

Quoting jsamtak <jsamtakpatmedia.net>:

> I was thinking of buying a 2TB Western Digital My Book Pro Edition
> II for use with Time Machine backup. Has anyone have positive
> experiences with this HD that they can share?
> --


We had three of these at work . . . and while I've not hooked any of
them up to a Mac we have had nothing but trouble getting them to mount
on Windows 2003 Server or Windows XP installations. In addition, 2 of
them have died.

I would recommend another brand . . . personally I'm partial to OWC's
(www.macsales.com) cases with Seagate Barracuda mechanisms in them.

neil

On Feb 5, 2008, at 9:04 AM, jsamtak wrote:

> I was thinking of buying a 2TB Western Digital My Book Pro Edition
> II for use with Time Machine backup. Many of the user reviews are
> not positive, ie loud fan, varying transfer rates and failure to
> mount. I know it is human nature to complain about problems but not
> say anything about good experiences.
>
> Has anyone have positive experiences with this HD that they can share?

I've been using a 500GB drive since December 27, 2007 as my Time
Machine drive. I am VERY happy with it: it mounts every time, it's
quite, and I am satisfied with the transfer rate. Call me a satisfied
customer.

Rick Taft
ricktaftverizon.net

A back-up on the 1TB (2x500 GB) version this summer saved me when the drive on my Powerbook G4 failed. For that alone, it was worth the money.

Alas many of the complaints are fair. It is pretty loud, and I corrupted a partition on in when I accidently pulled the firewire cable before it had dismounted. Another unpleasant surprise was that my Powerbook G4, at least under tiger was unable to boot from it when mounted as a firewire volume. This was listed as an unaddressed problem when I finally tracked it down. Leopard on my MacBookPro can boot off its USB interface.

-Joe

On Feb 6, 2008, at 5:54 AM, Neil Laubenthal wrote:

> We had three of these at work . . . and while I've not hooked any of
> them up to a Mac we have had nothing but trouble getting them to mount
> on Windows 2003 Server or Windows XP installations. In addition, 2 of
> them have died.
>
> I would recommend another brand . . .

Recently I've been warning Mac users against the Western Digital My
Book drives, as they can't boot (startup) PowerPC-based Macs.

http://oomiiw.notlong.com

Also, Western Digital has decided to include software on their external storage drives that restricts them from being used for network file sharing.
http://www.gearlog.com/2007/12/western_digital_blocks_nas_fro.php
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702710
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/12/western-digital.html

Both problems can be worked around...but why should a user have to?
These are issues that show that Western Digital is not customer-
oriented, and users, Mac users in particular, should express their
displeasure by not purchasing their crippled products, despite the
fact that some resellers seem to be selling them at deeply discounted
prices.

Randy B. Singer • Mac OS X Routine Maintenance • http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

On Thursday, February 07, 2008, at 07:40AM, "Randy B. Singer" <randymacattorney.com
 > wrote:

>
> Also, Western Digital has decided to include software on their
> external storage drives that restricts them from being used for
> network file sharing.
> http://www.gearlog.com/2007/12/western_digital_blocks_nas_fro.php
> http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702710
> http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/12/western-digital.html
>

This was talked about in December on various boards, but as far as I
can tell, it has no effect on the Mac community, and little effect on
the Windows world.

I have several WD My Books and have not had any problems with them
(crosses fingers). They are convenient, and interchangable with power
sources and plugs. That said, I have not had to reboot from them and
do not have an Intel system, so if that is a factor, it may influence
your decision. But I can find no problems with sharing files or music
on any of the drives formatted in Mac OS Extended. Whatever the
restriction scheme is, it isn't a technology that affects the Mac.

Ray

We purchased a 1TB dual drive MyWorldBook Ethernet drive. I felt we had been duped by WD as they claimed the drive was Mac/PC but is really not at all.

The drive came Formatted FAT32 (or is 23) which requires that no un-usual digits are used in file names, like back slash and inverted commas etc. This means saving things as disc images or changing all your file names. And there is no way to re-format the drive, Disc Utility doesn't see it and the USB plug on the side will only accept another drive formatted in FAT32. So we have to use it as is and wonder what we will do if we have to reformat ever. It is also very very slow - we who are used to Gigabyte Ethernet or FW800 find that a 20 Gbs file will take three hours to save are a bit shocked.

But it does seem safe, all three of our systems can talk to it at once, no matter who is logged in and so far it has remained very reliable.

We keep ours in the hall - the fan is a bit noisy but then, we bought it because we had just lost another LaCie fanless drive.

i bought a MyWorldbook drive too. the drive was formatted as you
say, but i reformatted it by using idisc and have been using it. i
was using it as an external drive and installed leopard on it. what i
did have a problem with was that i couldn't upgrade to leopard 5.1.
my problem was figuring out how to reformat because it came with no
directions.


nicky