Comments on: Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II sucks!

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 12:14:04 +0000

>Chris
>18/12/2007 at 11:24 pm

>I have bought a my book2 studio edition 1tb a few days ago. I >don’t read about any problems with the studio edition here, so i >hope everything will be ok. I have been using WD disks for >several years and always been happy. Before that i had Maxtor and >those crapped out on me.

Hi all. This was me one year ago. Don’t worry my drive is still alive! However, it starts to become noisy. It’s the same noise as good old ball bearing disks used to make once they got older. Also, sometimes the disk turns itself off and then i have to unplug the power to get it working again. Very strange! I have a toshiba 1tb disk next to it which backups every single bit. So, the coming months i will see what happens with this baby. Lucky me i have five years of warranty.

By: bobbi

bobbi — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:30:40 +0000

I have a set of a friends WD500. Few years old. Previously, discovered they sort of cloned their drive id chips, so certain pairs would not work together. Oh well, just a shuffle.

But, is this normal: the drive lights stay on even with the power turned off! In fact, the drive gets down right WARM.
Only thing that stops it is to unplug the FireWire cable.

That is a lot of power to be taking from the FireWire, to keep the drive warm!

By: Rovettidesign

Rovettidesign — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:15:53 +0000

Finally took apart my MyBook 500GB essential. Besides the quirky behavior and horrible power management and the cpu not being able to actually recognize the drive, it was working fine… It was a snap to take it apart, and inside was an IDE 500 GB WD Caviar SE Drive, which I quickly transferred into a Acomdata all aluminum enclosure that I’ve had for a long, long time with no failures. Feel free to reply to this post if you want any more info on the process. It was easy, and is nothing to be afraid of. Get the drive out of that WD shite enclosure before failure!!!!
Cheers!

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:35:32 +0000

P.S.

For important data: Never, never use RAID 0

1 Back-Up is no Back-Up!

Good lucK!

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:32:27 +0000

@ Insky

Is the USB connection still working? (You don’t mention it).

Your 2 HDD’s are formatted (in raid 0) by the own WD controller…

Maybe, just maybe… an extact WD housing wil reconice your HDD’s…

By: insky

insky — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:35:39 +0000

I have a 2TB My Book Premium Edition II since March 2008.
I use it as a Firewire 800 HD on my Macbook Pro. It’s not mirrored, I formatted the disk so that it makes a 2TB full disk instead of 2x 1TB.
I went on holidays for a couple weeks. I got home and… the disk doesn’t start. I guess the disk is in good shape (it always worked perfectly) but the electricity doesn’t go through anymore or something. Anyone heard something similar and a possible solution?
I would not mind taking the 2 disks out and put them in a brand new HDbox, if only there’s one that supports those disks the way they have been formatted and used (i.e. not having to erase my 2TB worth of daily work…)
thanks!

By: John Hansen

John Hansen — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 02:13:51 +0000

I guess I’ve been lucky. I have had a lot of WD caviar and my current mybook 1 terrabyte and they all work great. I’m had the external a year now and got it from Dell for $218.00. I have another that is the system disk and it’s a sata and I have another that is an Eide.

I have had lots of trouble only with maxtor - which is now seagate.

[email protected]

By: Kasumi

Kasumi — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:49:43 +0000

I have had my MyBook Essential II since January 2007 and it has always worked well for me. Enough so that I made the mistake of entrusting my files to it. I run Vista, and one day it decided to not want to show up in any list (My Computer, Device Manager, Disk Management, ect). I emailed WD and they told me to download the driver off the download page…so I did. Guess what? DIDN’T WORK. So I sent another email to them telling them what the last guy told me to do, and that it didn’t work. You wouldn’t believe the response I got. “Have you tried going to the downloads section of our website and downloading the device driver?” Me: NO! What makes you think based on the last email I sent you, that I have ever done that before! >.< Anyways, I decided that I need the CD that came with it and get the driver I need off of there. Except I have had it for so long that the CD is long since been lost…

If ANYBODY has a copy of the CD for the MyBook Essential Edition II (mine is a 250GB), and could possibly rip the CD or just the driver…or anything that could possibly help, I would greatly appreciate it (and might even refrain from bashing some skulls in at WD).

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:40:48 +0000

@ Nocturne

It getting worse… If you use the WD casing, your Harddisks are getting too hot!

Using eSATA, you can see that the temperature will exceed WD own harddisk specifications!

By: Nocturne

Nocturne — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:07:30 +0000

I have two different cases with the WD Studio Edition line. I bought one 1TB WD SE drive 6 months ago and it works like a charm, no problems! In fact, I was so happy with it that three weeks ago, I bought a 2TB drive of the same model. BIG MISTAKE! The drive keeps disconnecting by itself while I’m working - I use this drive for editing HD video material and thus opted for the 800 Firewire port etc. but what is it worth? NOTHING! I tried an eSATA port on my friend’s Hackintosh and it seems to work better with this cable, though it means I have to spend an additional amount of money to buy an eSATA connectivity card for my Macbook Pro..! This sucks WD!

It seems that with WD products, you’re taking a gamle, 50% of the drives seem to work, but the other 50% suck ass from a straw!

Any users having similar problems with your WD Studio Edition II, let me know! I’m desperate, this material is like a baby to me!

By: Stalin

Stalin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:04:26 +0000

@ David

If that doesn’t work, try to ENABLE the Cache and see what happens.

Maybe you can chance a setting in Vista energy control, see this Link: Disable harddisk sleep or similar.

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_manual_act_winVista

By: Stalin

Stalin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:54:02 +0000

@ David Sade

Did you try to DISABLE the WRITE-CACHE of your Western Digital USB drive?

See example:

http://lonesysadmin.net/2007/01/29/windows-vista-performance-tip-enable-write-caching/

Use option: Optimize for quick removal

By: Stalin

Stalin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:21:52 +0000

@ Lenin (And all other souls).

You forgot something!!!

1 BACK-UP = NO BACK-UP!!! Use ALWAYS a secondary Back-Up!!!!!!!!!!

By: Yusuf Martin

Yusuf Martin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:35:16 +0000

My saga is similar to most - Already mentioned above.

After a couple of weeks the MYBOOK swallowed 500 gig of precious material. I sent it back to the shop I bought it. They, without telling me, reformatted the hard drive and kept the unit for over 4 months. On complaint the local WD people took the unit from the retailer and tried to salvage my material - they succeeded but all the 500 gig of material was corrupted.

I am about to write and tell them what they can do with their products

By: David Sade

David Sade — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:16:27 +0000

Sunday, 7 September 2008

Dear Sir,

I found your site following your comments concerning Western Digital external hard drives. I wonder if you could provide me with some advice or point me where to get answers from.

My system: SONY VAIO-L, Vista Home Premium, 2 Gb main memory
External Drive: Western Digital 320Gb MyBook

The problem: although the drive connects and working fine when I copy files or whole directories onto it using Windows Explorer, when I would like to back up the whole system, the computer simply cannot find the target drive.

Now, I know the problem, that is whilst the backup programme collects the information from the computer as to what files to back up, etc…, a considerable time, say 2-4 minutes, is passing, during which the MyBook is going to SLEEP, and it doesn’t sense that there is data to be downloaded and it must WAKE UP. Therefore I simply cannot use the drive for large scale backups.

There must be a way to make the drive not to go to SLEEP (I can’t wake it up by pushing the power button either). Perhaps the problem lies with a Vista setting that I don’t know of.

Would you have a solution? If so, please let me know.

Sincerely,

David Sade

By: Lenin

Lenin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:58:32 +0000

WD HAS TO BE THE MOST IRRESPONSIBLE COMPANY EVER TO PUT OUT A PRODUCT. I’M KEEPING THIS SHORT. I BOUGHT AN EXTERNAL DRIVE FROM WD AND STORED ALL MY PICTURES AND VIDEOS ON THERE THEN FOUR MONTHS DOWN THE LINE IT FAILS AND I END UP LOSING ALL MY PICS AND VIDS. NOT EVEN A RECOVERING AGENCY WAS ABLE TO RETAIN MY DATA. I CALLED WD AND THEY REPLACED IT WITH A NEWER VERSION AFTER I THREATEN THEM TO SPREAD THE WORD. THEY SEND ME ANOTHER ONE AND COME TO FIND OUT, IT FAILS TO RUN AFTER 2 WEEKS!!! THEY HAS GARBAGE PRODUCTS. I HAVE HAD A SEAGATE EXTERNAL FOR ALMOST 5 YEARS NOW AND IT’S STILL GOING AND GOING AND GOING. MY ADVISE…..DON’T BUY A WESTERN DIGITAL DRIVE UNLESS YOU DON’T MIND LOSING YOUR DATA.

By: Tina

Tina — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:29:24 +0000

David,

Did they offer to pay to recover your data, too? Of course not. I wouldn’t accept another piece of crap from this company. I bought mine at Costco so took it back for a full refund and reported the issue to them as well.

Tina

By: David

David — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:32:38 +0000

You have to speak with Consumer relations or someone with authority at Western digital and they will send you a new drive free of charge. I called to complain or comment about how this drive really sucked and they sent me a new one for free.

Good luck.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:09:46 +0000

I’ve had my 1TB MyBook for about three weeks, just enough time to back 400GB of photos and files from my workplace before I moved to another job. It suddenly stopped working. Years of photos of friends, family, important events, the last photos of my grandfather before he passed away…all gone for no good reason at all.

Don’t ever buy a Western Digital Hard Drive again.

By: David

David — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:48:21 +0000

My Western Digital Premium 1TB triple option died last night. Kind of pissed off that the warranty was only a year. Makes clicking sounds on top of the hair dryer sound it usually makes. Not going to buy WD external products again or rather I’ll pay closer attention to the warranty before I buy. But I got screwed - that’s for sure!