WD My Book 1TB External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 File Backup and Storage

Packaged arrived within 3 days, very good shipping. The drive came pre-formatted as NTFS, and contained western digital product related software. I had to wipe it clean as I am using a combination of Linux and Unix systems which caused some trouble due to problems with IO instability (Debian Testing not the fault of this drive). The drive performs excellent in Windows 7 x64, and decent on USB 2.0 on a MacBook Pro (Using Parallels for NTFS drive mounting). Linux USB 3.0 drivers are still lacking, maximum read/write speeds about the same as USB 2.0 (35-50 MB/sec). Windows transfer speeds were outstanding, capping at over 110 MB/sec from a SSD and 90 MB/sec from a network Samba share. Data reads just as fast to the SSD, but not written quite as fast to the network share. In any event, I am extremely pleased with my purchase. Another outstanding product from Western Digital, they know how to do hard drives and its hard to go wrong if you pick their products.

I got this to be used on my home network to replace a smaller one I had. it was hooked up plugging in the power to a power strip and the USB to the back of my router. come to find out it was never made to work like this but for some reason it did. I hooked the new work book up the same way and was never able to get it to work. So I called WD tech support and found out it couldnt be hooked up that way, It would have to be connected directly to the computer .. the thing is I never seen it in the disruption on amazon telling me It had to be hooked to my PC only and could not work with a router made for external had drives. I never seen it not to say that it is there its just that I never seen it. I am keeping it and am going to hook it to one of my PCs and just share the drive it is on. The drive is nice and a lot smaller than I was thinking it would be

My Book sits securely on my desk with its reassuring tiny light blinking, absolutely quiet. It has ridges on the bottom so it can ventilate from the bottom as well as the back and top, so Im not worried about placing it anywhere or about it overheating. Right now, I only use it to store photos. Im not well organized and take lots of photos so I need a place to dump a lot of them without worrying about overloading my computer. So Ive just been selecting whatever photos I might want to use for free-lance assignments from my card reader and sending them to My Book. Then I could erase my memory chip and start shooting photos again. I then search the photos in My Book to pick the 1 to 20 photos Ill submit for my assignments and if theres any mess of photos, its not taking up my memory on my cameras memory chip or my computer. When I get time Ill start checking out My Books other capabilities, like backing up my computer. So far, My Book hasnt registered any memory used despite several weeks of downloading photos that fine quality digital photos that take up more room than raw photos. So Im very pleased. Its just what I needed.

I chose this rating because I feel the 3TB ext is doing its job flawlessly. My laptop has a 250GB internal HDD and was 75% filled up with movies. With this bad boy, I was able to transfer all my tv movies and other files to the external. Allowing my laptop to free up space. How often do I use the 3TB ext? At least once a week. I used to transfer tv movies from my laptop to 16GB thumbdrive to watch on my Samsung 40inch 1080p 120hz LED HDTV. Now I can use the 3TB ext. Like: Good price. Transfer rate is fast. Noise level is relatively quiet. Runs smoothly on Windows XP. Dual USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 compatibility. Dislike: Like many other customer reviewers been writing, the 3TB ext isnt sturdy and can easily be tipped over with the slightest touch. I recommend flipping it (or else the stand blocks the cable ports) and placing it on the plastic stand that came with the box. It works perfectly. Recommend to a friend? Yes.

I have spent all day (literally) trying to get this bad boy to work on my system. As of the end of October many manufacturers have updated their USB 3.0 Drivers. I have intel 3.0 usb hubs on my pc, running in win 7, 64 bit... I followed all of the instructions available to update my equipment (bios included) to be ready to to use this WD drive. I figured all these 1 star reviewers had to have missed something, or not had these new drivers to make this hard drive work. I was wrong. I am a very competent pc guy. I have never run into an issue like this. All the research Ive run across as of Nov. 6th 2012, all the drivers, all the instructions (even checked my bios, made sure my power settings didnt let usb drives sleep)... If YOU have a 64 bit system, vista, 7 and EVEN 8, stay away from this nightmare. Save yourself some time. Go with a usb 2.0 drive. Im printing up my return and sending this back to Amazon. I WISH WISH WISH this would work. Just FYI to tell you what happens.... Plug in the drive. Windows installs the drivers. One driver doesnt install, but its no biggie cause its included on the drive. Install that. The drive SHOULD work now (no NEED to install their software, but Ill get to that in a sec). Once you copy paste something into the drive it starts to do what it should. Then, after about a gig, the drive is no longer recognized by windows. It disappears. Then reappears and asks you if you want to open the drive. Of course, what you are copy/pasting is now incomplete. rinse repeat, same results EVERY TIME. If you are not moving data, you will not get a disconnect. Now, if you install the software that comes with the drive, you will see this connection and disconnect every few seconds. This is because the software will constantly check to see if the drive is there. And since it is doing this connect/disconnect all the time you will get the pop-up window every few seconds asking if you want to open the drive. Very annoying. I usually dont use software like this anyway, but I tried it out as a last resort just in case Im forced to go back to my old WD my book from years ago, a 500gb drive.... I need MORE space, but it still works fine. Which is why I went with WD again with my eyes closed.

I have 2 of these drives. Theyre dependable so far in that Ive experienced no problems with any data loss. Theyre plug and play and I use them as stand alone externals for back up. I dont unplug them and move them around which is why I bought 2 of them. One is running on an HP XP and the other on a Sony Vaio 64 bit Windows 7 desktop. My only complaint with this drive is that its slow to wake up. If I want to copy a file, when I drag it to the WD Drive, I oftentimes get a not responding message and then a few seconds later it copies ok. If I double click to open the drive to copy something into a folder, it takes about 10 seconds for the drive to wake up before I can copy to it. Other than that, the drive is fine and at a good price, its perfect for backups.

I bought this to back up my newly built system to and also I was planning on digitizing all my movie collection and this just seemed to be a good solution for both storage and backup! Ive had it for 2 months and I think I have had enough insights to write a review! So here it is! Speed: As a storage drive this is a great performer especially the USB 3.0, it is 4 times faster than USB 2.0 (see the images Ive uploaded on the product page), I love the fact that huge file transfers (im talking 100s of GB) takes less than an hour to complete! Backup also is blazing fast especially if you have set the utility to incremental (dont use the software that this comes with, more on that in a second)! Reliability: It has weathered 2.5 months of daily use and extensive use very well so far, but it is too early for me to comment on this! Hopefully it would fare better than the Seagate I had before, that is junk! Format: It is primarily designed to work with Win 7, and hence the the file format is NTFS, which is the best format for a hard drive this big, but for whatever reason you are buying this for a FAT32 system (like a PS3), then dont because it is going to be a PITA, and also you would not be utilizing this drive as it is designed to be used! So for PS3 owners you are better of buying a much smaller HDD and then reformatting that to FAT32 - there are utilities out there which would do that for you! Enclosure: Im not the biggest fan of WD enclosures, but this one is not bad! However I had a terrible issue trying to get this to be recognized by my

This external drive is an excellent choice for computer backups. Its 1 TB drive is large enough for me to do both a file and a clone backup. It operates quietly in the background with a relatively low energy consumption. There are only three concerns that I have: 1. It has been reported that the connectors on the drive have failed. Rather than find out about this problem the hard way, I just connect and disconnect the drive by using the AC plug that I connect to a terminal strip. This avoids completely a possible problem. 2. The file backup software works well. However, it is a resource hog during boot up. 3. In the event of drive failure during the warranty period, one must return the drive to Western Digital (WD). But, if one has confidential information on the failed drive, one will be loathe to do even though WD states that they will destroy the old drive. But this appears to be a common problem for all drive manufacturers.

Tomorrow the 28th of February 2023 will give this hard drive 10 years and it still works like a charm.

Purchased the WD My Book Essential 2TB backup drive because various astronomy web cam and flip videos were taking up too much space on my computer hard drives. I plugged this Hard Drive onto my Dell XPS 400 via the USB2 port and let the computer install the drivers. I then formatted the drive since I did not want to use the WD supplied backup software. It took 6 hours to reformat the 2TB Hard Drive. Windows XP indicated it had a capacity of 1.81TB (2,000,364,236,800 bytes). I took a few more hours to transfer my videos. I did a comparison of USB2 to USB3 ports on my HP laptop with this backup Hard Drive by copying the same 2.05GB folder from the backup drive to the local drive. The USB3 port was about 3 times faster than the USB2 port (22 seconds vs 57 seconds). You have to read WDs pdf file for instructions on how the My Book Essential functions (no printed manual). The power button on the rear only works when the WD SmartWare software is installed on your computer. The white LED on the front is on steady when idle, flashes 3x per second when active and flashes once each 2.5 seconds when in standby mode. So far (1 day), all is working as expected.