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

This drive is almost unbelievable. While my system did not initially come with a USB 3.0 connector and I was forced to purchase an external card, once installed it runs very fast. Im using this drive on a Linux web and media server. I installed a Syba USB 3.0 SuperSpeed 2-port PCI-Express USB adapter - PCI Express 2.0 x1 (uses the short white NON-VIDEO PCIE motherboard connector). This controller uses an NEC chipset fully supported under newer (2.6-32+) Linux kernels so installation went without a hitch. I mounted the drive using its default format (NTFS) and it worked perfect from the moment it mounted. I am most impressed with the overall speed of this drive. Using a gigabit network I am able to copy data at sustained rates exceeding 110 mega bytes per second, In some cases as fast as 140 meg for short periods. Compared to the USB 2.0 drive that transferred at around 40 meg per second this drive is a dream! I can copy digital movies, pictures, raw camera files, even rip Bluerays in minutes. The drive is a bit large compared to their Elements series. The Elements lies flat and is only 1.5 cm high whereas this drive stands upright, is larger in all dimensions and appears to want to be operated in the upright position based on the position of the feet. It comes with an external power supply (unnecessary?), a good quality albeit short cable and a large unfolding quick installation guide. Because it is an external drive it would be difficult to use it as a bootable system disk but with an appropriate motherboard supporting alternate boot methods this drive could be configured as a system disk for either Linux or Windows but would require more than the average understanding of computer hardware to make it work. Speed, a reputable company and large storage capacity make this a perfect choice if you already have a media server and want to increase its storage capacity. I upgraded from an Elements 2 tb USB 2.0 drive. If you dont have an existing media server you might want to check out Western Digitals NAS (Network Attached Storage) drives that come with built-in network sharing firmware eliminating the need for a separate server. NAS drives have an RJ45 connector (TCP/IP) and function just like a Windows or Linux file server.

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.

This drive is all i needed and expected from it. With its 2GB storage space it accomodates most of mine precious data, its much fater than old USB 2.0 MyBook when used with USB 3.0 controller ... and all of that is packed in a very minimalistic but elegant package. The activity LED is not overwhelming but bright enought to see it even in direct sun light. The drive is slim but heavy enough to maintain its stability on the desk and the power and usb cables that are included are long enough to reach to the other end of desk where I have my surge protector. The only bad thing about the drive for me was the software it came with, and the kind of autorun partition with the junk on it. Backup agent that is included and branded by WD is super limited, and almost useless unless you just want a very simple backup of everything. Other than that, if You know what are you doing you can easly wipe out all the junk software that came preinstalled and than set-up a backup software of your choice to do exactly what you want it to do. To make it clear for some interested in the software that WD supplied, my bigest issue was that it wont let you choose certain folder or folder tree to backup period, instead it will ask you wahat kind of data (pictures, documents, videos etc.) you want to backup, than it asks you were to look for it and than it scans the locations you provided for this particular data to be backed up. You have very limited or even no control over it what so ever. I want my backup software to give me aability to show it what folder, drives or single files to backup and just do it. Dont think for me whats good whats bad or whats a picture whats a video etc. A user that knows what backup is for and that he/she needs it, will for sure know what exactly is important to them and needs that backup. That said, the hard drive, its performance, design and the looks are great! Just make sure that if you want to use it for backup to get some more advanced backup utility.

The only two external hard drives i can swear on are Western Digital and Segate both these companies make super HQ products the only done side the newer HD dont have any on/off switch but, its no a massive deal The WD My Book 2tb HD is perfect for anything but, its a must have to add to your XBone you can usually get a 2tb hd on sale for around $90.00 maybe even less sometime you can get the 3tb hard drive for $110.00 it all depends on sale and where you go Ive never had any major problems with any WD Products (as far as the external hd if you aint using it just put the USB cable up and away or away where its safe the usb cable is the only major problem its a bit fragile but, as long as its out of the way youll be fine One other thing some WD My Books offer a chunk of cloud storage (Ive heard a mixed reaction as far as there cloud service) Havent used it most companies that use there own cloud storage are usually hinky! But, what do i know 10/10

Does a great job backing up, using Acronis.

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.

This 2TB hard drive workds great to extend the memory on my DishNetworks ViP 722K recorder. This price of $109.99 is less than the 1TB WD for $119.99 recommended on Dishs Website. After connecting the power and usb connections, this hard drive needed to be formated. I went to Menu, then multimeda, then it asked me if I wanted to format the harddrive. It took around 15 minutes or so, then the DVR recorder had to find the signal again. After all was said and done, total time was less than 30 min. total setup to get everything up and running. I did call dishnetwork to talk me through the formating part. Just didnt know where to find it. Movies take about 13-15 min to transfer over to the harddrive. One thing I like is that once I copy what I want to the harddrive, when I go to MY RECORDINGS, MY MEDIA comes up at the top of the list, so it is easy to find.

I have a home media center PC and have purchased several of these over the last couple years to store movies and tv shows. I always purchase them in pairs so I have one for the media center and one for backup. WD has changed the design slightly on this model compared to the 1TB & 2 TB model My Book. Those models had two blue LED lights on the front that would blink back and forth when data was being accessed. When the drive went into sleep mode the front would go dark and the lights off. This model has one micro white LED that is bright. It flashes when data is being accessed and continues to slowly pulse when the drive is asleep. A little disappointing in the asthtetics area that they changed this as I purchase this drive for looks almost as much as capacity. It also seems to take a bit longer to spin up and be ready when powering it on than the older models. I gave the bundled software 2 stars because it only came preloaded on the hard drive and not backed up on a disc. When I purchase a hard drive I dont feel anything at all should be on it. The first thing I did was format the drive but then I have to find a place to store the bundled software if I wanted to keep it. Otherwise, WD is a very solid product and I will continue to purchase. They cost a bit more than other brands but I feel you are paying for higher quality. USB 3.0 speeds were good. I purchased a seperate USB 3 card for my laptop but it also works fine at USB 2 speeds as well.

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

I only trust my important data to Western Digital or Seagate. I picked this particular product because while everything is going to have its issues, the issues this model had seemed less catastrophic than the issues the competing Seagate was having. People have talked about the control board and the plug itself having problems, but so far so good for me (about a month of use), Mine tends to stay plugged up and in the same spot anyway though. Reliable, good speed. Im consistently getting around 28 mb/s on a USB 2.0 port. The only thing I dont like is the sleep mode / head parking feature that a lot of drives have these days. Its a good idea, but not so well implemented IMO. I can understand head parking when its completely shut down for added transport safety, but doing it after 15 or whatever minutes idle time seems like unnecessary wear and tear and it makes it take twice as long for the drive to spin up. I cant fault the company for trying, but that isnt useful to me. Edit 3/3/16 -- Still have this drive, but now I only use it for backup as intended so the head parking is a non-issue. Still works fine.