Western Digital WDG1C2500N My Book Premium Edition 250 GB USB 2.0/Firewire400 External Hard Drive
At last, someone has finally created a device that is literally plug and play. There is no need to install any sofware for it. Plug in the USB, plug in the power, and you're ready to transfer files. The included Google software and Western Digital's back-it-up program is also optional. The box doesn't even have a cd for installation. You just plug it into the computer and you'll find the software on the drive itself.
It's a beautiful little black box with two blue led rings on the front. The outer ring consists of four LED's that flash in a clockwise direction as you read or write data to the drive. The inner ring consists of six LED's that display how much of the drive is being used up. The back contains one usb port and two firewire ports. The top and bottom have two black rubber borders that grip any surface pretty well and they contain exhaust vents which were made with looks in mind.
Finally, when Western Digital says quiet operation, they MEAN quiet operation. This hard drive makes absolutely no noise at all. Not on spin-up, nor while you're using it. The last great feature is that it detects when your computer is on or off so it will turn itself on and off as well.
Great product!
It is really amazing how fragile external drives continue to be. I read a lot of scary stories in customer reviews and figured it was just statistics -- tons of drives sold, a few scary stories, not to worry. And I have friends who have had some success with these devices. But my Western Digital My Book Premium Edition refuses to start up, and I've only had the device for one month.
These problems seem to be common to all external drive makes. I had a Maxtor that experienced similar problems. I chalked that up to an old and flaky laptop. But with a brand new, high-end Dell desktop with Firewire and USB 2.0, I thought I would be in the clear. Not so.
What should you, the reader, do about this? I believe the only realistic answer is the one recommended by a friend of mine: budget for two external backup drives. Swap them regularly so that when one fails you always have a reasonably fresh backup on another drive. It is a sad sign for the industry when you need backup drives for your back drives. But there you have it.
I needed a large capacity external hard drive for work, and I did a fair amount of research of different products. Based on several other reviews, I chose this unit with some circumspection. This unit was hands-down the easiest pc product I've ever installed. Granted, I kept the unit formatted as fat32, but it may be more difficult if you choose to format it to NTFS. The unit is very quiet, pleasing to the eye, and built tough. File transfer and retrieval is quick. My setup is a laptop hooked up to a docking station, and this unit does something I wasn't expecting: It turns itself on during boot up, and turns off during shutdown. I thought it was a cool, anyway. In conclusion, if you need an external HD, you will be very pleased with this unit.
I just purchased this item and it is awesome. It is as easy to use as plugging in a Jump Drive and start saving. The only difference is that it needs power. You may want to format it to NTSF in order to save larger videos. This was easy too and the manual directs you where to get the directions on the Western Digital website.
I purchased this external drive after my last external drive failed me wiping out my itunes library and most of my data. Now that drive is decorating my shelf with its dust, and this new spiffy drive is working like a charm. It really is plug and play. I loaded it, and it just worked... Awesome. The large capacity means I can get my iTunes library, my recorded shows and hard drive loaded on it with room to spare. Thanks my book.
PRETTY AMAZING!!!, NO NOISE, LOW HEAT, NO FAN, BEAUTIFUL STRUCTURE AND DATABASE AND POWERFULL TRANSFER SPEEDS, IT TAKES USB 2, FIREWIRE 400 TO THE MAX NO CONS. ILL BUY NEXT TIME THE PRO, THAT WAY ILL HAVE A COOL LIBRARY.
I DOWNLOAD LOTS OF ANIME SOMETIMES AS BIG AS 10 TO 5GB AND WHEN IM DONE DOWNLOADING IT, I TRANFER THOSE VIDEOS TO THIS HARDDRIVE IN LESS THEN 7 MIN, ON USB2 AND IN 5 MIN ON FIREWIRE 400, YUST IMAGINE WHAT WOULD BE LIKE ON THE PRO WITH FIREWIRE 800!!!
There are numerous external hard drives for sale. I looked at some of them and concluded that WD's My Book is the best choice for me. Using with XP SP2.
Pros:
1) I believe this is the best-looking external drive out there. I don't buy products solely based on looks, but I do think My Book's case design is elegant. It goes well with my black ThinkPad and I happen to have a USB hub that also glows in blue, so they complement each other well.
2) It is a plug-n-play device. It feels to me that WD's engineers worked hard to make the experience as easy as they can think of. The first time I plugged it in to my USB hub, the drive automatically started its initial configuration, which I declined because I already had other backup software and search utility (both included with My Book), but for someone new to computers, I don't know what could be simpler. Everything you need to use My Book with either a Windows machine or a Mac is included.
3) It is competitively priced. I went with My Book Premium Edition instead of Essential Edition (cheaper than many other drives with similar capacities) because it has both USB and Firewire connections. I plan to have this drive for a while and maybe I may use it with a Mac in the future.
4) I like WDC's support. For example, the included manual has instructions on how to convert from FAT32 to NTFS. Yeah, geeky, but the fact this is included in the manual as well as relevant FAQs on the web site (like restoring My Book's icon in Explorer after you format the drive) sealed the deal for me.
5) The best thing about My Book: I do very much like the feature that it turns off itself when the computer is shut down. I cannot find any other external drive that does this. It also has an extra protection built in not to shut it down while the data are being written to the device. That's intelligent and user friendly. It's quiet too.
Cons:
I read reviews that this drive is slow when writing data. I do not feel that it's slow. Your mileage may vary.
All in all, the elegance, price, and WD's support make My Book Premium my choice for an external hard drive!
The hard drive works well, it writes and retrives well. However, this was my first experience with an external hard drive and there is no info telling how to do more that install it. I am using it to store photos and had to consult an outside source in order to learn that I had to format it to get it to do more that act like a back up. Once it was formated it has performed very well.
My first WD My Book drive delivered from Amazon.com actually never worked but shut down after a few seconds on several computers. After spending nearly 30mins waiting for an only remotely helpful WD helpline rep, I was eventually directed to WD's support website which had a new drive shipped to me in less than 48hrs soothing my initial anger.
The new drive works just fine. The software is very easy to use (no installation), but provides only limited functionality. If you consider using this drive for more complex backups (rather than just storing data outside of your PC's hard drive), you should definitely consider upgrading the software.
Super nice HD so far. I bought the 250gb from JR, and arrived two days after ordering it. Plugged it into my notebook and was backing up my thousands of photos within 2 minutes.
The drive is very quiet. One nice feature is it shuts off when you shutdown your computer. Haven't used the backup software yet as I just drag and drop.
I have a wireless network of 3 computers in the house and can back up all three from the notebook.
Would recommend this product to anyone.
Pros
-its been 2 weeks since Ive had it and it hasnt erased my data
Cons
-Must turn off computer to turn off harddrive
-Sometimes isnt recognized by the computer
-Inner ring is supposed to show how much space is left on the drive....it doesnt do that.
-SUPPORT IS A JOKE. HAD TO CALL 6 TIMES IN 4 DAYS JUST TO BE PUT ON HOLD. I WAS ON HOLD FOR 20 MINUTES AND THE GUY WAS ANYTHING BUT HELPFUL.
Bottom Line
-I guess its not that bad, but I would recommend purchasing from another company, my luck with them has been anything but good. But the price is pretty reasonable, but just be careful if you decide to buy from WD.
Checking the other reviews here on Amazon showed that everyone either loved this Western Digital drive (and gave it 5 stars) if it worked or else they blackballed it if it failed. As the prices for these drives continue to fall, since larger drives (500 GB as well as even 1000 GB) are now available, they really are a good buy and an excellent way to externally store as well as transfer data.
My experience is that this drive is very easy to install, reformat, and use as an extra drive. No problems.
The only thing I really don't like is the fact that it doesn't have a real on/off button. The circle on the front does turn off the power, but whenever the computer starts, this drive starts as well. That means that unless the drive is manually turned off after the computer starts, the drive will always be on when the computer is on. I prefer to have the drive on only when I need it to save it from unnecessary wear and tear. Other external drives from Maxtor and even other Western Digital drives have real on/off switches.
This drive does make a noticeable hum while running.
I bought this for my father after his notebook suffered a major hard disk malfunction, so that he'll have a backup system in the future. He's been very pleased with it, and hasn't had any difficulty getting it set up, despite not being strong computer user.
Don't believe the claim that you can "just plug it in and it's ready to use." This product is set up for Windows, and the instructions for installing the drive for a Mac fail to mention that you have to reformat the drive to remove the Windows software. It's easy to become hopelessly fouled up.
Don't expect any help from Western Digital. If you can actually get connected to them, and your call isn't dropped while you wait for 40 minutes or so, you'll get a customer rep who reads to you from the same useless manual that came from the drive. Their web site help is equally useless.
Exceptional product. Easy to setup and had complete backup within minutes of receiving this product. Nicely made and not too bulky for your desk. Highly recommended!
I have a 4 year old computer, whose hard drive is too small for current needs.
I leave this on all the time and find myself useing it more and more.
I cleaned up a LOT of space off my regular drive. Of course this can be said for any external drive.
Specifically, this is nice. Installed with no problem, almost like a memory stick. It's very pretty and it barely takes up space. It makes little noise. I was worried it would be slow because of the size, but it seems to me to read just as fast as my regular drive.
I should have read more reviews before buying this ($&$@(@ hard drive. It seems simple enough, take it out of the box, plug it in to power, and then use either the firewire or usb2.0 plugs to connect it to the computer. However, it simply would not work with my windows xp sp2 machine. Every time it would show up for about a second or two and then poof - gone. I looked and looked for a way to make it work - but all I found was bad reviews of other ones that worked for a few days and then died. If you are considering this hard drive, or perhaps any western digital - consider something else.
Like most reviews on Amazon, it would appear that some reviewers have purchased the product, had one issue during installation and then rushed to write a bad review.
As we say in Geekdom, RTFM! Well, as a last resort anyways, lol.
I purchased this drive for my Intel iMac and it works perfectly. I was backing up my essential files within minutes. Unlike some comments here, I didn't need to reformat the drive. Just plug in the firewire cable, flick on the juice and you're good to go.
Powering down was easy; just hit the button on the front of the device (for those that couldn't work it out, it's in the middle of the glowing blue rings).
The operation is almost silent, more so than the Maxtor external drives I have used in the past. Plus it looks pretty damn sexy sitting on the desk :)
I bought one of these drives since it had a good capacity, nice design, and both FireWire and USB 2.0 ports. However, both the FireWire ports were completely dead--the drive didn't respond at all when I plugged it into my Mac, nor did it show up on the desktop. The USB port worked OK, but it was pretty slow (FireWire is faster than USB for large data transfers), so I exchanged this drive for another of the same model, thinking the odds that two drives would both have malfunctioning ports would be pretty slim.
I was wrong. The second My Book Premium that I bought had the exact same problem as the first (other online reviews I've seen also allude to defective batches of My Books). At this point, I gave up and bought a different hard drive.
This has a nice design although it is somewhat noisy sitting on my disk, a hmmmmmm. It is plug and play in the sense that you can just plug its usb cable into your computer and it will be recognized but in order to use all the "features" you have to load the WD button manager. Just another driver that sits in your system tray and all it does is enable the weird blue light on front to show how much space is used( I still have not figured out how to read it" and it allows you to power it down as long as no other programs are using it. Which means you have to close almost every program! There is no on/off switch!
In Pcmag reviews, performance is lower than other external drives. I just got a 500gig sata drive and coolmax sata enclosure that has firewire, usb and sata ports for $160. The performance is better, it has a on/off switch and it is much quiter.
I owned one of these without issue for about 4 months and decided to buy another (same size, same model) to double my external capacity.
The new drive's firewire ports (both of them) didn't work. When I exchanged it for a new one, same thing - both firewire ports defective. You can't chalk this up to user error because I own an identical drive and troubleshooted everything on both drives (cross-testing them on different computers, tested the cables, power supplies, etc. etc.) and no dice - it's the ports.
One faulty drive I'd chalk up to bad luck, but twice in a row is no coincidence. I'm getting rid of these drives (BOTH of them) because I don't want to trust my precious data to hardware that's habitually bad. I suggest looking at a different company. This isn't the first time I've had issues with a Western Digitial drive.
I owned one of these without issue for about 4 months and decided to buy another (same size, same model) to double my external capacity.
The new drive's firewire ports (both of them) didn't work. When I exchanged it for a new one, same thing - both firewire ports defective. You can't chalk this up to user error because I own an identical drive and troubleshooted everything on both drives (cross-testing them on different computers, tested the cables, power supplies, etc. etc.) and no dice - it's the ports.
One faulty drive I'd chalk up to bad luck, but twice in a row is no coincidence. I'm getting rid of these drives (BOTH of them) because I don't want to trust my precious data to hardware that's habitually bad. I suggest looking at a different company. This isn't the first time I've had issues with a Western Digitial drive.
I bought one of these drives since it had a good capacity, nice design, and both FireWire and USB 2.0 ports. However, both the FireWire ports were completely dead--the drive didn't respond at all when I plugged it into my Mac, nor did it show up on the desktop. The USB port worked OK, but it was pretty slow (FireWire is faster than USB for large data transfers), so I exchanged this drive for another of the same model, thinking the odds that two drives would both have malfunctioning ports would be pretty slim.
I was wrong. The second My Book Premium that I bought had the exact same problem as the first (other online reviews I've seen also allude to defective batches of My Books). At this point, I gave up and bought a different hard drive.
This has a nice design although it is somewhat noisy sitting on my disk, a hmmmmmm. It is plug and play in the sense that you can just plug its usb cable into your computer and it will be recognized but in order to use all the "features" you have to load the WD button manager. Just another driver that sits in your system tray and all it does is enable the weird blue light on front to show how much space is used( I still have not figured out how to read it" and it allows you to power it down as long as no other programs are using it. Which means you have to close almost every program! There is no on/off switch!
In Pcmag reviews, performance is lower than other external drives. I just got a 500gig sata drive and coolmax sata enclosure that has firewire, usb and sata ports for $160. The performance is better, it has a on/off switch and it is much quiter.
Like most reviews on Amazon, it would appear that some reviewers have purchased the product, had one issue during installation and then rushed to write a bad review.
As we say in Geekdom, RTFM! Well, as a last resort anyways, lol.
I purchased this drive for my Intel iMac and it works perfectly. I was backing up my essential files within minutes. Unlike some comments here, I didn't need to reformat the drive. Just plug in the firewire cable, flick on the juice and you're good to go.
Powering down was easy; just hit the button on the front of the device (for those that couldn't work it out, it's in the middle of the glowing blue rings).
The operation is almost silent, more so than the Maxtor external drives I have used in the past. Plus it looks pretty damn sexy sitting on the desk :)
I should have read more reviews before buying this ($&$@(@ hard drive. It seems simple enough, take it out of the box, plug it in to power, and then use either the firewire or usb2.0 plugs to connect it to the computer. However, it simply would not work with my windows xp sp2 machine. Every time it would show up for about a second or two and then poof - gone. I looked and looked for a way to make it work - but all I found was bad reviews of other ones that worked for a few days and then died. If you are considering this hard drive, or perhaps any western digital - consider something else.
I bought this for my father after his notebook suffered a major hard disk malfunction, so that he'll have a backup system in the future. He's been very pleased with it, and hasn't had any difficulty getting it set up, despite not being strong computer user.
Don't believe the claim that you can "just plug it in and it's ready to use." This product is set up for Windows, and the instructions for installing the drive for a Mac fail to mention that you have to reformat the drive to remove the Windows software. It's easy to become hopelessly fouled up.
Don't expect any help from Western Digital. If you can actually get connected to them, and your call isn't dropped while you wait for 40 minutes or so, you'll get a customer rep who reads to you from the same useless manual that came from the drive. Their web site help is equally useless.
Exceptional product. Easy to setup and had complete backup within minutes of receiving this product. Nicely made and not too bulky for your desk. Highly recommended!
I have a 4 year old computer, whose hard drive is too small for current needs.
I leave this on all the time and find myself useing it more and more.
I cleaned up a LOT of space off my regular drive. Of course this can be said for any external drive.
Specifically, this is nice. Installed with no problem, almost like a memory stick. It's very pretty and it barely takes up space. It makes little noise. I was worried it would be slow because of the size, but it seems to me to read just as fast as my regular drive.
Checking the other reviews here on Amazon showed that everyone either loved this Western Digital drive (and gave it 5 stars) if it worked or else they blackballed it if it failed. As the prices for these drives continue to fall, since larger drives (500 GB as well as even 1000 GB) are now available, they really are a good buy and an excellent way to externally store as well as transfer data.
My experience is that this drive is very easy to install, reformat, and use as an extra drive. No problems.
The only thing I really don't like is the fact that it doesn't have a real on/off button. The circle on the front does turn off the power, but whenever the computer starts, this drive starts as well. That means that unless the drive is manually turned off after the computer starts, the drive will always be on when the computer is on. I prefer to have the drive on only when I need it to save it from unnecessary wear and tear. Other external drives from Maxtor and even other Western Digital drives have real on/off switches.
This drive does make a noticeable hum while running.
We installed this external HD on a Dell computer. As most Dell customers will attest to, any time you talk to one of their representatives, they'll deny compatability with anything other than a Dell product. Well, I have upgraded the video card, power supply, and now added this HD to the computer with very liitle effort. This HD has performed perfectly for us.
I purchased 2 at the same time. One was DOA and after the return process I attempted to daisy chain the 2 units per sell sheet. Can't do it and tech support was no help. I have had them 2 months and one unit runs fine. The other has become noisy and I'm certain will have to be replaced soon. Poor QC on these products.
easy to install, easy to use. I give it a big thumbs up.
fast - stable - quiet - easy to use - and simply attractive. external drives don't get any better!
this is my first HDD ive ever bought. im glad i came on amazon and read all the user reviews and compared because i was thinking about getting a seagate one but they posed to have alot of problems.
the thing that got me hoocked on this HDD was its plug and play feature. it trully is plug and play.
i can honesly say that this is the best invesment ive ever made on a product due to what it does, and how many times its saved me.
Im sad and happy to say that it was dropped for the first time by my friend off a computer desk 3 days ago, he tripped on the wire and it fell about 4-5 feet to the ground, and to my amazment it still works. unlike my MP3 player :(
PRETTY AMAZING!!!, NO NOISE, LOW HEAT, NO FAN, BEAUTIFUL STRUCTURE AND DATABASE AND POWERFULL TRANSFER SPEEDS, IT TAKES USB 2, FIREWIRE 400 TO THE MAX NO CONS. ILL BUY NEXT TIME THE PRO, THAT WAY ILL HAVE A COOL LIBRARY.
I DOWNLOAD LOTS OF ANIME SOMETIMES AS BIG AS 10 TO 5GB AND WHEN IM DONE DOWNLOADING IT, I TRANFER THOSE VIDEOS TO THIS HARDDRIVE IN LESS THEN 7 MIN, ON USB2 AND IN 5 MIN ON FIREWIRE 400, YUST IMAGINE WHAT WOULD BE LIKE ON THE PRO WITH FIREWIRE 800!!!
It is really amazing how fragile external drives continue to be. I read a lot of scary stories in customer reviews and figured it was just statistics -- tons of drives sold, a few scary stories, not to worry. And I have friends who have had some success with these devices. But my Western Digital My Book Premium Edition refuses to start up, and I've only had the device for one month.
These problems seem to be common to all external drive makes. I had a Maxtor that experienced similar problems. I chalked that up to an old and flaky laptop. But with a brand new, high-end Dell desktop with Firewire and USB 2.0, I thought I would be in the clear. Not so.
What should you, the reader, do about this? I believe the only realistic answer is the one recommended by a friend of mine: budget for two external backup drives. Swap them regularly so that when one fails you always have a reasonably fresh backup on another drive. It is a sad sign for the industry when you need backup drives for your back drives. But there you have it.
I needed a large capacity external hard drive for work, and I did a fair amount of research of different products. Based on several other reviews, I chose this unit with some circumspection. This unit was hands-down the easiest pc product I've ever installed. Granted, I kept the unit formatted as fat32, but it may be more difficult if you choose to format it to NTFS. The unit is very quiet, pleasing to the eye, and built tough. File transfer and retrieval is quick. My setup is a laptop hooked up to a docking station, and this unit does something I wasn't expecting: It turns itself on during boot up, and turns off during shutdown. I thought it was a cool, anyway. In conclusion, if you need an external HD, you will be very pleased with this unit.
I just purchased this item and it is awesome. It is as easy to use as plugging in a Jump Drive and start saving. The only difference is that it needs power. You may want to format it to NTSF in order to save larger videos. This was easy too and the manual directs you where to get the directions on the Western Digital website.
I purchased this external drive after my last external drive failed me wiping out my itunes library and most of my data. Now that drive is decorating my shelf with its dust, and this new spiffy drive is working like a charm. It really is plug and play. I loaded it, and it just worked... Awesome. The large capacity means I can get my iTunes library, my recorded shows and hard drive loaded on it with room to spare. Thanks my book.
At last, someone has finally created a device that is literally plug and play. There is no need to install any sofware for it. Plug in the USB, plug in the power, and you're ready to transfer files. The included Google software and Western Digital's back-it-up program is also optional. The box doesn't even have a cd for installation. You just plug it into the computer and you'll find the software on the drive itself.
It's a beautiful little black box with two blue led rings on the front. The outer ring consists of four LED's that flash in a clockwise direction as you read or write data to the drive. The inner ring consists of six LED's that display how much of the drive is being used up. The back contains one usb port and two firewire ports. The top and bottom have two black rubber borders that grip any surface pretty well and they contain exhaust vents which were made with looks in mind.
Finally, when Western Digital says quiet operation, they MEAN quiet operation. This hard drive makes absolutely no noise at all. Not on spin-up, nor while you're using it. The last great feature is that it detects when your computer is on or off so it will turn itself on and off as well.
Great product!