Western Digital WDG1T5000N My Book Pro Edition 500 GB USB/Firewire Triple Interface External Hard Drive

This is my 6th firewire drive, and my 2nd firewire 800 drive. Of all the drives I now own, this is the most quiet and quickest drive to date. This drive has been tasked with the daily backup duties for a recording studio and has performed without complaint. For the price today there is not a better deal out there for 500GB of quick storage.

I love this harddrive. Triple interface, including FireWire 800 is lightning fast. The included EMC software is much better than the Google backup included with 500GB premium drive.

Last year, I puchased a 250mb Lacie d2. When I found out about all the reports discussing its failure rate, I couldn't afford to take a chance, so I started looking for its replacement. After researching for a couple of weeks, I decided to purchase Western Digital's My Book Pro. It offered the most options and the largest capacity for the money, but more importantly, everything I've read has stated that WD makes very reliable hard drives.

I not only use the external HD for backing up files on my computer, I also store all of my digital music it, since I have more than 100gb of it. Because of this, I use the HD all the time and its reliability is extremely important to me. There might be cheaper options out there, but I am willing to pay a little more for safety.

Pros:
-Very small and light.
-High capacity for the size and price.
-Really great looking... it matches the look of my MacBook Pro (if looks matters to you).
-Clear rubber on all edges makes me feel comfortable to place it anywhere.
-Triple interface allows you to connect to computer in multiple ways and allows for easy daisy-chaining.

Cons:
-Takes longer for hard drive to show up on my desktop than other hard drives I've owned (especially when connected via USB2).
-Small spurts of vibration are emitted every once in a while. Can by annoying depending on where you set it.
-The front lighted gauge doesn't seem to work correctly, even though the software was installed correctly (I haven't done much trouble shooting with this issue, so it might be resolvable)

Overall, I think this is a great product at a fair price. I would recommend it to anyone who needs a reliable external HD with a large capacity drive.

This is my fifth My Book I've purchased in the past few months (and first triple interface Pro model). Haven't had any trouble with any of them. It's very fast and very quiet. And they look amazing when stacked next to each other! The Pro models features a plastic case (like the Essential model) and a rubberized edge (like the Premium model). I haven't tried the backup software that ships with it -- a previous drive I had backed up with Restrospect didn't restore fully when I my laptop crashed. I now opt to use the better Super Duper to clone my drives.

Just a couple notes. When formatted on Mac OS X, you end up with 465GB of storage (which is to be expected with any formatted drive). Also, the photos make out the drive to be iPod-like pearly white, which isn't correct. It's more like metallic plastic -- similar to the aluminum case of Powerbooks/Mac Book Pros.

I ordered this harddrive with desperate need of space. I trusted it since it was brand new and put 100 gigs worth of very very important stuff on it. One week later it won't load on any computer and all my stuff is lost. DO NOT BUY!

I tend to keep alot of things on my computer. Alot. Between movies, music, massive AV projects, and the archive of backups I keep, I needed space and this drive has delivered. It is quiet, speedy, and looks nice (silver) with my iMac. I appreciate that it has USB2, FW400 and FW800 -- I like having options.

My only complaint is that it wasn't delivered with a FW800 cable as promised in the 'included' list. When I called customer service (only 10 minute wait) they informed me that the cable would be shipped promptly -- he said that originally this cable wasn't going to be included but was later added to the packing list, so some boxes (though marked otherwise) didn't have it inside. Almost 2 months and 2 phone calls later I had the cable. I am preemptively concerned that this could be a sign of Western Digital's processing time, should I require any kind of repairs. Hopefully it won't come to that...

I would highly recommend this drive to anyone seeking a quiet drive with plenty of interface options and huge storage at a great price.

I have several Western Digital (WDC) disk drives. I normally prefer WDC disk drives. Until this one all have been great.

Problem #1: Often the "My Book Pro Edition" external hard drive is not detected by Windows XP when my computer is started. I have a new PC computer (Gateway with Athlon X2 dual core) that I have the My Book Pro Edition external drive connected to. The drive is connected via the FireWire400 interface. I have to warm reboot and sometimes even cold reboot before the drive is recognized by Windows. Once the drive is recognized it works OK.

Problem #2: The Retrospect Express backup software that is provided with the drive does not display the graphic images in the Help subsystem. Since Retrospect Express is not very intuitive, it is necessary to read the instructions in the Help system. It is very difficult to know what the instructions are referring to when the graphics do not display (only a graphics place holder is displayed).
Update 11/18/2006 WDC support finally responded to my request for help with information that resulted in a solution to this problem. WDC suggested that I install Retrospect Express again (a fifth time), but this time from a different DVD/CD drive. After a reinstall using a different DVD/CD drive all the graphics can be seen.

Problem #3: I have tried unsuccessfully to get answers to both of these issues from the WDC support website via email four times so far. The first answer I received recommended that I run a disk diagnostic test on the hard drive. That answer has nothing to do with either of my questions. A standard (computer generated?) reply is apparently sent in response to any question. The response says to click on a link to finish submitting the original question. The link DOES NOT EXIST in the email from WDC. I am extremely frustrated by the very poor WDC help system. After repeated failures to get help via email, I even called the WDC support telephone number. At least three times after responding to the support telephone menu questions to get to the right place, the system said help was not available and disconnected me.

So far, I have not received any help from Western Digital to solve the problems with the My Book Pro Edition disk drive and Retrospect Express software.

WDC may make good disk drives, but their support system is broken. The Western Digital support system irritates customers rather than helping them.

Update 11/18/2006 WDC provided a solution to problem #2. See above.
I would now upgrade my rating to 4 stars, but I can not find a way to change my rating.

I recently purchased the WD 500GB hard drive it works great and I received it on time. Thank you Amazon.com!

Fast. reliable and full of space. I have had it running nearly constantly for months without a problem. If it has the longevity, I will be using this product for a long time.

First, I am not affiliated with WD or Amazon. Just a happy user. Amazon sent follow-up mail asking me to review my purchase, and I'm so satisfied that I did it.

This WD My Book Pro 500GB drive is my third WD USB drive in the past 1.5 years. They "just do it". I have had nothing but success with them, while I've had two other USB drives fail.

I am a high-end technical user and I push this and all of my drives hard. I do development of large-scale data systems that use this USB drive as the data platform and I am very happy with its reliability and response. I have several 20-50GB images that perform well and stay consistent on this drive.

I admit that I don't use any of the "one touch" backup features or ease of use things, so I don't know how they stack up. In fact the included Retrospect backup utility is designed to not work on Windows 2003 Server, so I guess that's a minor negative. But for raw performance and reliabilty, I can tell you that I am very happy. Check out other reviews for analysis of the creature comforts.

I purchased this external hard drive to store files for my client. The triple interface is excellent, and few external hard drives out there have USB and two Firewire options. The design is also good, and while I don't use the backup software, it is there. Plug and Play works effortlessly on this device, which isn't saying much, but many products do have their own problems. There has been no data loss or any problems, even after I dropped the hard drive from about 1.5 feet off the ground (oops).

What I don't like about this hard drive is the large front-side button, which is very easy to click when adjusting the position of the drive. This will sometimes kill whatever process you may be running on the drive, which is annoying. I also which there was a front-side USB port, as some other Western Digital hard drives have.

The WD idea of using these as books is cute, but impractical. Hard drive space is increasing so rapidly that your "books" will soon be outdated.

Nonetheless, highly recommended if you need the triple interface; otherwise the "lower" versions of the WD external drives will work just as well.

Update: This hard drive can get a bit warm, so do not place it on top of your desktop computer.

I 've been using this product for 2 weeks now. so far so good. I just want to mention that the color is not Apple white, it's exactly like the silver ipod.

I've been using this drive for about a month now on my MacBook Pro laptop, and I really like it. It doesn't take up much space in my computer backpack, but it might be bulky for some briefcase-style laptop bags. The Firewire 800 interface is extremely fast and there are Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces for those who need them. Firewire 800/400 and USB 2.0 cables were included, which is a nice touch. I did read in another review that some of these hard drive models were shipped without a Firewire 800 cable, and the manufacturer had to be contacted to correct the situation.

The backup software included with the drive (Retrospect) received fairly poor user reviews, and after trying it for myself I decided to remove it and spend $35 on a backup software suite that I could rely upon (Mac users might want to check out a backup product called "Synk"). I would expand more on the problems I had, but it's been a while now and I can't remember. I would have given this product 5 stars, had it come with computer backup software that ended up being useful to me.

The drive and internal fan (if there is one) are very quiet. I did read a review about the 1 Terabyte drive being excessively loud (and much larger), so if you don't need that kind of storage space, I think you will be happier with the 500GB model.

I fully recommend this product, especially considering the relatively low price tag.

I got this to back up my music, movies and documents from multiple computers, both Mac and PC. The drive has performed flawlessly on both platforms, which is exactly what I hoped for. It's also a sleek-looking unit with a power display that is attractive, clever and informative.

This is for much a great external Drive, I think that maybe to the Size will be slow, but my surprise was that it's really good, and quickly too.

If you really want performance and A lot of space to save your stuff, this is the one.

perchased last August or September i dont remember exacly... working just fine without any problems at all, very quiet. The prduct has all the needed software and cables required.
its only little slow in start up only if connected to the pc (pc already on).
Other wise this product is the TOP.

I've been looking for an external drive with 300+ gb for the longest time. I read all the reviews and did my homework. one day I just got bored from all the hesitation and bought this drive.
and believe me U won't regret it.

pros:
-very fast.
-small.
-the best looking drive out there.
-triple interface, now come on.
-on and off botton.
-quite.
-relatively cheap.

cons:
-from time to time there is this little vibration.. a little buzz (it last less than a sec). it rarely happens, but its unnoticeable so I'm not bothered by it really.

overall I'm loving the drive!

Needed big and fast external drive for new HD videocam (Sony HDR-HC3)... Did some homework and found all required capabilities along with very reasonable price/GB in the MyBook Pro. Using it for several months now and completely thrilled: 100% successful mounts and unmounts, blazingly fast FW800 , and stylish package that looks great next to my MacBook Pro17. Button Manager functionality works as advertised, and device is whisper quiet. Overall a great piece of gear at a great price... excellent value. Thinking of getting a second one soon, since I've filled this one about 75% full with work in progress. Looks to be straightforward enough to just daisy chain another one off the back (there are 2 FW800 ports, 1 FW400, and 1 USB2.0), so I might just have a go at that soon. There are a couple other options out there worth considering too, but this one seemed to be best value of the bunch, and that perception has been exceeded by my experience to date.

I've had the My Book for about 3 months now and I couldn't be happier with the purchase. Since I don't have a good Firewire connection on my computer, I use the USB port, but still the capacity trumps the lack of speed (which, eventually, can be achieved with a new computer). I would recommend this to anybody looking for a spot to hold your backups (always back up to DVDs as well!), music collection, etc.

I scanned reviews for Western Digital as well as La Cie. I also checked the WD and LC websites for product details. Past users were fairly critical of La Cie drives reporting numerous problems & failures. I have an old La Cie and it has worked well enough but is noisy. I wanted a very large capacity hi-speed and quiet external drive for my new iMac. I ordered and took delivery very quickly. Installation and partition using OSX Disk Utility was easy. The drive is very quiet and with FireWire 800 is very fast! Its vertical orientation and included FW cable are pluses. I use CarbonCopyCloner v2.3 and the cloning of my current 60GB is very quick. Overall I am very pleased with and highly recommend the WD MyBook pro 500GB external drive.

I have used this ext.HD several times and it comes in great use. My wife can use it on her MAC while I use it on my laptop which is windows based.... so all in all it is perfect for us both.

When looking for a 500gb external drive for my Mac PowerBook there were a number of choices. I have used Lacie with good success in the past but the lower price and good exterior design of the My Book prompted me to give it a try. While the drive works well it has one major problem, extreme sensiticity to line voltage. After several "crashes" of the drive I called customer support. They said this drive REQUIRES a dedicated electric outlet (you can't plug it into a strip). It has worked well sense that change but who has many available dedicated outlets near their computer?. It also has a power sensing firewire connection so that it trys to turn on and off every time your computer goes to sleep. This also prompts warnings (improper removal of an external device). Western recommends not using the sleep mode with your computer when the drive is connected. This makes it impractical if you leave you computer on most of the time and like your drives always connects. Not very practical. Also since this drive is designed to work with both Mac and PC you have to reformat the drive to save more than 100gb from a Mac.
Bottom line: it looks well made but it is too finicky for me. I'lll stick with Lacie next time.

One of the best purchases I've made. Never have had a problem with this product and makes transferring data simple between computers.

I love this drive. It's quiet, stable, and looks great with my mac powerbook. I have kept it on almost all day everyday for a few months now and never had any problems. I highly reccommend this drive!

Overall, this hard drive does everything it promised. It's small, quiet, sleek, and holds a ton of data.

Considering that this disk is marketed to both Mac and PC users, it's no surprise that WD went with the lowest common denominator in terms of formatting. The device is formated as Windows FAT32 out of the box, which works on all systems, but is generally not ideal. I have a Mac and I wanted to take advantage of journaling and the HFS+ filesystem. Re-partitioning the drive took less than five minutes using Apple's Disk Utility. Doing this erased everything on the disk, but all the bundled software is also included on a CD.

I have the disk hooked up my Mac mini with firewire 400, and it's great. All the lights work (including the capacity gage), and the drive goes to the sleep whenever the mini does. (Make sure to install the drivers to get this functionality). The only slight annoyance is that the drive takes an unusually long time to mount when plugged into the computer. Whereas an iPod or LaCie drive will show up almost immediately, the My Book takes 30 seconds or more to mount. This doesn't affect performance at all, and it's a small price to pay for all of the other excellent features.

This device is working great. The only watch out was that the disk came formatted FAT32 which does not allow very large files to be saved (such as back up files or DVD images). I had to re-format the drive to NTSF before using it for large files. Of course, the re-format wiped out the existing back up files on the drive.

This is a great drive and met all my expectations apart from one thing.

I bought two identical drives for backing up one to the other.
Daisy chaining them together was what I expected to do, but it just won't work. What did work however, is connecting the drives to the computer individually. In my case, one drive with Firewire and one with USB. This is inconvenient and, more importantly, very slow transfer.

The response from Western Digital Customer support regarding my problem:
"You have a known issue and unfortunately, we have no fix. I recommend you use one drive with USB and the other with FireWire."

Not great. You might wanna consider this if you plan to use them the way I intended to.



Installs easily, only running USB 2.0 , haven't tried firewire. Mounts easily with windows boot, although their buttonmanager software loads sporadically. All the photos would lead you to believe the colors are white and black. Bought thinking the white was similar to the Apple color white, NOT , its very silver, probably would have ordered black had I know. Drive performance is decent, defragging takes a long time. Turns off with windows which is nice. Compact , nice design, quiet. Quite happy, wish it was black.

The My Book pro 500gig edition is an excellent deal. From what I know Western Digital is a very reputable manufacturer of hard drives. I've had the drive for about a month now, and I've had no real problems with it.

I'm running it with my Mac book pro 17" via the firewire 800 cable. I've noticed that the drive is a bit temperamental. For example, if I turn on my computer with the drive plugged into the computer and turned on, the computer will not recognize the drive. I think this is due to the auto-sleep function which tells the drive to sleep, turn on, and turn off when the computer does the same. So for the drive to be recognized I have to have it turned off and plugged in and then start my computer and everything runs fine. I can also plug the drive into the computer after the computer is on and that works, but I just learned that this can damage the computer and the drive. Thats the only trouble I've had which I think is due to my ignorance and not a failure of the drive.

The option of firewire 400, 800, and USB 2 make this drive an excellent choice. All the cables are included which is also a nice feature.

I previously read complaints about Western Digital's customer service being very bad and I checked it out myself and, sadly, it's true. I'm afraid if I ever have trouble with the drive I'm on my own, as the online support page sucks.

Overall, however, I feel this is a great buy. I don't think you'll find this much space with all the included cables and the triple interface for cheaper.

I have had WD My Books work great on PC's so I purchased this PRO edition for my imac. Had trouble getting it to mount, finally got USB to work, but the firewire never mounted. Called WD customer support and they had me return the drive. After my experience I did some research and it seems this is common with this drive and the MAC.

Don't want to jinx it. Most mechanical items fail me, and this has not and it's been a few months. I definitely recommend it.

Sufficient space, 500 Gigs. Nice, sleek case.

No major problems so far. Drive runs cool and quiet, not as noisy as stated in other reviews.

As with any other large capacity drive, re-formatting to NTFS could take some time.

Cons: Didn't get the 1394A interface to work on the first shot.


By looking at the images from web, I thought My Book Pro has white color. When I got it, it was a SILVER !!!

Other than that, the drive works fine for me. Formatted to NTFS and using FireWire 400 connection.

first thing I did was reformat and partition, then I connected it to the USB 2.0 port on our Airport Extreme, and now all 3 laptops (a Macbook Pro, a G4 Powerbook, and a G4 iBook) have space to back up to, and we have a common drive to share files with. Has worked flawlessly, both when it was connected directly to my Macbook Pro via firewire 400, and on wireless network.

This is the best external hard drive that I have ever purchased. This hard drive is sturdy but portable even for me to travel to clients to do work at various sites.

I got this drive in the fall of 2006 and have successfully had a daily back up of my internal harddrive and my external media drive. Just last week my internal drive died, and was replaced. In just two hours, the My book pro restored my entire system set up and I was back to working as if nothing had happened. It is as quiet as my lacie drive, and sitting on a desk with a mac mini, the lacie drive, and other gizmos and gadget, it is no louder than any of the others. I will be buying another one in a few weeks.

This product simply DOES NOT WORK. I purchased this item about a month ago to back up my software on my old PC (because I was about to buy a new PC). After backing up all my photos, music, files extra using the trusted drag-n-drop method it seemed as though the files loaded successfully on the hard drive. I restarted my old computer and verified that the files were on the drive. Everything seemed ok. I then went to my new computer to upload the files but it said that the files didn't exist. It was panic time (because I had already reformatted my old compuer) so I just lost all my files. I went to WD Support and I was told to only back my files up using their software called Retrospect. If I used drag and drop, then who knows what will happen. I was enraged. External hard drives are supposed to be simple, like portable USB drives, but WD has made a simple process more difficult that it needs to be. I will NEVER recommend or buy a Western Digital product again.

I have been a graphic designer (printed media) for over 17 years. My very first hard drive was a whopping 20mb and I thought it was huge! Over the years I have purchased and used many different storage hard drives (internal, external and removable). This hard drive has been dependable, recovers if my computer crashes (not often) due to power/weather problems. I purchased this drive as my previous 500gb hard drive (a different brand) crashed and had to be reformatted. Fortunately I had only started using it as a backup and not much was lost. I have had ZERO problems with this Western drive and I like the fact that it powers up and down with my Mac. I am thinking of buying another one soon. I recommend it to anyone who needs lots of storage space.

I purchased two of these drives for developers to use in backing up work product. We were pleased with GB capacity, portability, and easy setup and use of the devices. The EMC Retrospect utility is a nice addition. Exactly what we were looking for in external drives. Also nice design. Takes up very little space blends in nicely on the desktop with books etc.

This unit setup perfectly with a new Dell with XP, installed with USB and then switched to Firewire. I don't know about long-term peformance obviously, but it works fine, just another drive on the PC. And it's fast with the Firewire connection, for regular use not noticeably different than the 500 gig hard disk in the Dell. It runs warm, but nowhere near hot, and it's silent except for a little clicking when it does its shutdown light show dance. I don't know what else you would want from this kind of drive, except for it to be a lot smaller and cheaper, which is coming obviously. But for now this multiple interface unit appears to be the state of the art.

XP WIDOWS DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE DRIVE AS IT WAS PROMISED. FIREWIRE CONNECTITION CAUSES CRASHES. CAPICITY IS NOT FULL 500 GB, IT IS LESS. OVERALL, IT WORKS.

Fast data transfer when using FW800. I had no trouble daisy chaining two drives together so they could share a port on my MBP. I formatted the drives as "Mac OS Extended, Journaled" and it works great.

Was a BRREEZZEE to install took less than 5 minutes and I was throwing stuff on it fast as I could.

I remember the days we backed things up on 3.5" floppy disks. My computer was having problems lately, and having had a computer completely die on me before, I didn't want to lose all of my photographs, videos, and important startup business documents. While I consider myself competent with most technology, I still wanted something that was self-running with no maintenance or interference from me. I also wanted a drive large enough for the future, with enough ports to work on anything. This truly was an investment.

I have been extremely pleased with the performance of this drive. I've had no hardware or software failures, and every night it backs up my computer seamlessly. It has lived up to every single requirement I had when purchasing a backup drive. And, it doesn't hurt that it looks great!

I'm a Mac user and own two of these drives and one 500GB My Book Premium ES. I like the drives, and they have all worked well for me individually. Unfortunately, unlike the claim in the Product Description, I have not been able to daisy-chain any of my drives together or these drives with drives from other makers; in fact, when I try to daisy-chain with these drives, my Mac won't recognize any of them at all! After researching this issue, I discovered that the problem seems to be some sort of conflicting IDs with these drives. Apparently, Western Digital is aware of the problem, but has not yet issued any kind of fix (and doesn't even mention it at all on their Support pages).

So, if you are a Mac user considering buying this drive and don't care about daisy-chaining, then this may be the drive for you. If you think that you'd want to daisy-chain with these drives, then you should check out this issue.

Purchased this device for the firewire 800. Worked great right out of the box with the lacie firewire 800 card. Liked the drive so much I purchased a second one. System could not recognize the second drive. Thought it was bad until I disconnected the first drive. Then it worked fine. Tried several variations, both connected to the lacie card, daisy chained both directions, nothing worked. Contacted WD. After 4 emails with them with some suggestions to solve the problem, they finally told me it was an existing problem they are aware of and that there is no fix for it. They suggested using one drive as a firewire 800 and the second one as usb 2.0. It has something to do with a GUID. Seems all the WD triple interface drives use the same address and it makes it impossible to have two drives connected via firewire 400 or firewire 800 at the same time. I could have saved a few dollars if I had known that only usb 2.0 can work with a firewire drive for WD.
For a problem they are aware of it seems they don't seem to be telling people about it. I would have returned the units, but I had the first one for a few weeks and it was a month by the time WD told me it was 'A known issue'. And with over 400gb each of data stored on them I didn't want to take the time to back it up somewhere else. Turned this one over to PCWorld and they sent it to their On Your Side editor. I think it should be on the Consumer Watch column.
So if you get one be aware it will be the only firewire drive you can use. I read that the Maxtor drives don't have this problem. Try them instead.

a very excellent external HDD. I'm considering to even get another one or the 1TB once it gets more reasonably priced. Highly recommended

Have a Mac G5 that this drive doesn't work at all well with. Plan on returning this item.

No instruction booklet in the box, only a incomplete quick install guide and a CD probably containing instructions, however unreadable on my Mac.
This being said I found links to impractical Western Digital support. I thought I would only need to plug and use. Not a chance. I suppose I will need to go to the bookshop and buy a 500 pages instruction guidebook if I want to be able to make use of this equipment...

I've been using this drive for about 9 months now. I am very satisfied. The FireWire 800 is very fast with my iMac. I'm going to get another one soon. The drive is very quiet and has given me no troubles at all.

Fast firewire 800 connection, quiet, dependable and lots of space. Performs just as advertised.

I bought this item because most of the other reviews seemed very positive, and i am actually very impressed with this product. The shipping speed was fast too, i got it in 3 days! plus the color is nice, and it just seemed like the extra 20 bucks for the pro edition was worth it! so far so good, no problems, i might just get another one soon! :)

I'd been contemplating a more spacious external hard drive for some time when I read a review of the My Book Pro in Macworld. That sold me, and I'm glad I made the investment. I took the My Book Pro out of the box, connected it via Firewire 400, formatted it for Mac OS X, and started moving files right away. Good stuff!

I used this WD MY BOok Pro Edition drive to back up a lot of files on one xp machine. Took it to another xp machine, which recognized the drive and then in the middle of some copying gave error messages and showed my drive as empty (even though it contained 300 gigabytes of files from the first machine). Plugged it into my vista machine and it doesn't get installed at all - Vista tells me it can't find any drivers. WD's website mentions nothing about vista. In fact it mentions very little about anything - about as sparse as the 4 page instruction book that comes with the drive. Anyway, plugged it back into my original xp machine which could see all my files. Took it back to the second xp machine and everything seemed ok so I started my copying again. Now that machine has stopped responding completely! I know its the WD drive causing the problem because until now that has been an extremely reliable PC. Too scared to just turn off the power in case my data is corrupted. I'll wait overnight to see what the situation is in the morning. So much for the peace of mind from doing external backups! Sending it back tomorrow. From reading other reviews there are design problems with this product. Its about time these manufacturers were held to account for putting out shoddy products with no support. Too many people put up with this contemptuous attitude from computer hardware and software vendors. My advice is always: don't waste your time trying to fix their problems. SEND IT BACK and make them pick up the bill and warn others through publishing reviews. Only when it starts to hurt their bottom line will these vendors start paying attention to quality control.


I'd been contemplating a more spacious external hard drive for some time when I read a review of the My Book Pro in Macworld. That sold me, and I'm glad I made the investment. I took the My Book Pro out of the box, connected it via Firewire 400, formatted it for Mac OS X, and started moving files right away. Good stuff!

I used this WD MY BOok Pro Edition drive to back up a lot of files on one xp machine. Took it to another xp machine, which recognized the drive and then in the middle of some copying gave error messages and showed my drive as empty (even though it contained 300 gigabytes of files from the first machine). Plugged it into my vista machine and it doesn't get installed at all - Vista tells me it can't find any drivers. WD's website mentions nothing about vista. In fact it mentions very little about anything - about as sparse as the 4 page instruction book that comes with the drive. Anyway, plugged it back into my original xp machine which could see all my files. Took it back to the second xp machine and everything seemed ok so I started my copying again. Now that machine has stopped responding completely! I know its the WD drive causing the problem because until now that has been an extremely reliable PC. Too scared to just turn off the power in case my data is corrupted. I'll wait overnight to see what the situation is in the morning. So much for the peace of mind from doing external backups! Sending it back tomorrow. From reading other reviews there are design problems with this product. Its about time these manufacturers were held to account for putting out shoddy products with no support. Too many people put up with this contemptuous attitude from computer hardware and software vendors. My advice is always: don't waste your time trying to fix their problems. SEND IT BACK and make them pick up the bill and warn others through publishing reviews. Only when it starts to hurt their bottom line will these vendors start paying attention to quality control.


I've been using this drive for about 9 months now. I am very satisfied. The FireWire 800 is very fast with my iMac. I'm going to get another one soon. The drive is very quiet and has given me no troubles at all.

Fast firewire 800 connection, quiet, dependable and lots of space. Performs just as advertised.

I bought this item because most of the other reviews seemed very positive, and i am actually very impressed with this product. The shipping speed was fast too, i got it in 3 days! plus the color is nice, and it just seemed like the extra 20 bucks for the pro edition was worth it! so far so good, no problems, i might just get another one soon! :)

Have a Mac G5 that this drive doesn't work at all well with. Plan on returning this item.

No instruction booklet in the box, only a incomplete quick install guide and a CD probably containing instructions, however unreadable on my Mac.
This being said I found links to impractical Western Digital support. I thought I would only need to plug and use. Not a chance. I suppose I will need to go to the bookshop and buy a 500 pages instruction guidebook if I want to be able to make use of this equipment...

a very excellent external HDD. I'm considering to even get another one or the 1TB once it gets more reasonably priced. Highly recommended

Purchased this device for the firewire 800. Worked great right out of the box with the lacie firewire 800 card. Liked the drive so much I purchased a second one. System could not recognize the second drive. Thought it was bad until I disconnected the first drive. Then it worked fine. Tried several variations, both connected to the lacie card, daisy chained both directions, nothing worked. Contacted WD. After 4 emails with them with some suggestions to solve the problem, they finally told me it was an existing problem they are aware of and that there is no fix for it. They suggested using one drive as a firewire 800 and the second one as usb 2.0. It has something to do with a GUID. Seems all the WD triple interface drives use the same address and it makes it impossible to have two drives connected via firewire 400 or firewire 800 at the same time. I could have saved a few dollars if I had known that only usb 2.0 can work with a firewire drive for WD.
For a problem they are aware of it seems they don't seem to be telling people about it. I would have returned the units, but I had the first one for a few weeks and it was a month by the time WD told me it was 'A known issue'. And with over 400gb each of data stored on them I didn't want to take the time to back it up somewhere else. Turned this one over to PCWorld and they sent it to their On Your Side editor. I think it should be on the Consumer Watch column.
So if you get one be aware it will be the only firewire drive you can use. I read that the Maxtor drives don't have this problem. Try them instead.

Fast data transfer when using FW800. I had no trouble daisy chaining two drives together so they could share a port on my MBP. I formatted the drives as "Mac OS Extended, Journaled" and it works great.

Was a BRREEZZEE to install took less than 5 minutes and I was throwing stuff on it fast as I could.

I remember the days we backed things up on 3.5" floppy disks. My computer was having problems lately, and having had a computer completely die on me before, I didn't want to lose all of my photographs, videos, and important startup business documents. While I consider myself competent with most technology, I still wanted something that was self-running with no maintenance or interference from me. I also wanted a drive large enough for the future, with enough ports to work on anything. This truly was an investment.

I have been extremely pleased with the performance of this drive. I've had no hardware or software failures, and every night it backs up my computer seamlessly. It has lived up to every single requirement I had when purchasing a backup drive. And, it doesn't hurt that it looks great!

I'm a Mac user and own two of these drives and one 500GB My Book Premium ES. I like the drives, and they have all worked well for me individually. Unfortunately, unlike the claim in the Product Description, I have not been able to daisy-chain any of my drives together or these drives with drives from other makers; in fact, when I try to daisy-chain with these drives, my Mac won't recognize any of them at all! After researching this issue, I discovered that the problem seems to be some sort of conflicting IDs with these drives. Apparently, Western Digital is aware of the problem, but has not yet issued any kind of fix (and doesn't even mention it at all on their Support pages).

So, if you are a Mac user considering buying this drive and don't care about daisy-chaining, then this may be the drive for you. If you think that you'd want to daisy-chain with these drives, then you should check out this issue.

This unit setup perfectly with a new Dell with XP, installed with USB and then switched to Firewire. I don't know about long-term peformance obviously, but it works fine, just another drive on the PC. And it's fast with the Firewire connection, for regular use not noticeably different than the 500 gig hard disk in the Dell. It runs warm, but nowhere near hot, and it's silent except for a little clicking when it does its shutdown light show dance. I don't know what else you would want from this kind of drive, except for it to be a lot smaller and cheaper, which is coming obviously. But for now this multiple interface unit appears to be the state of the art.

XP WIDOWS DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE DRIVE AS IT WAS PROMISED. FIREWIRE CONNECTITION CAUSES CRASHES. CAPICITY IS NOT FULL 500 GB, IT IS LESS. OVERALL, IT WORKS.

This drive has been running constantly since I purchased it nearly a month ago, serving as a storage drive for a large, environmental model that I use for research. I simply plugged it in to my XP workstation, and began writing and reading files seamlessly. Very simple installation (none really) for WinXP USB use, although I purchased the pro edition because I wanted to interface with Firewire in the near future. Little noise, little heat, little worry. It currently holds about 350 GB of data, and I'm considering buying a second once this one fills. I'm overall pleased.

I've been very pleased with this external drive-500GB. My only comments would be that at first the drive was a little 'hit or miss' with mounting on the desktop but a restart would always fix it. Now it seems to always mount. Its all automatic so no need to ever touch the drive. The other thing would be that it could use one more FireWire 400 port (there is only one). I don't use 800 yet so I need to daisy it off of my SmartDisk FireLite that happens to have 2. All in All-Get this drive!

Wow, this thing is very noisy, I may have to find a sound proof booth for it. The Accomdata drive I brought two years ago is whisper silent, plus it has 2 FW-800 ports for expansion. The WD Pro only has one FW-800 - So out of the three types of connections available the slowest one was chosen for expansion. And remember FW800 is not backward compatible to FW400.

This is an excelent product, I bought two to storage movies and pictures, I work with MAC, perfect match, absolutly quiet.

I bought this HD because my Lacie (which had lasted over 5 years) crashed on me finally. So I figured I would try a different company. Out of the box this product looked great, although it was very large and heavy. I immediately plugged it in to test it and it came up - however that was the one and only time that it booted. I tried several more times and it wouldn't boot up. VERY VERY scary when you buy a new device to hold all you important data and it won't boot up out of the box. I don't know if this product just happened to be the one that sucked - but I am not taking any chance on a defective HD and my data. Going back to Lacie!

By looking at the images from web, I thought My Book Pro has white color. When I got it, it was a SILVER !!!

Other than that, the drive works fine for me. Formatted to NTFS and using FireWire 400 connection.

first thing I did was reformat and partition, then I connected it to the USB 2.0 port on our Airport Extreme, and now all 3 laptops (a Macbook Pro, a G4 Powerbook, and a G4 iBook) have space to back up to, and we have a common drive to share files with. Has worked flawlessly, both when it was connected directly to my Macbook Pro via firewire 400, and on wireless network.

Don't want to jinx it. Most mechanical items fail me, and this has not and it's been a few months. I definitely recommend it.

Sufficient space, 500 Gigs. Nice, sleek case.

No major problems so far. Drive runs cool and quiet, not as noisy as stated in other reviews.

As with any other large capacity drive, re-formatting to NTFS could take some time.

Cons: Didn't get the 1394A interface to work on the first shot.


I have had WD My Books work great on PC's so I purchased this PRO edition for my imac. Had trouble getting it to mount, finally got USB to work, but the firewire never mounted. Called WD customer support and they had me return the drive. After my experience I did some research and it seems this is common with this drive and the MAC.

The My Book pro 500gig edition is an excellent deal. From what I know Western Digital is a very reputable manufacturer of hard drives. I've had the drive for about a month now, and I've had no real problems with it.

I'm running it with my Mac book pro 17" via the firewire 800 cable. I've noticed that the drive is a bit temperamental. For example, if I turn on my computer with the drive plugged into the computer and turned on, the computer will not recognize the drive. I think this is due to the auto-sleep function which tells the drive to sleep, turn on, and turn off when the computer does the same. So for the drive to be recognized I have to have it turned off and plugged in and then start my computer and everything runs fine. I can also plug the drive into the computer after the computer is on and that works, but I just learned that this can damage the computer and the drive. Thats the only trouble I've had which I think is due to my ignorance and not a failure of the drive.

The option of firewire 400, 800, and USB 2 make this drive an excellent choice. All the cables are included which is also a nice feature.

I previously read complaints about Western Digital's customer service being very bad and I checked it out myself and, sadly, it's true. I'm afraid if I ever have trouble with the drive I'm on my own, as the online support page sucks.

Overall, however, I feel this is a great buy. I don't think you'll find this much space with all the included cables and the triple interface for cheaper.

Installs easily, only running USB 2.0 , haven't tried firewire. Mounts easily with windows boot, although their buttonmanager software loads sporadically. All the photos would lead you to believe the colors are white and black. Bought thinking the white was similar to the Apple color white, NOT , its very silver, probably would have ordered black had I know. Drive performance is decent, defragging takes a long time. Turns off with windows which is nice. Compact , nice design, quiet. Quite happy, wish it was black.

This device is working great. The only watch out was that the disk came formatted FAT32 which does not allow very large files to be saved (such as back up files or DVD images). I had to re-format the drive to NTSF before using it for large files. Of course, the re-format wiped out the existing back up files on the drive.

This is a great drive and met all my expectations apart from one thing.

I bought two identical drives for backing up one to the other.
Daisy chaining them together was what I expected to do, but it just won't work. What did work however, is connecting the drives to the computer individually. In my case, one drive with Firewire and one with USB. This is inconvenient and, more importantly, very slow transfer.

The response from Western Digital Customer support regarding my problem:
"You have a known issue and unfortunately, we have no fix. I recommend you use one drive with USB and the other with FireWire."

Not great. You might wanna consider this if you plan to use them the way I intended to.



One of the best purchases I've made. Never have had a problem with this product and makes transferring data simple between computers.

At the time that I made the decision to buy this 500 GB "Pro" Ext HD (around 02/01/07), it was priced at $249. The "Premium" version was priced at $229. The only real difference that I could see was the software. I gambled and went for the higher-priced unit, thinking I'd get a little more for my money. I was wrong. The software seems like something out of the mid-90's. The only benefit to it is that it allows you to schedule a backup, but why not simply start your backup before you go to bed? I used the software to start a backup and it was taking forever, so I cancelled it and simply dragged the data I wanted backed-up over to the unit and it went MUCH MUCH faster. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't even buy the Premium version, I'd save myself $50 and buy the "Essential" - now priced at $199. Other than that, the unit appears to work fine.

I purchased mine at Beach Camera through Amazon. It arrived very fast with standard shipping.
This drive is very fast through USB connection and I think it is fairly quiet. It has a low fan hum to it when running. So far it works as advertised and I feel much better now that I have all my data backed up.
I ordered my firewire 800 card and I can't wait to see how much better the transfer rate is.

I bought this hard drive about a month ago. So far it has been fantastic. I needed extra room for all my multimedia files for my Mac Mini. This hard drive setup very easily with my Mac. It runs very quietly and very cool. I have had no heat issues with it at all. It's also intelligent enough to turn itself on and off with the computer. I looked at t a lot of drives before I finally picked this one. I have another Western Digital drive that has run flawlessly, so that is why I ultimatly chose to go with another Western Digital drive. I will certainly buy another one of these when I need even more storage.

As far as speed goes, it's a pretty quick drive. I only have firewire 400, but the drive has the cabability to do firewire 800 and I'm sure it would be much faster.

For the price this WD 500 GB hard drive was a must have. Immediately recognized by my Mac Book Pro, it gives me the extra space I needed for music, video's, files, and pictures. The triple interface is great because I can use it with any computer in the house. The FireWire 800 is very fast. There is a little vibration noise at times when the drive is spinning for a while but it seems to run at a reasonable temprature. It will "sleep" when I power off my computer but, I can't figure out how to make it "power off" without manually pushing and holding the power button. It looks great and the silver finish nicely matches my Mac Book Pro.

This is it, folks. HUGE storage capacity, whisper silent internal fan. The only way it could be better is if it was able to run without the power cord, like smaller externals. Extremely affordable for all it has going. Perfect design, pleasing to the eye. Performance? Very, very fast, especially when being recognized by my PC. Software included, but my PC did not need it to recognize this drive(HP Media Center). I'll buy another one...and another!!!

I love this drive. It's quiet, stable, and looks great with my mac powerbook. I have kept it on almost all day everyday for a few months now and never had any problems. I highly reccommend this drive!

Overall, this hard drive does everything it promised. It's small, quiet, sleek, and holds a ton of data.

Considering that this disk is marketed to both Mac and PC users, it's no surprise that WD went with the lowest common denominator in terms of formatting. The device is formated as Windows FAT32 out of the box, which works on all systems, but is generally not ideal. I have a Mac and I wanted to take advantage of journaling and the HFS+ filesystem. Re-partitioning the drive took less than five minutes using Apple's Disk Utility. Doing this erased everything on the disk, but all the bundled software is also included on a CD.

I have the disk hooked up my Mac mini with firewire 400, and it's great. All the lights work (including the capacity gage), and the drive goes to the sleep whenever the mini does. (Make sure to install the drivers to get this functionality). The only slight annoyance is that the drive takes an unusually long time to mount when plugged into the computer. Whereas an iPod or LaCie drive will show up almost immediately, the My Book takes 30 seconds or more to mount. This doesn't affect performance at all, and it's a small price to pay for all of the other excellent features.

I have used this ext.HD several times and it comes in great use. My wife can use it on her MAC while I use it on my laptop which is windows based.... so all in all it is perfect for us both.

When looking for a 500gb external drive for my Mac PowerBook there were a number of choices. I have used Lacie with good success in the past but the lower price and good exterior design of the My Book prompted me to give it a try. While the drive works well it has one major problem, extreme sensiticity to line voltage. After several "crashes" of the drive I called customer support. They said this drive REQUIRES a dedicated electric outlet (you can't plug it into a strip). It has worked well sense that change but who has many available dedicated outlets near their computer?. It also has a power sensing firewire connection so that it trys to turn on and off every time your computer goes to sleep. This also prompts warnings (improper removal of an external device). Western recommends not using the sleep mode with your computer when the drive is connected. This makes it impractical if you leave you computer on most of the time and like your drives always connects. Not very practical. Also since this drive is designed to work with both Mac and PC you have to reformat the drive to save more than 100gb from a Mac.
Bottom line: it looks well made but it is too finicky for me. I'lll stick with Lacie next time.

I scanned reviews for Western Digital as well as La Cie. I also checked the WD and LC websites for product details. Past users were fairly critical of La Cie drives reporting numerous problems & failures. I have an old La Cie and it has worked well enough but is noisy. I wanted a very large capacity hi-speed and quiet external drive for my new iMac. I ordered and took delivery very quickly. Installation and partition using OSX Disk Utility was easy. The drive is very quiet and with FireWire 800 is very fast! Its vertical orientation and included FW cable are pluses. I use CarbonCopyCloner v2.3 and the cloning of my current 60GB is very quick. Overall I am very pleased with and highly recommend the WD MyBook pro 500GB external drive.

Needed big and fast external drive for new HD videocam (Sony HDR-HC3)... Did some homework and found all required capabilities along with very reasonable price/GB in the MyBook Pro. Using it for several months now and completely thrilled: 100% successful mounts and unmounts, blazingly fast FW800 , and stylish package that looks great next to my MacBook Pro17. Button Manager functionality works as advertised, and device is whisper quiet. Overall a great piece of gear at a great price... excellent value. Thinking of getting a second one soon, since I've filled this one about 75% full with work in progress. Looks to be straightforward enough to just daisy chain another one off the back (there are 2 FW800 ports, 1 FW400, and 1 USB2.0), so I might just have a go at that soon. There are a couple other options out there worth considering too, but this one seemed to be best value of the bunch, and that perception has been exceeded by my experience to date.

I've had the My Book for about 3 months now and I couldn't be happier with the purchase. Since I don't have a good Firewire connection on my computer, I use the USB port, but still the capacity trumps the lack of speed (which, eventually, can be achieved with a new computer). I would recommend this to anybody looking for a spot to hold your backups (always back up to DVDs as well!), music collection, etc.

perchased last August or September i dont remember exacly... working just fine without any problems at all, very quiet. The prduct has all the needed software and cables required.
its only little slow in start up only if connected to the pc (pc already on).
Other wise this product is the TOP.

I've been looking for an external drive with 300+ gb for the longest time. I read all the reviews and did my homework. one day I just got bored from all the hesitation and bought this drive.
and believe me U won't regret it.

pros:
-very fast.
-small.
-the best looking drive out there.
-triple interface, now come on.
-on and off botton.
-quite.
-relatively cheap.

cons:
-from time to time there is this little vibration.. a little buzz (it last less than a sec). it rarely happens, but its unnoticeable so I'm not bothered by it really.

overall I'm loving the drive!

This is for much a great external Drive, I think that maybe to the Size will be slow, but my surprise was that it's really good, and quickly too.

If you really want performance and A lot of space to save your stuff, this is the one.

I got this to back up my music, movies and documents from multiple computers, both Mac and PC. The drive has performed flawlessly on both platforms, which is exactly what I hoped for. It's also a sleek-looking unit with a power display that is attractive, clever and informative.

I 've been using this product for 2 weeks now. so far so good. I just want to mention that the color is not Apple white, it's exactly like the silver ipod.

I've been using this drive for about a month now on my MacBook Pro laptop, and I really like it. It doesn't take up much space in my computer backpack, but it might be bulky for some briefcase-style laptop bags. The Firewire 800 interface is extremely fast and there are Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces for those who need them. Firewire 800/400 and USB 2.0 cables were included, which is a nice touch. I did read in another review that some of these hard drive models were shipped without a Firewire 800 cable, and the manufacturer had to be contacted to correct the situation.

The backup software included with the drive (Retrospect) received fairly poor user reviews, and after trying it for myself I decided to remove it and spend $35 on a backup software suite that I could rely upon (Mac users might want to check out a backup product called "Synk"). I would expand more on the problems I had, but it's been a while now and I can't remember. I would have given this product 5 stars, had it come with computer backup software that ended up being useful to me.

The drive and internal fan (if there is one) are very quiet. I did read a review about the 1 Terabyte drive being excessively loud (and much larger), so if you don't need that kind of storage space, I think you will be happier with the 500GB model.

I fully recommend this product, especially considering the relatively low price tag.

I purchased this external hard drive to store files for my client. The triple interface is excellent, and few external hard drives out there have USB and two Firewire options. The design is also good, and while I don't use the backup software, it is there. Plug and Play works effortlessly on this device, which isn't saying much, but many products do have their own problems. There has been no data loss or any problems, even after I dropped the hard drive from about 1.5 feet off the ground (oops).

What I don't like about this hard drive is the large front-side button, which is very easy to click when adjusting the position of the drive. This will sometimes kill whatever process you may be running on the drive, which is annoying. I also which there was a front-side USB port, as some other Western Digital hard drives have.

The WD idea of using these as books is cute, but impractical. Hard drive space is increasing so rapidly that your "books" will soon be outdated.

Nonetheless, highly recommended if you need the triple interface; otherwise the "lower" versions of the WD external drives will work just as well.

Update: This hard drive can get a bit warm, so do not place it on top of your desktop computer.

Fast. reliable and full of space. I have had it running nearly constantly for months without a problem. If it has the longevity, I will be using this product for a long time.

First, I am not affiliated with WD or Amazon. Just a happy user. Amazon sent follow-up mail asking me to review my purchase, and I'm so satisfied that I did it.

This WD My Book Pro 500GB drive is my third WD USB drive in the past 1.5 years. They "just do it". I have had nothing but success with them, while I've had two other USB drives fail.

I am a high-end technical user and I push this and all of my drives hard. I do development of large-scale data systems that use this USB drive as the data platform and I am very happy with its reliability and response. I have several 20-50GB images that perform well and stay consistent on this drive.

I admit that I don't use any of the "one touch" backup features or ease of use things, so I don't know how they stack up. In fact the included Retrospect backup utility is designed to not work on Windows 2003 Server, so I guess that's a minor negative. But for raw performance and reliabilty, I can tell you that I am very happy. Check out other reviews for analysis of the creature comforts.

I recently purchased the WD 500GB hard drive it works great and I received it on time. Thank you Amazon.com!

I tend to keep alot of things on my computer. Alot. Between movies, music, massive AV projects, and the archive of backups I keep, I needed space and this drive has delivered. It is quiet, speedy, and looks nice (silver) with my iMac. I appreciate that it has USB2, FW400 and FW800 -- I like having options.

My only complaint is that it wasn't delivered with a FW800 cable as promised in the 'included' list. When I called customer service (only 10 minute wait) they informed me that the cable would be shipped promptly -- he said that originally this cable wasn't going to be included but was later added to the packing list, so some boxes (though marked otherwise) didn't have it inside. Almost 2 months and 2 phone calls later I had the cable. I am preemptively concerned that this could be a sign of Western Digital's processing time, should I require any kind of repairs. Hopefully it won't come to that...

I would highly recommend this drive to anyone seeking a quiet drive with plenty of interface options and huge storage at a great price.

I have several Western Digital (WDC) disk drives. I normally prefer WDC disk drives. Until this one all have been great.

Problem #1: Often the "My Book Pro Edition" external hard drive is not detected by Windows XP when my computer is started. I have a new PC computer (Gateway with Athlon X2 dual core) that I have the My Book Pro Edition external drive connected to. The drive is connected via the FireWire400 interface. I have to warm reboot and sometimes even cold reboot before the drive is recognized by Windows. Once the drive is recognized it works OK.

Problem #2: The Retrospect Express backup software that is provided with the drive does not display the graphic images in the Help subsystem. Since Retrospect Express is not very intuitive, it is necessary to read the instructions in the Help system. It is very difficult to know what the instructions are referring to when the graphics do not display (only a graphics place holder is displayed).
Update 11/18/2006 WDC support finally responded to my request for help with information that resulted in a solution to this problem. WDC suggested that I install Retrospect Express again (a fifth time), but this time from a different DVD/CD drive. After a reinstall using a different DVD/CD drive all the graphics can be seen.

Problem #3: I have tried unsuccessfully to get answers to both of these issues from the WDC support website via email four times so far. The first answer I received recommended that I run a disk diagnostic test on the hard drive. That answer has nothing to do with either of my questions. A standard (computer generated?) reply is apparently sent in response to any question. The response says to click on a link to finish submitting the original question. The link DOES NOT EXIST in the email from WDC. I am extremely frustrated by the very poor WDC help system. After repeated failures to get help via email, I even called the WDC support telephone number. At least three times after responding to the support telephone menu questions to get to the right place, the system said help was not available and disconnected me.

So far, I have not received any help from Western Digital to solve the problems with the My Book Pro Edition disk drive and Retrospect Express software.

WDC may make good disk drives, but their support system is broken. The Western Digital support system irritates customers rather than helping them.

Update 11/18/2006 WDC provided a solution to problem #2. See above.
I would now upgrade my rating to 4 stars, but I can not find a way to change my rating.

I ordered this harddrive with desperate need of space. I trusted it since it was brand new and put 100 gigs worth of very very important stuff on it. One week later it won't load on any computer and all my stuff is lost. DO NOT BUY!

This is my fifth My Book I've purchased in the past few months (and first triple interface Pro model). Haven't had any trouble with any of them. It's very fast and very quiet. And they look amazing when stacked next to each other! The Pro models features a plastic case (like the Essential model) and a rubberized edge (like the Premium model). I haven't tried the backup software that ships with it -- a previous drive I had backed up with Restrospect didn't restore fully when I my laptop crashed. I now opt to use the better Super Duper to clone my drives.

Just a couple notes. When formatted on Mac OS X, you end up with 465GB of storage (which is to be expected with any formatted drive). Also, the photos make out the drive to be iPod-like pearly white, which isn't correct. It's more like metallic plastic -- similar to the aluminum case of Powerbooks/Mac Book Pros.

This is my 6th firewire drive, and my 2nd firewire 800 drive. Of all the drives I now own, this is the most quiet and quickest drive to date. This drive has been tasked with the daily backup duties for a recording studio and has performed without complaint. For the price today there is not a better deal out there for 500GB of quick storage.

I love this harddrive. Triple interface, including FireWire 800 is lightning fast. The included EMC software is much better than the Google backup included with 500GB premium drive.

Last year, I puchased a 250mb Lacie d2. When I found out about all the reports discussing its failure rate, I couldn't afford to take a chance, so I started looking for its replacement. After researching for a couple of weeks, I decided to purchase Western Digital's My Book Pro. It offered the most options and the largest capacity for the money, but more importantly, everything I've read has stated that WD makes very reliable hard drives.

I not only use the external HD for backing up files on my computer, I also store all of my digital music it, since I have more than 100gb of it. Because of this, I use the HD all the time and its reliability is extremely important to me. There might be cheaper options out there, but I am willing to pay a little more for safety.

Pros:
-Very small and light.
-High capacity for the size and price.
-Really great looking... it matches the look of my MacBook Pro (if looks matters to you).
-Clear rubber on all edges makes me feel comfortable to place it anywhere.
-Triple interface allows you to connect to computer in multiple ways and allows for easy daisy-chaining.

Cons:
-Takes longer for hard drive to show up on my desktop than other hard drives I've owned (especially when connected via USB2).
-Small spurts of vibration are emitted every once in a while. Can by annoying depending on where you set it.
-The front lighted gauge doesn't seem to work correctly, even though the software was installed correctly (I haven't done much trouble shooting with this issue, so it might be resolvable)

Overall, I think this is a great product at a fair price. I would recommend it to anyone who needs a reliable external HD with a large capacity drive.