Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Anyone Recommend the Western Digital MyBook HD?

C

Caitlyn

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 30, 2005
842
0
The title pretty much speaks for itself. What do you think? Anyone out there think they are reliable and won't crash on me? I have a hard time trusting external hard drives after a major crash last year. And I'd really prefer not to make my own, so if you wouldn't recommend the MyBook, what would you recommend? I've heard Lacie isn't so great because you never know what drives they put in those things.

Thoughts?
Thank you! :)
 
I have heard bad reliability and noise reports from people on these. However, I've heard good things about the OneTouch III's.
 
I have a 250 GB USB "Essential"

I've had mine for over a year now, and it's been dependable so far. I've used it to back up files from my iBook G4, and while it's not the fastest drive around, it has done its job for me.

I do wish I had paid more money to get a model with the Firewire 400/800/USB 2.0 interface, however. A cheap sale price overshadowed my ability to realize I have only 2 USB ports which are always being used, and there was a Firewire port just sitting there, waitin' for something to do. :rolleyes:

Good luck on your purchase, whatever it ends up being. :)

FWIW
 
I have a WD MyBook Pro 500GB, so far it hasn't crashed on me, or misbehaved in any way. In fact, I'm very happy with it. It is fast and reasonably quiet, but a single drive is a pretty small sample to base any recommendations on...

When it comes to hard drives though, external as well as internal ones, only one thing is certain - they WILL crash on us. It is only a matter of time...
 
Yep, OneTouch is Maxtor. I would emphasize "I've heard from people". This is just personal testimony and shouldn't be taken as some declaration of unwavering fact. :D
 
We have a 1TB Western Digital "MyBook", and boy is it LOUD! The fan will kick in for long periods of time when it's not being used at all. A real acoustic annoyance in my ever-so-humble opinion...
 
Hemingray said:
We have a 1TB Western Digital "MyBook", and boy is it LOUD! The fan will kick in for long periods of time when it's not being used at all. A real acoustic annoyance in my ever-so-humble opinion...
Click to expand...

The 1TB is really 2x500GB, isn't it? Two drives in a tight case strikes me as a really bad idea when it comes to acoustics and temperature.
 
itickings said:
The 1TB is really 2x500GB, isn't it? Two drives in a tight case strikes me as a really bad idea when it comes to acoustics and temperature.
Click to expand...

In contrast, my coworker has a OneTouch III 1TB (2x 500gb) sitting on his desk. We bought it due to personal testimony about MyBook noise much like the poster above.

The Maxtor has been very quit so far (just got it in on friday, so we'll see if it stays that way)
 
I've had Seagate, Maxtor and LaCie crap out on me in the past 5 years. If my current MyBook works out (I've only had it for 5 months), I'm sticking with WD for life.
 
Its not too bad, I have alot of externals, including this one, but I have never had any problems with any of them except with an iomega messing up files when transferring back and forth from mac to pc.
 
We use a 320GB drive as a backup for two systems, but I only have it on when necessary as it's pretty loud and makes the desks vibrate.
 
I have the WD 500GB and do not have a problem with acoustics. I do like the functionality of the drive with the spin down button. However, bear in mind that this is a sealed unit and you cannot "upgrade" this with a larger drive when they become affordable without breaking the unit.

Pretty much all hard drives these days are regarded as "consumables" with a livespan of about one year, since advances in HD technology coupled with broadband speeds has led to swift capacity increases encouraging people to swap out their disks almost on an annual basis to accommodate their ever-burgeoning P2P collections. You pay quite a bit extra for server quality drives with 3-5 year guarantees.

I do not throw my hands up in the air when a HD fails prematurely, as this is what the market is these days. You need to factor this in and take back up precautions correspondingly. It makes little difference whether the HD is Maxtor, Seagate or Hitachi etc. They are much of a muchness when it comes to longevity.

Where I worry, and this is why I discourage purchases of LaCie, is in the design of their cases, which are bound to lead to either HD or port failures.
 
I have a pair of 250GB MyBooks that I've been running in RAID-1 over Firewire for (probably) over a year. No problems.
 
itickings said:
I have a WD MyBook Pro 500GB, so far it hasn't crashed on me, or misbehaved in any way. In fact, I'm very happy with it. It is fast and reasonably quiet, but a single drive is a pretty small sample to base any recommendations on...

When it comes to hard drives though, external as well as internal ones, only one thing is certain - they WILL crash on us. It is only a matter of time...
Click to expand...
my brother has one of these and loves it.

FW 800 is roughly twice as fast as 400. From Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire_800#FireWire_800_.28IEEE_1394b.29
 
I have the 500gb My Book Pro. So far has it has been running great, and no noise or vibrations I would think to be out of the ordinary. Also matches the MBP.
 
I've had the 500 GB MyBook (the black one with usb + FW400) for about a week now. I've been running it reasonably hard so far, and have no complaints. It's fast, reasonably quiet, and I don't really think about it at all, which is the highest complement you can give to any behind-the-scenes hardware.

After a week of using it I can pretty confidently recommend it.

p.s. remember that, as with all hard drives, the useable formatted size is actually about 465 GB, not 500 GB. I say that because after transferring most of my stuff onto it, I now only have 96 GB left, and shrinking! Now I'm thinking maybe I shoulda gone with the 750 GB MyBook.
 
I just purchased the MyBook Pro 500 version and it just shipped today. PriceGrabber had pretty good reviews. My main reasons to pick it over others was FW800 and looks that matched the MBP. And the price is pretty good over at BuyDig.com.

Only advice I can give for better life is to not move the drive when the discs are spinning.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back