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Western Digital WDH1CS5000N 500GB My Book Home Edition External Hard Drive
Western Digital
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$308.12
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$160.99 |
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$147.13
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With True Enhanced Performance.. Latest Technical Development..
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Customer Reviews
for Western Digital WDH1CS5000N 500GB My Book Home Edition External Hard Drive --- Western Digital
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Excellent and flexible external hard drive
I have this drive and also the 1 TB version, connected to two different PCs each running Windows XP Pro SP2. Both drives are excellent although I will mention one caveat below about the other 1 TB unit.
I have not experienced any problems with this 500 GB drive.
The drives both installed easily and automatically. They come formatted for FAT32 which makes them compatible with earlier versions of Windows although it limits file sizes. Windows Disk Management easily reformats them to NTFS. Although the reformat takes several hours. You can continue using the PC itself, though, while the reformat proceeds.
Something unusual about the USB2 and eSATA interfaces. I tried the USB2 interface on both drives. I also tried the eSATA interface - in one case connecting to an eSATA port through a PCI card (and the PC has a 33 MHz PCI bus, not a 66 MHz PCI bus) and in the other case to a PCIx PCI Express interface. In both cases (!), the USB2 interface provided faster throughput than the eSATA interface. I believe the limitation is inside the PC, and NOT inside the drive. Nevertheless, it transfers about 1.6 GB in about 2.5 to 3.0 minutes. Plenty fast for my use. I now use the USB2 interface.
Note that the fancy although difficult to interpret white LED display in the front of the drive works with USB and FireWire although not with eSATA.
This 500 GB drive is super quiet all the time. The 1 TB unit is a bit odd. After accessing it, some time later it will sometimes make a low-level rapid clicking/whirring noise until the drive is again accessed at which time the noise stops. I actually replaced the 1 TB drive through WD and both drives did this. The drive passes the extended diagnostic test and WD says I am probably hearing a normal noise. I took it off the desktop and put it on top of the mini-tower so the noise no longer bothers me.
I use Acronis software to do disk image backups with these drives and also do simple backups of user folders through Windows. The drives makes this so easy.
I wholeheartedly recommend this 500 GB drive and also recommend the 1 TB unit although be aware of the possible noise.
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Do not waste your money on this product
Do not purchase this hard drive. There are too many reasons to list. Trial software. Backups which paralize your computer. Software which make sharing your drive with other computer difficult. One star is generous for this product. NO MORE WD products.
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unreliable: 2 drives died within a year
The first drive died after about two months of very light use. Then I got a replacement drive from Western Digital. This second drive died a few days ago, after about a year of very light use. Both drives died the same way, with the clicking sound of death.
Search keywords: Western Digital unreliable, My Book unreliable.
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Great for Mac users!
Very easy set up. Fast and easy. The only negative comments seem to come from PC users. Maybe the problems are not the hard drive- they are the operating system. If you have a MAC buy it! It is great!
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Very Quick and Easy Setup
I selected this unit because I use an iMac for my home business and I generate a lot of photos....over 50,000 high-res images in the past two years. I settled on the Western Digital My Book HD because of its Firewire 400 hookup and its 500 GB of storage. The fact that the manufacturer markets to Mac users was also a plus.
It took me all of 5 minutes to unpack the device, hook it up using the supplied Firewire cable, plug it in, and start using it. I set up the hard drive to transfer 1,368 photos (a wedding I shot two weekends ago), then walked away. In 30 (or so) minutes all images were copied to the device...flawlessly and efficiently.
I have two other external HDs that I also copy photos to, but the Western Digital My Book HD was vastly superior to them in terms of ease of setup and startup.
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A Mac-Centric Review
Pros:
Triple interface with USB 2.0, eSATA, and FireWire 400 ports
Two FireWire 400 ports to support daisy-chaining devices
Relatively quiet, passively cooled design (i.e. no fans)
Automatically powers on/off with your machine, spins down when inactive
3-year warranty, vs. 1-year for the [[ASIN:B000XRK3LG Western Digital 500GB My Book Essential 2.0]]
Cons:
No boot support for PowerPC-based Macs
Mac software not yet compatible with OS 10.5 (i.e. capacity gauge and power button do not presently work)
*Fixed - see my update, posted as a comment on this review, for details.*
Power button on rear rather than front
Summary:
I bought this drive primarily as a backup drive to be used with the built-in Time Machine backup program in Mac OS 10.5. Providing the pending ButtonManager software update works, I will have no reservations in recommending it for similar usage. Even without the capacity gauge and power button, I am relatively happy with the drive. You should be aware that this drive IS NOT BOOTABLE from PowerPC-based Macs (see WD Support Answer ID 1715), so if you were planning to do that, you need to look elsewhere. It is bootable from Intel-based Macs, though.
In Depth:
As a basic drive, it worked right out of the box. Macintosh installers for "WD Anywhere Backup" and a "ButtonManager" program that enables the capacity gauge and power button are included on the drive, along with documentation in PDF format. I'm using Time Machine and had no interest in the included backup software, so I can't speak to its quality. Installing the ButtonManager seemed to go smoothly. The installer even asks if you want to reformat the disk, and opens Disk Utility if you opt to do so. (See notes on formatting below.)
Upon rebooting, I was initially pleasantly surprised to find no extra processes running related to the ButtonManager... until I discovered that was only because it wasn't working. No capacity gauge, and the power button on the back does nothing. It turns out that the software is currently incompatible with OS 10.5, although on their website Western Digital has promised a fix by the end of January 2008 (WD Support Answer ID 1716). A company representative assured me that this was still the case at MacWorld 2008.
Apparently WD used a StartupItem, which were deprecated in 10.4 in favor of launchd - and no longer work at all in 10.5. Considering that this drive didn't become available until September of 2007 and that StartupItems have been officially deprecated since April 2005, the commitment to Mac compatibility could be stronger. If you are using 10.5, there is no reason to install the ButtonManager at present and the representative I spoke with at MacWorld actually suggested removing it if you did install it.
I don't mind the missing capacity gauge gimmick, but the power button is a bit annoying. After unmounting the drive, it goes into standby mode, but (short of unplugging the power) there is no way to turn it off completely. The only way to remount the drive is to unplug the power and then plug it back in. Being able to just press a button would be much more convenient. Hopefully, the updated software will resolve this issue.
The problem is somewhat mitigated by the drive's automatic power management features. The drive turns off when your computer shuts down or sleeps, and turns back on when your computer does. In addition, the drive spins down and goes into standby mode when it's inactive. Western Digital seems to have intended the drive to remain connected and "on" most of the time, which is reflected in the awkward placement of the (currently non-functional) power button on the back of the drive. For the most part this works, and is actually quite convenient, but there are still times, especially with a laptop, when actually being able to turn the drive off is important.
The somewhat unusual on-end vertical drive mounting results in a relatively small footprint for the case, although its volume is comparable to, if not greater than, that of most other cases. The drive has no fan and is pretty quiet normally, although I found its peak noise (when spinning up and during heavy use) to be slightly more than my other drives.
In my tests transferring a 5 GB folder, the drive averaged 16.42 MB/s write and 20.17 MB/s read using FireWire, and 10.56 MB/s write and 14.12 MB/s read using USB 2.0, making the FireWire interface worthwhile. The inclusion of dual FireWire ports with the ability to daisy-chain another device is also a big plus, especially on a laptop with a single FireWire port. Performance of a daisy-chained drive didn't suffer in my testing and, since the FireWire bus is self-powered, it works even when the My Book is unplugged from power. While I didn't have the ability to test it, the inclusion of eSATA should allow for high performance. Unfortunately, the documentation indicates that the drive's automatic power management features only work with the USB and FireWire interfaces. Also, while 4 foot long FireWire (6-pin to 6-pin) and USB (Type A to Mini) cables are included, eSATA cables have to be purchased separately. If your Mac has FireWire 800 - and performance is an issue, you may want to look into the similar [[ASIN:B000WGJZ44 Western Digital 500 GB My Book Studio Edition]].
How to format the drive:
If you intend to use the drive with both Macs and PCs regularly, leaving the drive formatted as FAT32 is the best choice. However, if you plan on using the drive exclusively with Macs it should be formatted as HFS+, and this format is required to use Time Machine. Unfortunately, the included PDF documentation doesn't explain how to format the drive, and instead refers you to an online document (WD Support Answer ID 287) which is decent, but a bit out of date. While the WD Support article suggests partitioning the drive using an Apple Partition Map, this is no longer the best choice. If you have an Intel-based Mac, using the GUID Partition Table is a better choice as it allows you to boot from the drive. Since the My Book Home doesn't support booting from a PowerPC machine, there really isn't any reason to use APM unless you use Macs with an OS prior to 10.4.
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Smaller than it appears but The size I need it
I was unsure which one to get, but I found this and it is good, I can use it USB or Firewire, the sSata is not really usefull for me now, the plus thing I found on it is that it turns on and off automatically with the computer, so no need to go and click on the power botton.
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