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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Western Digital - My Book Essential 1TB External Hard Drive
Nadine Redd, Photographer
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Kansas City | KS | USA | Posted: 9:08 PM on 05.27.09 |
| ->> Looking for a storage device and am considering this item. Has anyone on here used this? I have read conflicting reviews and am looking for any feedback from my SS family. |
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Chris Parent, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Harahan | LA | United States | Posted: 9:19 PM on 05.27.09 |
| ->> I have had three Western Digital drives and they all have failed around a year. I stopped buying them after the second one (the third one was a portable drive I had bought before). They work okay, but the speed and reliability just aren't up to the task. |
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Ian L. Sitren, Photographer
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Palm Springs | CA | USA | Posted: 9:44 PM on 05.27.09 |
| ->> For a few years or more I have bought nothing but Seagate and have never had a failure. |
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Jon Eilts, Photo Editor, Photographer
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College Station | TX | USA | Posted: 9:44 PM on 05.27.09 |
| ->> Just had a 500g one crash on me...I replaced all of them with different models. |
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Jim Comeau, Assistant, Photo Editor
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Los Angeles | CA | USA | Posted: 10:08 PM on 05.27.09 |
->> This is like asking if a certain brand has never broken down. Hard drives are like machines and they will fail eventually.
The only safe thing is a redundant setup, and there are even caveats with that.... |
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Steven Mullensky, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Port Townsend | WA. | USA | Posted: 10:16 PM on 05.27.09 |
->> Like Jim says, anything can fail. I've had great success with the G-Tech drives. I have 3 of them, one of which is a 1TB.
www.g-technology.com |
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Jason Manchester, Photographer
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Vancouver | BC | Canada | Posted: 10:40 PM on 05.27.09 |
| ->> I've yet to have any issues with mine and I'm pushing about two years with them. That sound you hear is me knocking on wood. |
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Isaac Ginsberg, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Seattle | WA | U.S.A | Posted: 1:04 AM on 05.28.09 |
| ->> I have three of the 1Tb, models. I love them, I have never had any problems, they are 18, 12, and four months old... I have heard people complain about having problems with these, but I never have. I love them, I consider them a great buy! |
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Melissa Wade, Photographer
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Boston | MA | USA | Posted: 2:26 AM on 05.28.09 |
->> I had lots of issues moving large amounts of data to/from the drives and lost images in the process. The lovely data cyclical whatever error which I think has more to do with the connection with your desktop than the drive inside the enclosure (used both firewire & usb).
If that isn't going to be your use, they might not be bad, but I'd recommend spending not much more (unless you've found an amazing deal on them) and getting a couple of My Passport drives instead. They are tiny, use power via the USB connection and I've got a half dozen of them and only recently had issues with one which I think is a combo of my impatience and the piece of crap case I wasted money on when getting a new desktop set up (USB issue - not "the drive" - had the my book issues with old case as well). I put velcro on them and on the top of my laptop and use them exclusively when I'm out shooting. If you don't care what color you get and shop a bit, you might spend an extra $10 to get 2 500gb drives (think they've got a greater capacity one now - they are all physically the same tiny, lightweight size). That way you have the storage space and you have the ability to use it in a portable fashion unlike the large, heavy, power-requiring my books (which also have venting on top as well as the back so you shouldn't stack them to save desk space). I've bought my My Passports (started when 125 or 150 was largest size through the 500s) via New Egg & Amazon. Both sell the colors as separate items so go through a full list as prices vary a lot with that as the only difference. Black is usually the cheapest, but not always - I have one lipstick red one.
Wow that was long, but if you can't tell - I love these drives and I don't think I'm even half as enthusiastic about anything else technology-related. |
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Andrew Fredrickson, Photographer
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Seattle | WA | United States | Posted: 3:39 AM on 05.28.09 |
| ->> I have a 1TB model, working great so far. I've only been using it for about 3 weeks though. |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | US | Posted: 8:24 AM on 05.28.09 |
->> I have (2) 500GB and (1) 1 TB drive from Western Digital. They work great. The only problem I had was one died (was killed) when I sent it to Philadelphia via US Mail in December.
Western Digital replaced the drive (it was still within the five (yep 5) year warranty. The drive failing sucked, but I had everything backed up anyway so I didn't lose anything.
ALL drives will eventually fail. If you make a new post asking about Seagate drives tomorrow you'll get the same response that you get about the WD drives.
Delane |
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Jamey Price, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Danville | KY | USA | Posted: 9:11 AM on 05.28.09 |
->> I have a 500gig WD and its still running after 1 year. No issues. Ive had a seagate crash though.
The man who invents a never dying HD will be the next coming. |
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Nadine Redd, Photographer
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Kansas City | KS | USA | Posted: 9:18 AM on 05.28.09 |
| ->> Thanks to everyone for you input, I really appreciate it. |
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Jim Colburn, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Philip Peterson, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Puyallup | WA | USA | Posted: 11:03 AM on 05.28.09 |
->> I had one fail losing all data.
Recently I've been using blueray disks for backups instead. Have you considered that? |
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William Maner, Photographer
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Biloxi | MS | USA | Posted: 12:18 PM on 05.28.09 |
->> It's threads like this that make SS worth the $25 annual membership fee..
I've never really thought about back-up HDs.. I use a WD 250GB dive that I pirated out of an old desktop computer whose motherboard fried 4-5 years ago..
I got one of those external drive cases that allows you to use an internal HD as a portable drive.. It hasn't missed a beat..
I don't know if having a physically bigger HD offers any advantage.. A lot of internal HDs spin at 7200 rpm, while most mini HDs hit 5400 rpm max..
Also, on my most prized photos, I create two photo DVDs.. I know there's been a lot of chatter about the long-term viability of optical disk storage, but I haven't had any problems thus far.. |
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Gavin Werbeloff, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Atlanta | GA | USA | Posted: 3:36 PM on 05.28.09 |
->> I used a mybook premium edition RAID 1 unit from them. I was initially very happy with it, but then had a drive failure about 6 months ago. Because it was one disk in a RAID 1 array, I didnt lose any data. After much wrangling they replaced the drive. A few weeks ago, I had another drive failure. Given the hassle I had to get a replacement drive (becuase it was a RAID unit, they had to be specific WD drives that could only come directly from the manufacturer and would have otherwise cost 3x the normal amount if not under warranty), and my 2nd drive failure in 6 months, decided to get a new RAID array. I went for a LaCie unit that had Hitachi drives in it. So far I've been very happy.
If you're looking at doing large hyper-critical file storage, I'd definitely go with something redundant. Either a Drobo, or other RAID array such as Newer Technologies Guardian MAXimus, or LaCie 2Big Quadra |
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William Hallstrom, Photographer
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Pasadena | CA | USA | Posted: 4:28 PM on 05.28.09 |
->> The warranty is a good place to start. Both Western Digital and Seagate make their own drives and one of them has a five-year warranty basically, as far as i understand-i always forget which one. And of course the reason you shouldn't buy a Maxtor or LaCie drive is becuz the actual drive is made by somebody else and they'll never give you the better warranty either.
And yeah as my buddy says there are 2 types of drives, "ones that have failed, and ones that will fail."
oh and those drobo things look pretty cool |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Mark Abbott, Photographer
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Durham | NC | US | Posted: 6:08 PM on 05.28.09 |
->> I have a 500gb and a 1Tb and to date no problems with WD
Knock on wood!!!! |
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Fraser Britton, Photographer
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Ste Anne de Bellevue | QC | Canada | Posted: 6:25 PM on 05.28.09 |
->> Just FYI using recordable media (CD/DVD/Blueray) is not a great idea for long term storage. Even using archival quality discs in optimal conditions (temperature/light/Uv controlled environment) the dye layer starts to break down within a year.
Use HDDs, have redundant copies (NOT RAID). Done. |
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Bill Mitchell, Photographer
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Tempe | AZ | USA | Posted: 8:44 PM on 05.28.09 |
->> I'm going to repeat what has already been said, but only because it's such an important fact for everyone to remember. Hard drives WILL eventually fail. It could be in a couple of days or a couple of years or perhaps in a couple of decades. ALWAYS back up your data on redundant drives! Then back up your most important images somewhere else (online storage, DVD, etc.). IMHO, you can't back up your important data enough times.
With that said, I've got two 500gb WD MyBook drives that have been running without problem for several years each, plus a couple of smaller WD drives that are also still functioning. |
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