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WD My Book Pro External 500GB Hard Drive
Price Range
$139.99
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Overall Rating
1 Star Review
Reviewed by: WF106060613
Updated:01-24-08
Duration of ownership:
Strengths: Looks great.
Weaknesses: Limited life.
Overall Evaluation: My drive lasted just six months before dying ? without warning. WD\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s foreign call center help desk was of no use. AVOID this product ? unless, of course, you want to replace it after six months.
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by: GASTURBO1
Updated:12-01-07
Duration of ownership:1 Months
Strengths: USB 2.0, 800 AND 400 Fire wire connectivity.
Weaknesses: blue light stays on after computer is on sleep/standby.
Overall Evaluation: Great buy for backing up files and saving large documents. Got it for my wife's iMac to free up internal hard drive space. So far working as advertised. The blue light spins in circles when moving files but partially stays on even after placing the computer in sleep or standby mode. The hard drive is small and can be stored vertical or horizontal. The silver color matches the design of the new iMacs. Overall a good external hardrive.
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Overall Rating
1 Star Review
Reviewed by: obibobi
Updated:09-02-07
Duration of ownership:6 Days
Strengths: Works for Macs
Weaknesses: WD support.Doesn't have drivers for 64-bit OS's
Overall Evaluation: Tried to ues it with my Vista 64-bit PC.Didn't work.emailed WD support -> 1 week later got an answer.-"We don't provide drivers for 64-bit OS's and probably never will. Talk to Microsoft, it's not our responsibility"Funny attitude from a hardware company, NOT providing drivers for their products.Have to move 450 GB data to another drive and format this to HFS.
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Overall Rating
1 Star Review
Reviewed by:
Updated:04-10-07
Duration of ownership:1 Weeks
Strengths: the drive works
Weaknesses: the software doesn't work
Overall Evaluation: Retrospect Express is advertised as Mac compatible but is so bad it defies belief. It has the feel of something written for PC in the '90s and outsourced to Easter Island for updates. On an Intel iMac it pretends to do something for 10-15 minutes then requires a force quit. The help file crashes the browser. On a G5 iMac it pretends to do something for 10-15 minutes then tells you it can't handle files over 2GB. The help file on the G5 tries to run in Netscape 4.0 (Classic). Daily backup means Monday - Friday, like nobody creates anything of value on a weekend? Don't buy this drive for the software.
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by: yongming
Updated:01-30-07
Duration of ownership:2 Weeks
Strengths: Triple interface, including all cables // Fast file transfer, esp. using FireWire 800 // Low price // Three-year warranty // Enclosure matches the brush-metal of current Macs
Weaknesses: High pitch sound produced by drive mechanism // Low quality of FIreWire 800 cable (based on look and feel only) // Lame naming scheme
Overall Evaluation: I bought this drive to hold a clone of my PowerBook's hard drive and media files I don't need when away from home. I created two partitions on the My Book Pro for these two distinct purposes. I formatted both in HFS+ (it comes formatted FAT32), which allows me to boot from the My Book Pro using either of the FireWire connections. While this means I cannot use the drive on a Windows machine without installing a third-party driver, bootability is of supreme importance to me, since this drive will allow me to keep working, should my internal HD ever snuff it. -The My Book Pro powers on whenever it senses an active connection, whether the user has connected to a hot port or switched on the computer to which the drive is attached. This eliminates the need of reaching for a power switch. The drive is quiet, though I personally find the high pitch sound the mechanism makes when writing a bit grating. Its similar to those new ultrasonic cleaning tools dentists now use, only quieter. I am willing to put up with this irritation because the My Book Pro is fast. Using the FireWire 800 connection, I cloned my internal hard drive in less than half the time it took with hold drive with FireWire 400. The boot time is also perceptibly faster. I would have done a statistical comparison, but I couldn't bring myself to even test the FireWire 400 connection. There's no going back! In short, I am a happy owner. -NB: The My Book Pro warranty is for three years, not the one of Premium and Essential versions. Also note that only the Pro version comes with the faux aluminum case. -And finally a rant for the marketing minions at Western Digital The current naming scheme should be deep-sixed. Pro, Premium, and Essential? Pah! Next time use names that the clarify the hierarchy among these three products. The consumer shouldn't have to keep referring to a comparison chart just to remember that the Pro is better than the Premium, which is better than the Essential.
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by:
Updated:12-29-06
Duration of ownership:60 Days
Strengths: Firewire 800 16MB Cache
Weaknesses: Only 7200 RPM
Overall Evaluation: I use this Hard Drive daily at work and have to say that it has been a life saver on more than one occasion. We have an in house design team at the company I work for, that all use Macs. Whenever we need to re-install an OS for one of these users they inevitably have quite a bit of Data to back up, needless to say 50GB worth of data over a 100MBs connection = not good. Thus this little puppy steps in and with the firewire 800 I can have the data backed up in no time and move on with the re-install and not have to spend all day waiting for files to copy.
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Overall Rating
5 Star Review
Reviewed by: pouralice2001
Updated:12-06-06
Duration of ownership:30 Days
Strengths: Solid and fast by using firewire 800. 2 firewire and 1 USB connection. Quite and powerful. Very fast write and read speed.
Weaknesses: Kind of bulky but hey, it is a 500GB harddrive inside.
Overall Evaluation: I would recommend this external hard drive to all my friends and family. It is such a reliable thing and I don't need to worry about there is only a 80gb SATA in my Dell 9200 any more. It is solid and portable. The difference between My book Pro and My book essential is prominent (I owned a My book essential before). Although both of them are from WD and 500GB, I am more willing to store all my important files on this one.
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Overall Rating
5 Star Review
Reviewed by: svengsouk
Updated:11-29-06
Duration of ownership:
Strengths: Innovative, appealing book-like form. Functions well. Three connection options.
Weaknesses: While others found the indicator light tacky, I actually like the organic pulsations.
Overall Evaluation: I got this external drive to backup my main internal hard drive, connected to my Power Mac G5 via Firewire 800, which is nice and fast. Other than that initial activity, however, I have not made extensive data transfers since. Nevertheless, the drive continues to function well. I like the indicator light. Since I don't open the drive folder often, the central ring readily indicates to me how full the drive is. The organic, breathing-like pulsations of the outer ring are amusing.
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Overall Rating
5 Star Review
Reviewed by: jessbo
Updated:10-24-06
Duration of ownership:
Strengths: Grate price, 3 year warranty, very fast. Nice design.
Weaknesses: Don't like the plastic case, could scratch easily. Wish it had a better plastic case or made from aluminum.
Overall Evaluation: The My Book Pro External 500GB hard drive is so cool. It has triple interface USB 2, Firewire 400 & 800. It's fast. I like the small design. I has a 3 year warranty. Good value for a 500GB Hard drive. I highly recommend this hard drive. I like how it is fast. The light on the front is neat. It works quality too. What can I say! I like it a lot!!
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Overall Rating
2 Star Review
Reviewed by: slickninja
Updated:10-19-06
Duration of ownership:4 Days
Strengths: Quiet!Fast!Multiple FW800 ports allow daisy chain.Stylish asside from blue light.Relatively small.
Weaknesses: Blue light is extremely tacky looking.Slightly more expensive than non FW800 drives.
Overall Evaluation: Its hard to find an external HD that is quiet, harder to find one that has a aesthetically pleasing enclosure and one that is fast and sporting the two previous? Barely any. After fully loading my G5 up with 5 internal HDs (a feat for a computer than only has 2 internal drive bays) I was cramped for internal space and had to migrate to external HDs. Annoyed that I had to sacrifice precious performance for external, I was looking at buying a SATA card that sported eSATA ports as well as internal, then I stumbled across this HD. Buying a FW800 drive let me by pass the need for buying a PCI card. I did a little research and found that this drive. I was a little wary as the My Books are well known to be an under performer but the few sources I found was highly reviewed My Book Pro praising its very fast and near silent design.I ordered a 250 and was extremely pleased, it worked well with my PC laptop and my G5 desktop but in my line of work; audio production and motion graphics, there's no such thing as enough HD space. I ended up buying a 500 to compliment the 250. Due to the FAT32 limits of 4 gig file chunks I formatted the 500 for HFS+ which notably improves performance. I observed roughly 30 megs a sec sustained when copying over a 4 gig file. Its hard to top that.The downsides are that it isn't exactly a portable HD. Its small enough to pack up when needed but rather bulky to cart around on a daily basis, however Its smaller than many externals like the ever popular LaCie FA Porche. Also the blue lights are the single mar on the otherwise testiment to some beautiful industrial design. The drive looks at home next to a G5/Mac Pro with its sliver body and morse hole patterns that embody functionality as decor. There's no pointless wings, indents, no clashing of black + silver but instead a pleasing metal finish. The blue light sadly detracts of its minimalism and elegance, looking more like a last minute attachment to appeal to the "FLASHING LEDS ARE COOL" Gamer/Nerd market, where clear plastics, internal lights and objectional color palettes rule all. Between the two bright LEDs, it gives the entire room an unsettling blue glow at night as they do not turn off when the computer is put to sleep. Had they even been white, I'd had no objection to the light.I don't think I've seen an HD that inspires tech lust like this has. Since my original 250 GB purchase, I bought a 500 GB. Not to be left out a programmer friend of mine purchased a 500 GB to back up his MacBook Pro and another friend now has it picked as his HD without me really saying much about it.This is the HD for Mac Pro/G5 users. Do to the relatively low install base of FW800, I'd recommend PC users buying a eSATA card as opposed to a FW800 card as eSATA provides virtually the same performance as internal HDs unless they need an HD they can plug into just about any computer or already have FW800 installed. The fact it has two FW800 ports (as the many FW800 computers only come with one port) makes it all the sweeter.Update: After 4 months and 6 months with the 250, both HDs are going strong. Update 2: I'm leaving my original review intact but only after nearly a year the 500 WD died taking 500 GBs of data with it. Luckily the HD had one bout of finnicky performance (Then magically started working again) which caused me to move irreplaceable project files off the HD and just use it for audio libs for audio production. The S.M.A.R.T. report generated a few warnings but then when the bad blocks were identified the drive assumed normal behavior for months. The HD never traveled, never was knocked off my desk but died unaggravated. Currently between my HTPC and G5 (A ridiculous 3.5 Terabytes of storage for HD movie editing and TV shows) I've learned a thing or two about storage. While its easy to blast a whole product line, the only HDs I've had die in the past 3 years have been Western Digital. (I currently own Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital and Maxtor drives).I may have been unlucky but there's a bit of a reoccurring pattern from my personal experience. However my first purchase, the 250 GB WD still works and is a year old now. I've since purchased four Seagate Barracuda ES series drives and am making a RAID 1+0 setup to avoid data loss on work related projects. No storage mechanism is infallible. Back up your data, and don't skimp... setting up RAID 0 on Mac OS X and XP/Vista is painless and creates an identical mirror of your HD in question, and requires no effort to maintain. Don't skimp if your data is worth anything to you and backup.
