WD My Book 1TB External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 File Backup and Storage

I set this up without activating any of the special software, and did not set it up for automatic backups. I prefer to do manual backups, because of concerns that I have about automatic programs. So far, everything is going well. It is a lot of space for not too much money. I say this as someone who got into computer use when 1 GB cost as much as these 3 TB! My two complaints so far are these: (1) the connecting power wire is extremely flimsy and probably will fail if handled much, or bumped the wrong way, and (2) it says that you cannot turn the unit off unless you activate the backup software included with it. Since I chose not to active the software, I guess that I cannot turn it off. That means that I will have to unplug it to take it offline. This is not only inconvenient, but will eventually lead to the connectors failing. I like having it offline between manual (drag and drop) back-ups to keep from having it hacked. Update on 05-08-2013 The 3TB data storage unit is still doing the job well, with no problems, after three months. I leave it on all of the time, although I do manual backups whenever I add or change something on my computer hard drive that I wish to back up. So far, I am still pleased with this product!

I got this to be used on my home network to replace a smaller one I had. it was hooked up plugging in the power to a power strip and the USB to the back of my router. come to find out it was never made to work like this but for some reason it did. I hooked the new work book up the same way and was never able to get it to work. So I called WD tech support and found out it couldnt be hooked up that way, It would have to be connected directly to the computer .. the thing is I never seen it in the disruption on amazon telling me It had to be hooked to my PC only and could not work with a router made for external had drives. I never seen it not to say that it is there its just that I never seen it. I am keeping it and am going to hook it to one of my PCs and just share the drive it is on. The drive is nice and a lot smaller than I was thinking it would be

Ive had quite a few people buy these, after a few of my Seagate drives died in less than a year, I decided to stick with Western Digital that has never failed me. Everybody that wants one is working with video, they need tons of space and speed as well. Ive completely filled up my 3 TB drive via usb 2.0 about 21 hours to wait. It did get warm but I saw no warping of the case, and it continues to shell out HD video no hiccups. None of these have been returned though I did have one guy back up his entire laptop to the drive when he accidentally hit the backup button, so far the only trouble because it caused him to run out of space. I guess somebody uses that button, I just havent met anybody that needed it yet. These drives work well, and if you check the price you will see it is cheaper to buy one of these, take it apart to get the drive out, and put it in your computer than it is to actually buy an internal drive for your computer. So really, for the price, this USB external case and internal hard drive combo is a steal.

Been using these for a couple of years and love them. I just add a new one whenever I need space. There are a couple of issues that are not for the faint of heart, but are easy to correct with a bit of googling. A few tips for success: 1. These are DESKTOP EXTERNAL drives and are not meant to be portable or routinely traveled with. Plug them in and leave them stationary, just like the name says. Get some small portable drives if you need to hand transfer data. I have 6 or 7 portables for that reason. 2. Ensure they get good, clean air flow and space to breathe. The cases dont run especially hot, which I suspect means they are overly insulated and dont shed enough heat. 3. Take some time to get to know and customize the software they ship with. Its not bad, and somewhat better than similar products Ive used from Seagate and Buffalo. Customize it so it only backs up what you want, when you need it. You can even specify file types and set file versioning, which is very useful. Also be sure to do the software and firmware upgrades through the management software. 4. Set the power management appropriately. If you hit the disks often, you dont want them to drop to sleep mode every 15 minutes. Match it to your workflow. I personally do all my backups to one drive and treat the others as giant write space for archives that arent catastrophic if I lose them. 5. You may discover an issue with Windows 7 not recognizing more than 2 of them concurrently. It will manifest as only two mapping drives and the third not being recognized. Its a quick fix, just google and follow the instructions. Great little drives and ample storage for the price. UPDATE 7/3/13: I just purchased my fourth drive and added it on with no problems. The software -which has been updated to a very nice new interface- recognized it and had it working immediately. The drive shipped with the latest firmware and is visually identical to previous models. Still a great drive and value for the money.

I have a home media center PC and have purchased several of these over the last couple years to store movies and tv shows. I always purchase them in pairs so I have one for the media center and one for backup. WD has changed the design slightly on this model compared to the 1TB & 2 TB model My Book. Those models had two blue LED lights on the front that would blink back and forth when data was being accessed. When the drive went into sleep mode the front would go dark and the lights off. This model has one micro white LED that is bright. It flashes when data is being accessed and continues to slowly pulse when the drive is asleep. A little disappointing in the asthtetics area that they changed this as I purchase this drive for looks almost as much as capacity. It also seems to take a bit longer to spin up and be ready when powering it on than the older models. I gave the bundled software 2 stars because it only came preloaded on the hard drive and not backed up on a disc. When I purchase a hard drive I dont feel anything at all should be on it. The first thing I did was format the drive but then I have to find a place to store the bundled software if I wanted to keep it. Otherwise, WD is a very solid product and I will continue to purchase. They cost a bit more than other brands but I feel you are paying for higher quality. USB 3.0 speeds were good. I purchased a seperate USB 3 card for my laptop but it also works fine at USB 2 speeds as well.

This 2TB hard drive workds great to extend the memory on my DishNetworks ViP 722K recorder. This price of $109.99 is less than the 1TB WD for $119.99 recommended on Dishs Website. After connecting the power and usb connections, this hard drive needed to be formated. I went to Menu, then multimeda, then it asked me if I wanted to format the harddrive. It took around 15 minutes or so, then the DVR recorder had to find the signal again. After all was said and done, total time was less than 30 min. total setup to get everything up and running. I did call dishnetwork to talk me through the formating part. Just didnt know where to find it. Movies take about 13-15 min to transfer over to the harddrive. One thing I like is that once I copy what I want to the harddrive, when I go to MY RECORDINGS, MY MEDIA comes up at the top of the list, so it is easy to find.

I was hesitant to purchase this because of all the minor and major complaints. I dont like to see the number of 1 star ratings become 50% of 5 star ratings, but Ive learned to ignore many common types of complaints from non-technical users - here and at work. One minor complaint was that Windows 7 backup cannot recognize this size drive for imaging. I found this to be true, but that is not the drives problem. Other backup software does work and address the sectors correctly (NTFS). Complain to MS. I like Cobian for its uncompressed simplicity for home use and it works fine with this drive. I use compression and massive incremental tape backups at work and this is why I love Cobians simple mirroring system at home. The bottom line was that it wasnt a legitimate complaint and created 2 and 3 star ratings. Really? Go tell it to Steve, but hell tell you that its always a 3rd partys mistake. Another complaint was setting up the drive. Windows 7 did it for me and I did not use the proprietary software. In this day an age, I would think installing a driver to be like knowing how to update your DVR firmware. Wait, I may have lost some people there. There were many other complaints involving premature failure. When I see a customer with 2 or 3 catastrophic failures on the same product I start to question the customer. Its the same as questioning the person with multiple marriages. Whats the common element in all these failed marriages? USB voltage and other conditions can adversely affect external drives. Is it on the floor and/or are the vents covered with dust? Is the room 85 also? Does the dog pee in the corner? etc. etc. I havent broken the USB connector as others have because its a desk external and not an SSD portable. Again, I saw many softcase travelers knock this drive. There are good portable, small, USB portable drives for this so pay the extra per GB. et SSD if you really care because it rocks. The message is, dont kick it or drop it or manhandle the connectors in any way and youll be fine. Transport it with some care and consider removing the connectors before throwing it in the back seat or kicking it on the floor. Ive run this daily for 7 months without issue (24x7). Its part of a triple redundancy backup scheme which I recommend to home users. Your PC, your external and then something that goes in a fire safe, leaves the house, or is stored in the cloud. Ive seen to many tears over lost photos. Pros: 1. Good Price for the amount of storage, disc size and speed. 2. Reasonably fast at USB 3.0 and not bad at 2.0. If you arent seeing this, your BIOS, Firmware or actual USB hardware is likely at fault. Cons: 1. I have nothing here as my expectations were realistic. In summary: I believe hard drive reviews to be extremely anecdotal and I come from a IT background. I take complaints without data with a grain of salt. Do we really think from the reviews that 30% of all Western Digital drives are 1 star failures? Not a believable business model. PS - Comments from those who say it happened to me should be directed to WD. Thanks.

This is the 4th WD external storage device Ive bought...as the newer, larger capacity ones were available, I purchased the new one and gifted the older one. Never a problem with the smaller capacity devices. Then came this one and for first couple of years, not even a hint of a problem. A few months past the warranty, the PC can no longer access the data. Mind you, every thing important to me is stored here, eMails, purchase info going back over 7 years, banking, thousands of photos covering over 50 years, a huge music library, several databases...no software, only the records of my life. Ive never used this to back up my computer, as my computer does not hold the data...only the software. The ONLY reason I use an external storage device is to store my life and protect same from computer crashes. Im no guru, but Im not a dummy, either. Everything conceivably possible was tried, including the purchase from WD of a new connector cable. Nothing helped. The light was on, the PC showed the software intact, the device was seen by the PC, the disc could be heard spinning. Finally caved and put in a call to WD...no real person ever came on line, so hung up after 53 minutes. Later that afternoon, called again with same NO RESPONSE. Yesterday, my professional computer guru made a service call and after over an hour, he gave it up and took the thing to his shop where he had software that MAYBE would work. This morning, hes taking it to a data retrieval service, a pricey solution if that even works! I understand that any technological device can (and does) fail. My angst is with the totally unacceptable level of Western Digital non-customer service. For shame, Western Digital...you have just lost a long time customer. So, bottom line is if you want to store important information on an external storage device and expect the manufacturer to be available in case of failure, stay away from WESTERN DIGITAL. My replacement will be with a different manufacturer.

I had trouble and problems getting this drive working. It seemed to install fine, though it took several minutes for Windows to install the correct drivers, but it still didnt show up or appear in My Computer, though it was visible in Add Devices and Disk Management. In trying to troubleshoot it, googling had me at a loss and I started to think it was a bad driver, so I got lost down that rabbit hole for awhile, but I was mistaken. I finally resorted to calling WD Tech Support who were actually quite helpful. They didnt dink around and zeroed in on what is apparently a common problem for Windows 7 : drive letter collision. Im listing it here since I didnt find this solution on my own so maybe it will help someone else. Click Start. Right click Computer in the right column. Click Manage. This should open your Computer Management window. On the left, you should see Storage, and under it: Disk Management. Click this. (If you cant see Disk Management, click the arrow next to Storage to expand it.) After a second it should display at the bottom all your drives, probably Disk O, Disk 1, and CD-ROM 0, or something similar. One of these, probably Disk 1, should say Basic Online, and the drive size: 931.48 GB for the 1TB drive. This is your WD drive. Under the blue bar is should say the size again, NTFS, and Healthy (Primary Partition) Right click on the blue bar for this drive. Click on Change Drive Letter and Paths... In the next window, click the Add button. In the next window, the top radio button for Assign the following drive letter: should be selected. On the right, click the dropdown and select a letter for your drive which you are sure is not in use elsewhere in your system. M is a good bet. Then click OK. Under the blue bar, the drive should now be properly identified as My Book and in My Computer it should appear properly. You should now be good to go.

I bought this to back up my newly built system to and also I was planning on digitizing all my movie collection and this just seemed to be a good solution for both storage and backup! Ive had it for 2 months and I think I have had enough insights to write a review! So here it is! Speed: As a storage drive this is a great performer especially the USB 3.0, it is 4 times faster than USB 2.0 (see the images Ive uploaded on the product page), I love the fact that huge file transfers (im talking 100s of GB) takes less than an hour to complete! Backup also is blazing fast especially if you have set the utility to incremental (dont use the software that this comes with, more on that in a second)! Reliability: It has weathered 2.5 months of daily use and extensive use very well so far, but it is too early for me to comment on this! Hopefully it would fare better than the Seagate I had before, that is junk! Format: It is primarily designed to work with Win 7, and hence the the file format is NTFS, which is the best format for a hard drive this big, but for whatever reason you are buying this for a FAT32 system (like a PS3), then dont because it is going to be a PITA, and also you would not be utilizing this drive as it is designed to be used! So for PS3 owners you are better of buying a much smaller HDD and then reformatting that to FAT32 - there are utilities out there which would do that for you! Enclosure: Im not the biggest fan of WD enclosures, but this one is not bad! However I had a terrible issue trying to get this to be recognized by my