WD Hard drive Blog

These elegant portable drives are simple to use, light and easy to carry, and require no power adapter — they are powered directly through the USB cable. Pack up your office files and take them home. Carry thousands of songs or pictures. Synchronize files between home and office and encrypt everything on the drive for added security. WD Sync synchronization and encryption software lets you take your critical data with you. Plug My Passport into any PC, edit files, read e-mail, and view photos. Then sync all of your changes back to your home or office computer. Your data is protected with 128-bit encryption (Windows only). It’s perfect for business travelers who needs to transfer large amounts of data from their laptop to a client’s computer, or daily backups as insurance against accidents from mishandled luggage or coffee spills. Also comes in handy if you’re worried about laptop theft and someone else having access to your important data, you can store it on this portable encrypted drive instead. For all those precious pictures, videos, music and data files, this external hard drive is a must have. WD Sync synchronization and encryption software lets you save your critical data and take it with you. Plug your drive into any PC, edit files, read e-mail, and view photos. Then sync all of your changes back to your home or office computer (Windows only) Search your drive, manage your photos, and simplify Web searches with included Google software (Windows only) Up to 480Mb/sec Bus Transfer Rate with USB 2.0 System Requirements - Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS X (10.1.5 or later), Available USB port Approximate Unit Dimensions - 0.59 (H) x 4.96 (L) x 3.14 (W) Approximate Unit Weight - 0.23lb Buy Here

Western Digital’s Special Edition hard drives are designed to maximize desktop computer performance for activities requiring high-performance storage such as computer gaming, digital video editing, and file server applications. Offering capacities as large as 250 GB, the Western Digital’s Special Edition family is equipped with an 8 MB buffer - the largest buffer available today in a desktop EIDE hard drive, delivering data to users faster than any hard drive in its class.Your new Western Digital hard drive comes with an IDE interface cable, mounting screws, jumpers, installation poster, and Data Lifeguard Tools installation software and utilities. Buy Here

Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II dual-drive storage system offers RAID mirroring for extra peace of mind or RAID striping for extraordinary capacity and performance. Triple-interface and a powerful combination of features and performance make this system the storage solution of choice for creative professionals, workgroups, small offices and anyone looking for extra assurance that their data is safe.
Customer Review: Great drive for Time Machine
This drive is what I was looking for as I shopped for a device to use as a Time Machine backup for OS X. The Firewire 800 is what sold me, and I am satisfied with the purchase. I have the drive set up in mirror mode, and it works fine. I’ve had a few system hangups, but that’s due to OS X accessing the drive rather than the drive itself. I installed the software that came with the drive, and it’s a simple solution to set the drive in RAID 0 or RAID 1. I did download the updated device manager from WD’s web site, but it installed a menu bar icon that really seemed to do nothing, so I restored the original software. There is a firmware update available from WD, but I’ve read some horror stories about it and have decided to leave the existing firmware in place. If any drive does fail, I’m really happy about the drive being user accessible. Hopefully, that’s a feature I won’t have to learn more about, though.

Other than that, so far great drive and a great price, too.
Customer Review: Western Digital 1 TB : secure backup, reasonably priced and quiet
Received WD hard drive this afternoon. Installed Retrospect Express and RAID Manager the software that accompanies this hard drive. Backed up the 39 GB accumulated on the Imac G5’s HD… 2.5 Hrs. The fan came on twice while I was in the room with it. The noise level was well within acceptable limits. I have the new hard drive setting about 3′ from my right ear.
Western Digital has gotten some bad reviews in the past for loud fan noise. If this hard drive is an example of the current crop of WD HD’s, then they have listened to the people’s complaints and solved the problem.

The issue of overheating has also been mentioned in past reviews. To satisfy my curiosity I used a digital thermometer to record the temps around the outside of the well ventilated HD case. The range was from 81.1 to 96.2 taken over a two hour period. Most of the time the temperature was in the upper reaches of this range. The fan did not come on during that time period. As a comparison, the IMac G5 ran a maximum of 114.5 for the same period and its fan did not come on either. What this paragraph signifies: GIGO*.
Your estimate is as good as mine. Time will tell if these temperatures are within a range that insures long life to these hard drives.

A side issue is Retrospect Express: After the above backup was completed I had a window showing some execution errors between the originals and the copies. I went through the help menu they provided (CD based).
I will admit that I made a few reading errors; however, the relationship between their suggestions and the windows they provided for action (repair files) were confusing and awkward to use. Eventually ( I won’t say how many hours) I stumbled my way to success. Could I reproduce the sequence that was successful? I doubt it. Suggestion: use the toll free support line and let them walk you through the procedures.

*Footnote: GIGO = Garbage in Garbage out Buy Here

WD Scorpio Blue drives offer high-performance, low power consumption, and cool operation, perfect for notebooks and other portable devices. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Scorpio Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability.To make drive selection simple, Western Digital has gathered all WD Scorpio drives under one umbrella - WD Scorpio Blue. Built to Western Digital’s awarding winning quality standards, these drives are available in a full range of performance features.s ShockGuard technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. WD’s SecurePark parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to less head wear and improved non-operational shock tolerance. Buy Here

Cool, quiet and fast. WD Caviar Blue drives offer superior performance and reliability, making them ideal for business and family desktops. Buy Here

IBM / Western Digital 2.56GB IDE Hard Drive Desktops - New - 76H5822 Buy Here

Protect your business assets and access them remotely with this easy-to-use combination of reliable storage and automatic backup features. Windows operating system required for remote access.
Customer Review: horible to work with
I bought this poduct a few months ago and still having problems with it. I could not transfer any file over 150GB with out it crashing and stoping. I had to turn it off and on to get it to reboot. It is slow in the search for anything on the disk you are looking for. evertime i want to use it it is down so i have to restart and reboot the drive at least twice a dayI i paid full price for it and hate it. I am ready to keep all the info on my computer for the network I have set up. Will try to find something better. i do not recomend this to anyone.

Customer Review: Works great!
This is my 3rd MyBook external HD and it improves on the performance and space of my other versions. The person who gave it a negative review either has a bad drive (it happens) or did not re-format the drive to NTFS. It does take a bit of time to format to NTFS (about 1 hour and 30 minutes), however it is worth it for you have a faster more efficient hard drive. Buy Here

WD Caviar Special Edition hard drives are designed to maximize desktop computer performance for activities requiring high-performance storage such as computer gaming, digital video editing, and file server applications. Offering various capacities, the WD Caviar Special Edition family is equipped with an 8 MB buffer - the largest buffer available today in a desktop EIDE hard drive, delivering data to users faster than any hard drive in its class.Data Lifeguard is an expanded set of data protection tools that includes shock protection, an environmental protection system, and embedded error detection and repair features that automatically find, isolate, and repair problem areas that may develop over the extended use of the hard drive. With these enhanced data reliability features, the drive can perform more accurate monitoring and error repair and deliver exceptional data security. Shock Guard provides outstanding improvements in shock and vibration protection for the newest WD Caviar drives. Shock Guard allows instantaneous data protection at high shock values to achieve leading shock specifications.
Customer Review: DON’T STORE ANYTHING VALUABLE
I bought a WD drive and it failed after 12 months of light use. WD folks told me it must’ve been something I did. I was backed up, but lost a lot of irreplaceable baby pictures. They wouldn’t do anything, as it was after a year. Buy a Hitachi hard drive, these are total junk and could cause you the same heartache they caused me.
Customer Review: Software Missing, Box missing
The product description says, ” Data Lifeguard Tools is a set of software utilities that work in conjunction with the embedded Data Lifeguard features to make hard drive installation, drive management diagnostics, and repair simple and worry-free.” However, the drive arrived in a plain box with xeroxed instructions and without any software. The instruction pages were jumbled in the wrong order, with some pages upside down. The OEM box was nowhere to be seen. What makes this “caviar” is left to your imaginaton. It should be labelled the “catfish” edition. Needless to say, I am returning it. Buy Here

A luxurious soft-touch finish makes these drives easy to grip, comfortable to hold, and beautiful to show off to your friends. Combine that with mega-capacity that fits in your pocket, plus a whole host of powerful features and you’ll understand why man call these little drives Elite. Buy Here

Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160G SATA300 7200RPM Caviar SE Hard Drive Cool, quiet operation, superior performance and industry-leading reliability make these SATA drives ideal for desktop, business, and consumer electronics storage.
Customer Review: high failure rate
While I didn’t purchase these drives from Amazon, I thought I would pass along my experience in the event it helps others make an informed decision. Our company recently performed a tech refresh on a little under 1000 computers. About half of the new computers have this Western Digital hard drive, the other half have a Seagate Barracuda 160 GB SATA drive. Within a month of the new computers being deployed, we are getting an average of 3 failed hard drives a week - all are the Western Digital 160 GB model # WD1600AAJS. The numbers seem too great to be the expected “infant mortality rate” for new hardware one might expect from +/- 500 new computers. All failures are being quickly replaced by the manufacturer since they are under warranty, but the amount of dead hard drives showing up on a regular basis has made me very wary of this model. BTW, no failed Seagate drives have been reported thus far.
Customer Review: Works great in the Linksys NAS 200
I purchased two of these drives for installation in the Linksys NAS 200. The install was easy and the drives are really snappy in the NAS 200. No issues at all. Buy Here