 Fantastically Unremakable. |
| Review Date: January 17, 2010 |
| Reviewer: palealien, Butte Creek Canyon, Ca United States |
For a very long time I have been needing to centralize a complete backup solution and as the price fell to within hailing distance of $100, I jumped in. I have always gravitated towards WD drives for some reason, after installing and using dozens I have never had a failure, unlike both the Seagates and Maxtors and others I have tried. I know this is basically a Ford/Chevy sort of loyalty, but what can I say?
I will say I couldn't be happier with my choice, at least not until the 2TB drive is available at the same price. I simply wanted a drive to hold real-time backups of all my stuff. I have about 700GB over 3 drives, so it is a good first step at a centralized and secure location. The WD is compact and nearly silent, the power supply is diminutive and transportable.
The front panel display is kinda neat- so-called "electronic paper" a la Kindle that displays the used space in a graph, the free space as a number and the drive name, unpowered and even unplugged. I can see carrying the "book" metaphor out a bit and having an archive of three or four of these on a shelf, it will be a great way to keep track of what's stored aboard without sharpies or stickies.
I unboxed the drive and plugged it in. XP Pro read all the drive info and it was ready to go in only a minute or so, it was exactly and finally what "plug `n play" was supposed to be all about. Precisely as it should be, I remember the days of having to wrestle an external drive to the ground to be able to use it. This was nice.
The software, after asking politely, checked for updates and installed itself. I had read enough negative comments about the WD backup utility I was prepared to expect the worst but since I asked for minimal install it was running in a few minutes and ready to go. I chose not to use the backup software for now, as I travel and would like to have access to my files without a restore involving an install on a remote machine. I will probably check it out later just to see how it works, the WD SmartWare control panel looks simple and efficient, and at very least is a nice little utility that displays all drive content and type
Moving all my files by hand the first time was a little tedious my method may seem crude, but it is also a good way to review and clean up some of the accumulated stuff I have been hauling around all these years. I remember running a normal compressed backup and seeing stuff I forgot was there go flying by, and then by the time the backup was done I had to go look for it and well; you know. I then defer to SyncToy to do the updates, so far it's been working pretty well.
Doing it this way I know in the event of a failure I will have immediate access to important files. I likewise keep a current clone of the system drive in the event of a primary failure, and it is possibly the only method in which I have complete confidence. I have done enough system restores and used enough automated backup software to appreciate it does not always perform as advertised in a crisis.
I was very impressed with the copy speed, this is my first machine that uses SATA drives so it's not unexpected- but the transfer rate, even on an external USB2 to me, seems faster than across two IDE drives on a bus.
An additional plus is the packaging; keeping in a movement to reduce plastic abuse and lower consumer frustration, the drive was in an easy to open cardboard box- but oddly enough, while WD drives usually came protected at each end with eggcrate cardboard, the Book was supported in plastic!
One minor grumble is the power switch, I have not yet discovered a consistency in its operation, sometimes it just shuts the drive off with a push, sometimes it delivers a "drive in use..." error message, sometimes the LED will blink rapidly- I have used other WD ext drives and I know there's a pattern, just haven't found it- or found it in the manual yet. On the other hand, the SmartWare tray icon powers it off just fine.
So far it seems an extremely unremarkable product, and that is exactly what I want from a secure storage device.
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Love it!
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| Review Date: January 13, 2010 |
| Reviewer: TropicalMinnesota, |
I was a little concerned when I opened the box as the plug-in slots didn't line up with the plastic drive cover. However, I easily wiggled in the power plug and it shifted the cover enough that I was able to connect the included USB cable. They both work fine.
There are very few instructions included in the box, but the best thing is that instructions really aren't needed. I installed this on a computer running XP and it automatically loaded the software. Within minutes I had backed up my entire computer hard drive without even opening any of the paperwork.
I really like that you can name this drive and the name will stay on the spine. Naming and password protecting the drive were very easy to do.
This was much easier to set up than my old WD drive and I didn't think that was difficult. As someone who painfully understands the need for backups, I am very happy to have this.
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A Large-capacity and Very Useful External Hard Drive
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| Review Date: January 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Lawrence H. Bulk, New Jersey USA |
This Western Digital My Book Elite 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAH0010HCH-NESN is, by today's standards, a fairly large-capacity one and, for storing music files, it is ideal.
Now by the end of this year, 1 TB may be considered "tiny" (my first Western Digital external hard drive was 40 GB - "huge" at the time, but now ...), however 1 TB is 1 TB. That's considerable.
I am going to use this drive exclusively to store music; this will be played through my stereo system. Instead of having to insert CDs individually into a CD player, I can just sit back and have my entire CD collection stored right on this drive and I can play anything I wish via the WD media player I mention below. (It will take me quite some time to encode them all - inertia, you know - but I'm in no rush.)
This drive is, in my opinion, excellent. It is very quiet, it runs fairly cool, and it holds a LOT of music. I roughly calculate that it will hold over two thousand CDs if I encode each of them in FLAC form, which is what I intend to do.
It comes with its own AC adapter which also runs quite cool, as well as with a fairly long USB cable.
And, from my own experience with Western Digital products, it should function perfectly for a very long time. So far, I personally have never had any WD product (and I have eight of their various products) go wrong.
I copied the music which I have already encoded in FLAC (about 12 GB) to the drive, connected it to my Western Digital, WD TV Mini Media Player WDBAAL0000NBK-NESN which was already connected to my stereo system, and started playing music.
It almost goes without saying that everything functioned correctly.
Now I understand that many people do not like Western Digital's backup software. That's okay. It doesn't really take up that much room - the drive came, empty, with 930 GB free. (As I'm sure many of you are aware, a 1 TB hard drive doesn't really hold 1 TB of data. The software takes up, I believe, less than 500 MB.) And, if you do not like it, you can ignore it, or, if it really "bugs" you, you can find out how to remove it entirely on WD's site.
As I do not use Windows or Mac, I have no need for the software so I shall just ignore it. All I personally am interested is to have a large storage drive for my music.
If you are planning to use such a drive for similar purposes (storing music, photos, videos, etc.), I think you can do no better than this one just now. I currently have my music on this drive as well as being backed-up on a Western Digital WD Elements 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAR3200ABK-NESN (Black). (Backing up hard drives is, I think, a wise thing to do; I do it routinely. If one drive were to ultimately fail, you would have your backup so you won't lose anything.) When that "little" one is filled up, I'll buy another one of these larger 1 TB drives as a backup or maybe something even larger; by the end of the year, who knows how low prices will drop for these things?. Or possibly a Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABM0010BBK-NESN (Midnight Black) - imagine: a 1 TB portable! And I'll bet that, by the end of this year, the price will be about half of what it is today!
Obviously, music storage is not the only thing for which you can use these large drives. But, for storage of anything, this particular unit is so large by today's standards, so well-made, and so reasonably priced, that, if you can afford it, buying one is practically a no-brainer.
At least that is what I think. A three-year warranty is icing on the cake!
I'm glad I got this drive and I highly recommend it.
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Note:
As I mentioned above in my review, I have had good luck with Western Digital products though with this one, an Amazon Vine offering, obtaining a properly-made one was a bit of "comedy of errors;" see my Comment following this review if you are interested in the "gruesome" (not really) details. But, even though the following is not appropriate to mention here (it has nothing to do with this drive itself), I want to say that Western Digital is a SUPERB company which went WAY out of its way to satisfy me. |
Love the extras, overall great external hard drive
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| Review Date: January 2, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Tate, |
My poor desk! I have 3 external hard drives (4 now) not to mention speakers and head phones and other usb gadgets all about. In any case, I must say that this new My Book Elite is my new favorite of the hard drives at least. Much like others like it, it is a separate memory bank from your computer or laptop so that should your pc fry, you can still have your files safely tucked away.
As some of you know, your external hard drive can also fry, so it's good to have a backup of the backup (hence I have 4 laying about) but they're still very handy. Unlike others, however, the My Book does a few other nifty things its competition can't. For example, it comes with software that easily backs up your computer files without your having to hunt for you and even categorizes them by type (Pictures, music, movies, etc). It also allows password protection which makes my privacy needs happy, and has a view screen that lets you know how much memory is remaining and a title if you wish. For example, if you had 6 of these guys you could name one "Home Videos - 2001" or something so you don't have to put masking tape on it or something as a label. It also comes with a 3 year warranty which is much more than my other hard drives.
Overall - External Hard Drives are kind of tricky. They all run the risk of breaking and they all typically do the same thing. I was more impressed with the My Book than others because of its extra goodies and extended warranty, but it also came in a cheaper container - plastic, instead of some which are rock-hard metal. It's a little more expensive, too, but it also runs absolutely silent whereas some of the others are about as annoying as a snoring spouse. Personally, as long as you don't expect the guy to undergo some kind of mega damage that might crack it's plastic coat, I think it's worth the few extra bucks to have the software and extra warranty.
PS: If you are simply wondering whether or not you need an external hard drive - YOU DO. With laptops that burn out all the time, you need a safer spot to store your precious memories and files. I recommend this one more than any other, but if you don't like the look or whatever, still buy an external hard drive. They make your computer run so much faster and makes everything so much cleaner and nicer. They're like super massive usb drives! |
works great in linux
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| Review Date: February 6, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Linux User, Seattle, WA |
| Got this drive the other day and set it up today with an Ubuntu Karmic Linux server without any problems. Just plug-and-play. I had to use a windows machine to run the included software to set the label on the e-ink display, and the "%full" meter doesn't seem to be showing up (not surprising, since I'm using an ext4 filesystem), but these are IMHO minor issues. |
Hard Drive well done!
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| Review Date: February 8, 2010 |
| Reviewer: PC, |
| Great drive that looks great on a desk! Software can be a little clunky but usually runs great! Westrn Digital should quickly bring USB 3.0 to this prouduct to create a real killer Ext. HD. |
Thus far great.
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| Review Date: March 23, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Deimos, Alberta |
| I recently bought this drive to back up my media and personal files with my Imac. The mac OSX SL makes it very easy to use and it has very fast read/write speeds. This is my third MyBook and I have yet to have one fail, the oldest one being 4 years old and still runs great. The advanced features and space on this one is excellent, it gives you a digital manual view of how much space you have used, tempreture conditions etc which is a huge plus. For the last few years I have entrusted my important data with Western Digital after having Maxtor's and Seagate's brick on me and have not been let down, great price too. |
Outstanding External HD
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| Review Date: May 30, 2010 |
| Reviewer: C. Bowman, |
Western Digital My Book Elite 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAH0020HCH-NESN
I bought this HD with a lot of expectations in being able to use it. I was very pleased with the results and will be buying two more at the least.
I use this drive as a back-up so it can mirror my laptop with no problems. I also store movies, music, photos, and other misc media on it. So far I have had no problems with it.
It doesn't take up a lot of space, keeps cool, and is always ready to go when I need to access it. WD did an outstanding job with this latest model.
The software is easy to use and if you don't want the software taking up additional space you can always remove it with an application at WD's website.
I recommend this HD for anyone no matter what you want to use it for. I prefer it over all the other external HDs I have and will eventually move all the stuff I have on them onto these when I get more in. |
Great Help
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| Review Date: December 28, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Leonard Mountz, |
| This is great buy it. I put 40 movies and 1,600 songs from I Tunes on it and the bar that shows you how many GB's you have used hardly moved. I will never use all the space it has. Easy to hook up and nothing to do after that. |
Great item. Western Digital Elite is the best.
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| Review Date: May 12, 2010 |
| Reviewer: A. Baez, |
Western Digital My Book Elite 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAH0015HCH-NESN
This External HDD have great capacity, works great and allows me to organize all my documents like never before. If you have problems of capacity changes WD Elite, you will not regret.
For backup, has enhanced software, which saves the information and keep it available in case of loss and regular storage is excellent too. |
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