As a few of you have suffered disk drive failures recently, you might be interested in taking a look at the Western Digital MyBook series of external hard disk drives. I've just recieved one today and it looks to be quite a decent piece of kit - obviously at the moment I can't speak for it's longevity, but it does seem to be well thought out and designed.
The unit is small (about the size of a Mac Mini) and seems to be designed primarily to be stood up on end on your desk - like a book (hence the book part of its name). There is no cooling fan built-in to the unit, instead it relies on air convection via the "morse-code" cooling slots that wrap around three sides of the unit. Unlike some units, there is also a reasonable amount of space inside to help airflow, and this should also aid in keeping the units cool if you stand a few of them side-by-side. There is also a rubber bump-strip running around the edge of the unit.
The disks are available in different capacities (160-500Gb) and in 3 different versions - Essential (USB2), Premium (USB2/FireWire400) and Pro (USB2/FW400/FW800). On the front of the unit is a single button surrounded by a blue light - the button acts as an on/off button, and the light shows HD activity. On the Premium/Pro units a 2nd light circle also gives a representaion of the capacity used/free. WD have supposedly included a feature to ensure that no data is lost on powerdown - the unit turns itself on and off with your computer and "Safe Shutdown" prevents the drive from being powered down until all data has been written. The drive will also power-down automatically if it's not used for about 20 mins - unfortunately this time can't be altered or disabled.
In use it seems to run quieter and cooler than the other external drives I've got (Maxtor and self-built ones), and it looks good on the desk (not that your data cares ).
Ray beat me to it - bought mine from Dabs. I tried Scan, but they will only do the USB version - not the Firewire or Firewire800 versions .
There is a slight problem with Windows XP 64bit - if you use the drive on the Firewire conection, then the front on/off button doesn't work as the button driver isn't compatible. You either have to power down the computer or pull the firewire lead to shut the darned thing down. Use USB2 though, and you'll have no problems. Bit of a pain. Guess you shouldn't have any issues on a Mac though.
Have fired a help request off to WD, but I guess the answer will be "no we don't/won't support XP64 or Win2003" .
After reading previous post about HDD failures. Would it be recommended to only turn the external on when needed? Or is there likely to be failure due to having the drive on all the time ?
My new system is based around 6 external drives. The only time they will be powered is when I'm saving data to them or when I need to retrieve an original file.
Discussion
6 repliesThe unit is small (about the size of a Mac Mini) and seems to be designed primarily to be stood up on end on your desk - like a book (hence the book part of its name). There is no cooling fan built-in to the unit, instead it relies on air convection via the "morse-code" cooling slots that wrap around three sides of the unit. Unlike some units, there is also a reasonable amount of space inside to help airflow, and this should also aid in keeping the units cool if you stand a few of them side-by-side. There is also a rubber bump-strip running around the edge of the unit.
The disks are available in different capacities (160-500Gb) and in 3 different versions - Essential (USB2), Premium (USB2/FireWire400) and Pro (USB2/FW400/FW800). On the front of the unit is a single button surrounded by a blue light - the button acts as an on/off button, and the light shows HD activity. On the Premium/Pro units a 2nd light circle also gives a representaion of the capacity used/free. WD have supposedly included a feature to ensure that no data is lost on powerdown - the unit turns itself on and off with your computer and "Safe Shutdown" prevents the drive from being powered down until all data has been written. The drive will also power-down automatically if it's not used for about 20 mins - unfortunately this time can't be altered or disabled.
In use it seems to run quieter and cooler than the other external drives I've got (Maxtor and self-built ones), and it looks good on the desk (not that your data cares
John MacTavish
Try Dabs @ http://www.dabs.com just type in "Mybook", they stock quite a range.
Now a question. Are you the same John,who got that cracking shot of the one eyed, crooked billed Rolled in India ???
Nope, never been to India.
Got a couple on order from Dabs, cheers,
John
There is a slight problem with Windows XP 64bit - if you use the drive on the Firewire conection, then the front on/off button doesn't work as the button driver isn't compatible. You either have to power down the computer or pull the firewire lead to shut the darned thing down. Use USB2 though, and you'll have no problems. Bit of a pain. Guess you shouldn't have any issues on a Mac though.
Have fired a help request off to WD, but I guess the answer will be "no we don't/won't support XP64 or Win2003"
William
John