Mac users steer clear of Western Digital My Books

[wparsonsgisnet]

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Bill W,

 

I don't use a raid scheme with my drives since I'm the only user of the drives and I am careful with my backups. Raid schemes cause the drives to work more than otherwise.

 

I keep a primary copy of my images on anexternal drive and mirror the directories to a second external drive. For offsite backup, I then mirror the directories to a 3rd drive that I keep in a fireproof box in my (detached) garage.

 

Until I stupidly erased one of my directories (all on my own) about a week ago, before backing it up properly, I was proud to say that I had not lost a file in years. Sigh.... Ansel probably wouldn't have printed any of those lost images, anyway....

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[miami91]

I recently got some G Drives myself. They come set up for Mac. Quiet, no fans. Can't speak for reliabilty. Fine so far.

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

 

 

Actually, most of the G Technology drives do have fans. You must have one of the small single drive models, such as the G-Mini, or the G-Drive, which apparently gets by with a well-designed heat sink. Any of the multiple drive RAID models have fans, yet are still pretty quiet (the fan on my Mac drowns out my G disks).

 

It's somewhat confusing that there is a G-Drive (capitol D), and several other models of G Technology drives (lowercase d). Sort of like keeping straight Digilux and D-Lux.

 

Jeff.

[wlaidlaw]

I have a Mac G5 dual 1.6. I added an additional drive in the open bay. It is a WD 500gig. I formatted it as Mac Journal extended. I am using this as a back up for my data on the primary drive that came with the computer. My question. Is this a good way to back up my important data, principally my photo files. Obvioulsy since it is my hobby, I do not have the capacity needs that a professional does. I figured if the primary drive fails, I have the back up and I can just pop it out and move to a new computer. I bought two of the WD drives with the intent of using them when I buy my new system a MacPro and I will have three drives in it. Any syggestions or help appreciated as usual. Mac offers a raid card as an option in the Macpro for a mere $900.....

 

Bill,

 

That is exactly what I did in the UK with my dual 2.3 Powermac, except I put in an additional 320Gb Maxtor Server Grade HD. Seems a good solution as held at optimum temp and has a very good quality stabilized power supply.

 

Wilson

[wparsonsgisnet]

Wilson, in regard to the fan remark, I have have several LaCie drives (which do not have fans) fail -- but the disk was fine, it was the pc cards that fried.

 

I bot a replacement housing with the usb/firewire firmware and the data on the disks were fine. This is the reason I buy refurb's from LaCie; I think they should pay for the repair.

[wlaidlaw]

Bill,

 

It was not me who made the fans remark. Ideally I would like a totally silent fan. My

Connectland (maxtor HD) 250 has a solid aluminium finned unit in contact with the drive itself and gets sufficiently hot that I am not willing to leave it on permanently. The casing also transmits lots of whirring and clicking that is as noisy as most fans. The Freecom Datatank I have ordered has a "high tech ball bearing fan". Sadly having ordered it yesterday when they were showing 3 in stock with 2 day delivery, today my order is showing awaiting stock from supplier - not happy.

 

Wilson

[wparsonsgisnet]

and we all thought *battery* technology was the problem .............

[Bill W]

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Thanks guys, I will keep doing the internal back up scheme and when I get my new Macpro, I will go with at leats two extra drives maybe four. I can back them up automatically. I am waiting for Apple to start shipping the Macpro with the new operating system in October before I upgrade. I also have a small G-Drive for quick back ups and data transfers from computer to computer. The wife and I have 4 Macs in the house. She has an iMac and we each have a 13 inch Mabook. Too many but they are easy to keep up to date unlike the Windozeeeeee thingy's................

[ceflynn]

I had not heard of G-Technology until I saw their drives in the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York. I buy nothing else now. I have seen enough of drives designed by people who have no interest in thermodynamics and containing parts chosen by bean counters. All drive vendors must choose from the available drive mechanisms, but there is no excuse for poor ventilation and power supplies not even suitable for operating a toy.

[wlaidlaw]

I had not heard of G-Technology until I saw their drives in the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York. I buy nothing else now. I have seen enough of drives designed by people who have no interest in thermodynamics and containing parts chosen by bean counters. All drive vendors must choose from the available drive mechanisms, but there is no excuse for poor ventilation and power supplies not even suitable for operating a toy.

 

That was one thing that worried me immediately about the WD My Book. The power supply block was one half the size and one third the weight of the one for my Connectland HD. The cables were also much thinner and used a figure 8 (non-earthed) power lead against the IEE earthed one on the Connectland. All in all it looked, as you say, a product where the principal designer was a bean counter rather than an engineer.

 

Wilson

[rafael_macia]

Wilson,

 

Sorry to hear your nightmare.

 

I have used LaCie Porsche design style Firewire with Macs a lot for about 8 years. They have all worked perfect. Plus they stack nicely.

Just a vote for LaCie for you in the future

 

Rafael

[wlaidlaw]

After my trials of last week, I at last seem to have found an excellent product that I can highly recommend. It is a 1 TB Freecom Datatank. It works very simply and if you want it (I don't) has one button synchronisation and one button encryption (128 bit). When running it has a thermally controlled ball race fan, which is next to silent in operation. You can use the drive in RAID 0, 1 or in JBOD mode to give both drives separate letters. One very nice feature for Mac users, is that it goes into sleep mode automatically when the Mac does - it may do this on Windows too but I don't know. It is USB 2, Firewire 400 or 800. There is a more expensive model that is wireless as well. Seems very nicely made and the manual is clear and concise. All in all a good find. Cost = €400.

 

Wilson

[FastFashnReloaded]

I have just had the IT day from hell. I bought a new Western Digital My Book Essential II 500Gb external HD. My existing Connectland 250 Gb which backs up both my iBook and iMac plus stores all my DNG's was nearly full. I copied and verified all the contents of the old 250 Gb drive to the new WD one using Chronosync, intending to then delete the back ups from the old drive but have duplicate sets of the DNG's, as these are not stored on any of the Macs. All seemed to go fine and everything copied across by 11PM yesterday. I then put all the systems into sleep as usual. This morning, when I fired everything up, the WD drive would not mount nor would any of the usual disk utilities help. The drive was shown as having total input output failure. I then found that the old Connectland drive appeared to be empty. Finally everything ground to a halt, both the iMac to which the WD was connected via USB and the networked iBook totally locked up. On restarting them from the Tiger DVD, the hard drives had been damaged on both but were repairable. On the old external HD, the FAT seemed to have been wiped and would not re-create. The WD was as dead as a dodo and has been sent back for a refund. I am currently running Data Rescue II on the old ext HD in the hope of finding my DNG's. I spoke to a very helpful German Lady at WD and she seemed to imply that there could be a compatibility problem between WD My Book II and Macs. The file system is FAT32 and you cannot reformat to HFS - I suspect this is the root of the mess. I think I will buy an Iomega, which has Mac as it's primary OS with Windows compatibility as an afterthought.

 

Wilson

 

I back up all my pix to dual layer DVD, then I make a back up DVD for the DVD backup, then I back up the data to an external USB or Firewire drive, and then I upload the pix I really like to Flickr.

 

Why can't you reformat? That's silly. Grrrr.

 

FAT32 isn't good for a partition size of 500GB. Max partition size is 32GB, so your data is incorrect. The drive would have been formatted NTFS to start with if WD had a brain, which I'm unsure of.

[wlaidlaw]

I back up all my pix to dual layer DVD, then I make a back up DVD for the DVD backup, then I back up the data to an external USB or Firewire drive, and then I upload the pix I really like to Flickr.

 

Why can't you reformat? That's silly. Grrrr.

 

FAT32 isn't good for a partition size of 500GB. Max partition size is 32GB, so your data is incorrect. The drive would have been formatted NTFS to start with if WD had a brain, which I'm unsure of.

 

Dana,

 

I suspect there was something wrong with the WD drive from the moment I got it. I should have been able to format it to HFS just like I have done with the Freecom Datatank I now have. I have always steered clear of DVD-R as I had been warned that the life could be as short as 2 years. There is a new product called Delkin Gold discs, which claim a minimum life of 100 years. I may try those but as my image library is now 90GB, it will take quite a few discs.

 

Wilson

[FastFashnReloaded]

Dana,

 

I suspect there was something wrong with the WD drive from the moment I got it. I should have been able to format it to HFS just like I have done with the Freecom Datatank I now have. I have always steered clear of DVD-R as I had been warned that the life could be as short as 2 years. There is a new product called Delkin Gold discs, which claim a minimum life of 100 years. I may try those but as my image library is now 90GB, it will take quite a few discs.

 

Wilson

 

I suspect (SUSPECT!) that if you keep your DVD in a fairly dark and temp controlled space you'll see longer lives than that. Two years seems awfully short for a DVD that is kept in a plastic housing in air-conditioning.

 

By the time two years rolls around for this lot I suspect I'll be copying to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or equivalent anyway. Gotta keep the back-ups backed up to the latest medium! :-)

 

Besides, as cheap as mag drives are now, you can afford ot keep another back up on your external drive, and then have another drive in the drawer/closet that you only use when you've had a serious HD failure and want to restore the files. I saw a 1TB external drive for $275 the other day. Like, "Holy Christmas Batman!"

[CJH]

I'm also a fan of the G-Tech drives and own 5 of them now. I travel with the small ones (100 and 160GB), then have larger ones at home (stored in a Sentry media safe) for permanent storage. The G-Drive Q is, I believe, the only external drive that has 4 different connection interfaces built in. The drive units themselves are made by Seagate and Hitachi (at least in mine), companies who, from what I've been able to determine, are considered to produce among the best drive units available.

 

By the way, if you're in need of very short cables to travel with, you might try USB, FireWire, Ethernet, Serial ATA - Cables Adapters and Hard to Find Items at www.USBFireWire.com or Find the latest Performance Upgrades, Firewire and USB Hard Drives, SATA, Memory, Laptop Battery, and more at OWC. Both sites have some 6 to 9-inch Firewire cables that make it much easier to transfer and back-up on the road (no connection with either site, other than having been a customer of both).

 

Chris

[Jamie Roberts]

Stay ALWAYS clear from WD mybooks - they advertise as NAS, but they are not. You can only access content by using propietary software.

 

In XP, I don't think this is true. But there is no auto drive letter assignment.

 

Now, their absolutely stupid instructions don't help. But if you simply put the drive on the network, then go to "my network places" there the drive is. You don't have to install their stupid MIO net software.

 

Then you just map the public share to a drive letter and hey presto. NAS without the stupid drivers.

[Jamie Roberts]

Dana,

 

I suspect there was something wrong with the WD drive from the moment I got it. I should have been able to format it to HFS just like I have done with the Freecom Datatank I now have. I have always steered clear of DVD-R as I had been warned that the life could be as short as 2 years. There is a new product called Delkin Gold discs, which claim a minimum life of 100 years. I may try those but as my image library is now 90GB, it will take quite a few discs.

 

Wilson

 

Wilson, the WD network discs I have come formatted with a LINUX file system--not FAT. It should be completely readable by a Mac.

 

I'm wondering if you had a power failure while you were copying stuff. I don't see any way how an external drive could corrupt your system. But a power supply problem or a power problem would have the same effect all the drives.

[topoxforddoc]

Wilson,

 

I'm sorry to hear about your IT woes. I use a couple of WD MyBook Premium HDs (320 &b 750GB with FW400 and USB2) on my Mac Pro using FW400. I've had no problems. I've formatted the drives out of the box and use them with CMS BounceBack pro software to make incremental bootable backups. I started using BounceBack pro about 4 years ago after their original ABS backup drives won the mac product of the year award.

 

Charlie

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[jquimby]

Many issues here...

 

1. Why didn't you format the drive when you first got it? If you are using mac's why run an old Microsoft file system? From now on when you first get a drive use Apple's Drive Utility to re-format the drive to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"

 

2. You may want to spend some time while the data rescue operation is underway and consider the value of the files and information on any hard drive you have. While keeping that in mind do you think buying a consumer commodity, marketed and sold by size and price, is consistent with what you have valued the files and information to be? I know this doesn't help and it may work in most situation but it is something to keep in mind.

 

Before anyone jumps in and states but it was only... or it should do this... or not do this.... I am not disagreeing with you. I am simply saying, if the value of the files and information is invaluable, memories and photos that cannot be replaced , would it not make sense to learn a little bit about how best to preserve them before this happens. Sure computers are complex and the learning curve is steep. But an once of prevention is worth a pound of the cure. Looking back from the point where you are now, maybe a few steps could have been done differently, I would hope that all of us learn from this most unfortunate situation.

 

Everyone tries to find "good value" but maybe it is ok to spend a little more on somethings. Maybe multiple copies of our photo archives on different drives isn't a luxury, but common sense. We buy Leica's for a reason, it is a premium product that delivers premium results. Hard drives are no different. All of which sometimes fail.

 

As an old photojournalist I carried three cameras, two on me while I worked and another in a bag, just in case. The concept of not getting 'the shot' because of gear malfunction, even with a premium product, just wasn't going to happen. Did it cost more, absolutely, but at the end of the day only you can figure out the equation of cost, risk and benefit.

 

Just some of my thoughts, I truly hope you can recover all of the information and hope everyone else take a minute to consider how they would fair if they find themselves in this situation...

[gesper]

All I know is that in the past I have had a lot of hard drives fail, and every single one was a WD. Now I never buy them unless they come installed in a computer, and then I always backup with another brand.