Gave up on My Book 2tb - Returned!

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

A message to the WD team:

While I think your internal HD’s are more reliable than Seagate
and have replaced many Seagate HD’s that have stopped working with WD HD’s, I
had to give up on your external HD because the software is just complete ■■■■!

I used the external HD for about 2 weeks, had it updated and
everything working fine during that time.

Then all of the sudden, the HD would randomly not show up at
all. I could see it was on and running and could feel the disk spinning inside
the case.

Sometimes, it would show up, but the software would not go
past the password login, while other times it would open, but not go
further than showing the tab with the data stored and a couple others, but
would not connect and back up.

I tried it on an older Sony WinXP Media PC, New Dell XPS 17
Laptop with Win7 Pro, New Dell Studio XPS 9100 with Win7Pro and it reacted the
same exact way

I spent the rest of the time here, searching the web, etc.,
and could not find any way to fix the issue.

I did discover that WD My Book external HD’s (and you will
see it if you Google search) seem to have tons of problems that are mainly due
to the software side of the drive.

So…

I couldn’t take it anymore and needed a backup since I run
multiple websites and need critical data backed up. So I went back to the store
where I purchased it and returned it for a comparable Seagate 2tb external backup.
It was also $10 cheaper!

I plugged it in, it connected right up to my Win7 Pro Dell
XPS Studio 9100 and let Windows do an image and full backup - no problem at
all!

So I think until you fix the software side of your External
HD’s, or just give the option for that model to not use the WD software so
Windows can handle the backup, I won’t be buying anymore WD External drives.
Sorry.

This post was meant to be constructive criticism because I
want WD to improve their external HD’s.

Thanks,

John

2

newsman2010, this is most unfortunate since the External Hard Disk Drive itself does not need WD SmartWare to work, at all.

Regards,

3

I have purchased a My Book 1TB from Sam’s a year ago and used it to back-up important pictures and files to it.  I changed computers and the new PC could not recognize the My Book. WD10000H1U-00.  I asked a friend to see if he could “find” it and he had no luck.  He tried unsuccessfully to read it and found that the harddrive was "searching " and searching and that it would spin-up and then shut down.  I do not know all of the technicalities other than he said it was “fried”.  I never really used the My Book, other than loading the files a few times as back-up.  Now it is fried and I am hoping I have the files on the old PC that I luckily kept.  He said I could pay $2k to send it off to hope that it could be fixed, but the last time he did that for a business it returned less than 10% of the information.  I purchased the My Book because of the reputable name and brand and am now screwed.  I potentially have lost all of those photos due to the harddrive being a peice of ■■■■ and it not working now.  I trusted Western Digital and now will not buy from them again.  I DO NOT recommend this product.  I will not recommend this or any other Western Digital products to my friends, and will ensure that when this “technology” discussion does come up in a conversation that I will pass along my utter disappointment.

4

NeverBuyAgain wrote:

I have purchased a My Book 1TB from Sam’s a year ago and used it to back-up important pictures and files to it.

I really do feel for you, and I know that this is going to be really hard to take, but you never backed up anything.  I had to learn this lesson the hard way, myself.  I never commit any of my important data to just one drive, or media, EVER.  a backup isn’t a backup until the data is in multiple locations.  that’s why I will always buy two cheap drives rather than one expensive “good” drive.  cause I know that every drive will fail, sooner or later.  I don’t care who builds it.  I’ve seen kids at Frys drop hard drives off the shelf, and then just put them back up for some poor fool to come along and buy them anyway. 

but to your issue, I don’t know you friend, but have you tried looking in disk management to see if the drive shows up.  If the drive is spinning up and searching and searching, then it isn’t fried.  you wouldn’t be getting any activity at all if it was fried.  there are several reasons your drive may not be showing up.  it could be a power issue.  it could be data corruption.  it could be a bad cable.  have you tried any of these things?