Just bought My Book Essential 1TB today and the first thing i notice is the SLOW speed. Almost 1 1/2 hour now but only 90MB been copied. Try googling and Checked that i have USB 2.0 on my laptop. Not sure what the problem. Looks like it’s WD problem. They need to fix this issue.
I’m using the 1TB My Book Home Edition ( WD10000H1CS-00 ) and have been getting HORRENDOUSLY slow speeds of anywhere from 120 KB/second, to 700 KB/second, on both the USB and FireWire 400 connections.
I have tried different USB and FireWire cables and have checked for updates to drivers (I’m running Windows 7 Pro-64 bit).
Occasionally, the speed will start out at 21 MB/second, or 14 MB/second (it really varies) then after maybe 10-20 minutes it will have slowed down to the aformentioned 120 KB/second.
This is a HUGE problem as I deal with tens or hundreds of Gigabytes of data that requires transfer to the drive for backup.
I let the drive copy ALL day at one point and only 20 Gigs of data had been copied.
120 KB/second is absolutely ridiculous !
Is there seriously NO solution??
I have checked both drives that I have for errors (s.m.a.r.t testing, chkdsk, etc) but everything shows up fine.
I’ve also formatted the drives to NTFS.
At this point, these drives are useless except for a couple of gigs worth of transfer.
Come on Western Digital, help us out! !
I had the same problem untill I reformat my WD drive into NTFS file system like my inner drives. It helped a lot!!!
Cheers!
Has anyone found a solution to the slow transfer speed? I just started using the WD 2T My Book essential and it to over 20 hours backup 200GB All my USB drivers are up to date and I have no problems with anyother software transfers or backups taking so long.
I just got the Essential 2TB and have waited 3+ hours just to categorize files…then spent all day Friday, Saturday and the very early Sunday…cuz I never let it sleep…to get 101gb copied…FINALLY …thought I’d set up the “ongoing” backup feature to only backup what I want “manually” set aside…and i it goes into the "categorizing files mode again…which I cannot find anything about whether I can interrupt this process and update to the new version…or to do anything with the Smartware…of course I had to already exchange the first Essential I purchased…because I thought for sure the slow speed HAD TO BE A PRODUCT FLAW…I have a fairly new computer…dual core, etc. HELP
This has got to be the worst external drive I have ever had the misfortune to use.
Im no computer newbie and can usually fix almost any issues.
The transfer speed of thses drives is ridiculously slow which means there are some serious problems with these drives and I wouldnt trust them with anything really important for a second. I suspect theres an internal conflict with the ESATA/-USB and Firewire connections. It tries do do everything but does nothing well.
It took me 9 hours to backup a mere 6gb over night. I woke up thinkiong the whole back up operation would have been done. I need to back up up 600gb. Can you imagine how long a restore would take with this thing…
I SUGGEST
You delete all the WD software and simply use Windows own backup system or simply drag the items you wish backed up over the dirve Just treat it is a regylar USB storage device. If for example you want you Documents folder backed up just drag it over. You will find the drive faster, but not much. Or you can look around for another backup software solution. There are even some free ones out there better than the WD one.
The ESATA connectors was the main reson I bought this pile of junk six months ago. I only yesterday decided it was time to back up more stuff. If only I had tried this when I purchased it I would have sent it straight back for a refund. ESATA is very fast, faster than USB2 and Friewire 800…yeah if they work on WD drives
My ESATA connections work perfectly with a seagate drive so theres nothing wrong with them
FIRMWARE UPDATE:
It simply doesnt work!
I think the reason mine wont work is becasue I have two internal WD drives which I have had no problem with. But the software keeps asking me to disconnect all USB connectors menaing it probably recognises the internal WD drives…well eh I need the mouse! and my C drive is a western Digital so I CANNOT disconnect everything.
I honestly think what were all seeing here is Chinese made junk.
I have a sevenyear old freecom 40gb ext drive which has traveled the world with me. Its been dropped, thrown around and generally abused. ANd its still working, and works better than any other external drive I have ever purchased. Ecen the seagate gives me issues
The included software for these WD external drives are pure rubbish
I honestly think what were all seeing here is Chinese made junk.
I will never again purchase another WD external drive and this experience has put me off ever buying one of their internal drives. But then again I will soon be gong SD (Solid State drive) which has transfer speeds 50 times faster than mechanical drives. They are the future, but for now they are still very expensive. But when you see them in action they are incredible. I suspect 600gb would be transfereed within 10-15 miniutes…Bring on the future
WD you dissapoint me… a lot
Hi All,
I bought My Book Essentials 1 TB drive 3 days back. It had one drive (930 GB) and another Virtual drive with the necessary drivers.
The main drive (930 GB) was pre-formatted as NTFS. I tried copying the Movie files (DVD Backups). It was terribly slow. It will start with 20 MB/Sec and after a while the speed goes down to as low as 500 KB / sec.
I tried removing the existing Partition and created multiple partitions (Quick Format). It didn’t help me either.
I checked the properties > Policies Section. The “Optimize performance” option is checked.
Interesting point is, when I copy the smaller files (MP3s and Pictures not exceeding 10 MB each) where total size was 4-6 GB, the speed was decent (10-11 MB/sec).
I spoke to the customer care. They did not deny anything and asked me to send it for replacement. But, I really doubt whether it will be solved even when I get a replacement disk.
I see lot of such complaints in many forums but with no solution. It is really frustrating for me to suffer after buying this drive 
Any help would be deeply appreciated.
Hi Paul,
Can you elobarate on the steps you followed to fix it?
Hi Everyone,
Yesterday I tried a fix (which was mentioned in some post) and it looks to be working.
Performance Increase:
Previosly the speed used to go as LOW as 500 KB per second. After this tweak, the WRITE speed was around 20 MB / sec which is very decent I tried copying 7 GB of Video Files which took < 8 minutes. 
Steps:
-
Go to Device Manager (Run > COMPMGMT.msc)
-
Navigate where your WD External HDD is located
-
Right Click and choose Properties
-
Choose Optimize for Performance (Dont choose Optimize for Quick Removal)
Caution:
When choosing this option, you have to be careful when unplugging the USB drive because, the data to br written will be cached. For more info, look at this MS article.
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/whshardware/thread/d522575c-7480-451d-8f60-ee886477b16f
Note:
I have 1 TB My Book Essential Edition. I formatted the entire drive into one NTFS Partition (930 GB). Used the USB 2.0 cable came with the package. Installed the Driver which was available in the Virtual Drive.
Will the warranty be void if i reformat the drive to NTF? I have a WD MyBook Essential 1TB which is barely 5 months old.
This is just a thought and something I’ve noticed. I have the MyBook Essentials 1TB. As I stated in a previous post and as with the rest of you have had horrendous transfer speeds.
I do have a WD Passport which I used as an extra backup for my genealogy files which was backed up via Norton 360.
I started a new backup set via Norton and used the MyBook as the destination drive for this new backup.
So far in the past hour 40,000 files have backed up. It’s hard to say what this is as far as GB but it looks to be roughly 1/20th. I think there was 120 GB to begin with. If this is correct, the speed is much faster.
Just a thought.
Scott
Scott
OK I’m not a techie…so I have a few questions…did you uninstall the Smartware to do the Norton backup…does the microsoft or Win 7 backup feature allow the same…tell me a little about the Norton 360 backup
I really don’t want to reformat anything…so if this helps…I will keep the drive.
Yes, the smart ware is installed , I am using Windows Vista. I did not uninstall the smartware. I didn’t reformat and it seems Norton is treating it like an external drive as it should. I am not religous on reading the posts but I read one a couple above my last one and will try that tomorrow.
Reposted as this is working for me. Just a couple minutes into transfer and have 5000 filed copied. The only difference is I did not reformat the drive (already NTFS).
Scott
Re: Slow Transfer Speed
10 hours ago
Hi Everyone,
Yesterday I tried a fix (which was mentioned in some post) and it looks to be working.
Performance Increase:
Previosly the speed used to go as LOW as 500 KB per second. After this tweak, the WRITE speed was around 20 MB / sec which is very decent I tried copying 7 GB of Video Files which took < 8 minutes.
Steps:
-
Go to Device Manager (Run > COMPMGMT.msc)
-
Navigate where your WD External HDD is located
-
Right Click and choose Properties
-
Choose Optimize for Performance (Dont choose Optimize for Quick Removal)
Caution:
When choosing this option, you have to be careful when unplugging the USB drive because, the data to br written will be cached. For more info, look at this MS article.
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/whshardware/ thread/d522575c-7480-451d-8f60-ee886477b16f
Note:
I have 1 TB My Book Essential Edition. I formatted the entire drive into one NTFS Partition (930 GB). Used the USB 2.0 cable came with the package. Installed the Driver which was available in the Virtual Drive.
Scott,
Now I am really confused…I do unplug my drive…what caution should I take after I’ve optimized performance…then at the beginning you said the drive was already formatted to NTFS…but then at the end you said you did that…HELP. I need specific …almost elementary steps to optimizing this transfer process…
Thanks
No. Nothing to do with Waranty 
You can safely go ahead.
Scott,
I just bought a 2TB My Book (should have read the thread before hand). Reading through the thread I’ve encountered the same issues. When applying the recommended changes I don’t have access to the Optimization for Performance option you referred to. I’m running Windows 7. Do you know if that’s even an option?
Thanks,
Howard
