Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II Hard Drive Array - WDG2TP10000N
Western Digital MyBook Pro Edition II 1TB (USB 2.0 & FireWire400/800) External Hard Drive

This external hard drive appears nice as it works great with Macs and Mac's Time Machine. However: (1) it is completely overpriced compared to other external hard drives. (2) It is noisy. And I mean noisy. The drive is always on (does not have a power button), and whether used (accessed) or not, it does things, and the fan turns on. Someone said it sounds like a hair dryer. Well said. The noise became really bothersome in conference calls I did over the speaker phone. This unit, since it never shuts down, appears to get hot, requiring the fan to run. Even when you are not accessing it! (3) And then it died. This one lasted 2 years. The fan came on more frequently lately, and I think it might be a deterioration in the drive resulting in heat accumulation, which eventually let the drive die. This is not the first Western Digital external hard drive that died on us. Talking about backup! Now my Time Machine is gone, and so are my backups. I have read many reviews of other external 1 TB hard drives (Western Digital, Seagate, Iomega); all appear to have the problem of failing sooner or later. I think my 2 years was "above average". But hey, for the price they charged me I would expect more than 2 years. And the other one only lasted for 3 months! It seems you not only have to have a backup, you have to have a backup of your backup to be really safe!
 
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I have one and like it enough to want another - but the price seems to change on a daily basis, at least on buy.com.
 
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[] PRO SIDE is that I never lost any data after 3 months of use. It is fast. [] CON SIDE is that it is VERY noisy. The fan when at normal speed sounds like a hair drier. If that is not bad enough the fan kicks in turbo drive making it VERY LOAD & NOISY. It runs hot so Turbo fan kicks in often, even when idle it heats up and fan kicks in on its own. This is not good for regular use. My suggestion is only use it for backup and then disconnect and turn it off while not in use. OTHER PROBLEMS: Sometimes the drive locks up and won't dismount for no apparent reason. Even when the drive look like it is doing nothing and off dismount does not work. I have to reboot my PC to free it up and dismount it which is risky but never lost any data that I know of yet. When using with other HDs this lock up problem happens more often. Tried contacting WD for help but they were no help, [] LOOK - This is not a reason to pick a HD but since WD initially spend most of their ad time talking about the new look 4 months ago I have to say this is an UGLY looking device. On top of that it is poorly designed. WD claims it takes up less space on your desk but actual it is more because the design is not suitable for stacking multiple drives and standing vertically you need to give it space all around it cause it runs very hot. I have my external desk fan blowing on it to help in the cooling.
 
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I always thought that Western Digital was a very great brand name for their products and very well known. After having 3 external hard drives, I have just figured out that many people have the same problem as me. The computer does not detect the hard drive and doesn't show up on my computer. It was only 3 months of usage! And I do not turn it on all the time and I do not keep it on for hours till it heats up. It just stopped working. It makes the detection noise from windows xp, but does not show up on the hard drives under my computer. All drivers were reinstalled and i've done searches related to this problem and many people seem to be unhappy with this same problem. Two hard drives not working from WD and so far only 1 works. Do not buy Western Digital anymore!
 
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Works great so far (3 months), but very noisy.
 
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This is the worst operating piece of hardware I have ever encountered. After a few operations, it would only stay powered on for a few seconds and power off again. Western Digital will not support the product from buy.com and buy.com only accepts RMAs for 14 days. Save your money.
 
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Err... RAID 0 offers no protection, it just combines the capacities of the separate drives as if they were one big virtual drive. Might want to RTFM before complaining. :)
 
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I have NOT had any problem with noise. I'm almost wondering if the fan is broken on mine. However, I'm not sure it is compatible with the new Microsoft Vista operating system. First, make sure you run the included software. If you just try and plug and play Microsoft will assign one of its drivers and you cannot install the WD provided driver to replace it without a serious hassle. I had to call WD to help me get my unit working on a new HP desktop PC. The service was great. If you call during their regular business hours (not 24/7) the woman I talked to was curteous and competant. Because I had a RAID0 500MB drive on my desktop the Disk Manager does not work. As such I had to move the drive to an XP machine to format it. I then moved it back to my Vista machine and it will not work with the Fire Wire connection, only the USB (slower) port. But I'm still satisfied. I like WD. I have a WD 400MB My Book on the system as well which I have had for over a year with no problems, and this terebyte drive, for the price, even with the hassle setting it up and no Fire Wire access, is all right by me. Lastly, the included Retrospect 7.5 software requires an administrative password to work which was not provided. When I asked the WD help desk they gave me another (800) number to call the company direct, and I just don't have the time.
 
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I have copied and recopied probably 2TB worth of information onto the drive so far in the first 3 weeks and still no problems. The only thing is that it came MAC formatted and there was no reference on how to format it through windows. The smart drive information that is common on many disks does not seem to work?? I have not looked into this problem but I assume it has to do with how I formatted it. I have not tried the raid configuration so I do not know how well that works.
 
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Sub-standard for Western Digital. I've had dozens of WD drives over 15 years and I've never seen anything so shoddy. The Fan runs all the time and is LOUD. No help form WD support. One poor guy has created a work around by turning the fan over to have it blow out instead of in. (which is the way it should have been mounted) DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF JUNK!!!!!!!
 
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I've been running this as a shared projects disk for our heavy-traffic design workgroup for two weeks, and so far no problems at all. It has solid construction, it's very fast (via FW800), and I've had none of the noise issues that have been previously reported. Of course, any hard drive can suddenly develop problems or die, so two weeks is hardly conclusive. Still, assuming that you do regular backups to other 500gb or 1tb disks, I'd recommend this extremely inexpensive drive as worth a try.
 
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Everything is as promised and great at the moment. I see what some reviews meant by the loud fan but I think it has different speeds for different conditions. sometimes it is loud when really hot but other times it is quiter when not so hot. Great Purchase, thanks Buy.com! I am a very happy customer!
 
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This drive cannot be trusted! Shuts down at random in the middle of a process! Folders disappear from the directory. RAID 0 only shows 1 drive - Where's the auto backup? NOISY!! No Peace of Mind!! Replacement was exactly the same deal!
 
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I got my WD a week ago, since then i used 600GB on it, i took it everywhere i did go and there is completely nothing bad about it that i can think of. Sometimes fan goes on little loud, but then it turns of in a while and everything's great. Great buy for that price. And then You got RAID1 option which gives You that extra security on your files that You always want to have. Great Buy.
 
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Easy to setup and use. I bought this to run my iTunes database off my iMac. I was concerned about using an external drive because of performance, but the drive performed well. The drive is fairly quiet, but depending on use, a loud fan kicks in that makes you wonder about why WD put such a loud fan in an otherwise perfect product.
 
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I know a lot of people complained about the noise of the fan to cool the drive. Well with the latest firmware update, that's not a problem anymore. I run my drive constantly, moving large files, watching hours of video, and anything else extensive... and I never hear the fan. It's quieter then my laptop fan, and my laptop fan isn't that loud. The only time I ever heard the ridiculously loud hairdryer-esque fan noise was when the firmware rebooted the drive, but it was only for a few seconds and then never again. The drive is amazing. It's fast and absurdly huge. I copy over entire HDTV shows I recorded and not even a single percentage is used up. Also, even though I only have firewire 400, the drive is insanely fast, so much that I feel like it's faster then my internal hard drive. Finally, with the price that buy.com has, this drive is just a must have. Don't ever worry about storage.... get the WD My Book Pro II, but don't forget to download the firmware update from WD's site.
 
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It is simple to install and it works as expected. Having RAID-1 (Mirror config) as an option or RAID-0 (no protection but more storage) is great! I configured with RAID-1 for protection. If I ever need more space I could reconfigure to use it in RAID-0. It is easy to do!.
 
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Works on the Mac right out of the box. Took 3 minutes to hook up. The brushed aluminum looks attractive, and the box is small considering the fact that their are two drives inside. It's true, the fan is loud, but only seems to kick on during larger file transfers. Probably not so suitable for desktop use (Then again, better a loud fan then a dead hard drive) For my purposes as an offsite backup, the unit serves my need perfectly. Backed-up 450GB using FW800 and SuperDuper, getting about 45GB per hour transfer rate. At this speed, about 20-25 hours to fill up the entire drive. Not the fastest, but an affordable way to secure priceless data. My only wish is that the drive could be configured as JBOD (Just a bunch of disks) instead of RAID striping/mirror. That way, in a pinch, I could take the drive out of the unit and pop it right into the desktop computer.
 
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The drive includes both USB and Firewire cables and ports for fast data transfer. It was immediately recognized and was up and roaring in seconds. It does sound like a jet engine as it starts up, but then is no louder then the Dell it is hooked to.
 
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I would not recommend this drive. It is very very noisy. Sounds like a hair dryer on your desk.
 
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$500 may seem expensive for an ext hard drive, but data's valuable. I was actually in the market for two 500GB drives and planned to setup mirroring when I came across this -- job done at about the same price, in one cool package. I have a background in IT and saw a few too many hard drives die in my day (including one of my own) to just let all my precious data sit on my laptop without any backup mechanism in place. I bought this for its dual drive RAID (note, out of the box, it's configured with 1TB, so you have to install the software and reconfigure it--easy as pie). Hence, I get only 500GB of storage, but I know that I'll never lose that data -- if one drive fails, the other drive contains identical info. Performance is generally great. Both USB and Firewire 400 result in snappy transfer speeds. I only dock it because it gets very noisy on the occasion that you're downloading large files (like an episode of Lost from iTunes). Once that fan kicks in, you're in the c*ckpit of an airplane! But for the general day-to-day, it's silent, zippy and provides me with ease of mind. One note: from my experience, laptop hard drives are about twice as likely to fail than desktops. As such, I highly recommend some form of ext drive with a backup plan in place (this comes with Retrospect for the Mac, which does the job).
 
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Beware! This unit has been flawless so far in its performance, but it sounds like a vacuum cleaner. I have this in a separate office so I can shut the door, but when I don't I can hear it upstairs and over the TV which is in another room. It is well ventilated so not sure why this happens. Maybe mine is defective, but this is unbelievable.
 
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Definitely a good purchase from a cost-value perspective. It looks very good as well. Formatted for Macs, but can be easily reformatted to NTFS. Nothing to setup which is great (driver is there for XP), but the apps that're on the CD are useless, other than the RAID config tool. One and only big "con" is the internal fan being too loud. The fan was not even mentioned in the product description, and that's really why I wanted to write this review.
 
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