Western Digital 1TB My Book (3 Interface)

[capreppy]

Morning All,

I just got my morning mailer from Buy.com

Western Digital My Book Premium Edition II - 1TB, 7200 RPM Triple Interface (USB 2.0 & Firewire 400/800

The cheapest you will find this on reseller ratings is 359.20 from Dell (it is 388.83 after tax and shipping).

I plan to grab one myself for work travel and also for backup.

[justin-branam]

Originally Posted by capreppy

I plan to grab one myself for work travel and also for backup.

have you checked how big they are? its about 6.9 x 6.3 x 4 inches and weighs over 4 pounds! also, they have to have a/c power.

i bought the 160gb one a while ago, and i find it to big for travel, and it is a good deal smaller than the 1tb. i would much prefer one that can run off of usb power also. my brother has some off brand that is a 250gb that he said he picked up for about $230 (although not sure where). i know WD has a 160gb portable drive that is $169, but im sure you could piece togather a much larger capacity drive that runs off usb power.

just thought you might find this info helpful, but if its what you want, then by all means go for it.

[capreppy]

I had looked at USB powered Externals, but the biggest issue is number of powered ports on my laptop. You can get a USB Hub, but then you'll still have to power the hub.

I realize the size isn't great for portability. I still plan to utilize as a portable as my laptop bag is big enough to hold this and other items. I need the space and the reduncy. I plan to utilize as a Raid 1 (Mirrored) 500GB drive. I have a couple of 250GB external drives, but they are getting old and sectors are starting to fail. I need to offload the data and then format the drive so it is reusable again.

For most users, I believe this will actually be used as a desktop external so portability isn't much of an issue anyway :)

I ordered mine last night and am hoping to have before the end of the week.

[justin-branam]

well let me know how you like it. i was actually thinking of getting the 1 tb network drive and running it as a raid system.

[capreppy]

I did place my order and it dropped shipped from FORT WORTH!!!! It's already on a FedEx truck for delivery today.

I've got 2 250GB Maxtor Externals that have a fair amount of data on them. I'm going to off load the data to the new drive today.

I'm debating whether to go Raid 0 (Stripping) or Raid 1 (Mirrored). I had a Raid 0 setup on my desktop two years ago and I changed that right after one of the drives crashed and BOTH drives became unusable and ALL of the data was lost!!! If however, I can get another of these drives, I may go ahead and go with Raid 0 and use the other for additional backup. Raid 0 is pretty dang fast.

[peteg]

Justin, I have the version previous. Same specs, except it doesn't have the network interface, just firewire and USB 2.0. I love it. Well, as much as a fella can love a black box that sits under his desk. I have it set up so that one 500gb drive mirrors to the other 500gb drive. My only complaint is that the fan is a screamer. Hopefully the new 3 interface version is quieter.

[capreppy]

Originally Posted by peteg

Justin, I have the version previous. Same specs, except it doesn't have the network interface, just firewire and USB 2.0. I love it. Well, as much as a fella can love a black box that sits under his desk. I have it set up so that one 500gb drive mirrors to the other 500gb drive. My only complaint is that the fan is a screamer. Hopefully the new 3 interface version is quieter.

Some initial thoughts.

It is a bulky piece of equipment. The fan is pretty quiet. It's quieter than my Maxtor One Touch II 250GB drives. It is LOUD when first booting up, but that only lasts about 5 seconds.

It is pretty quick. I'm running USB 2.0 right now. It took under 3 hours to copy nearly 220 GB of data from my old drive. I plan to pick up a FireWire 800 Cardbus (running on a laptop) tomorrow from Fry's and this should make it faster.

The backup software is MUCH easier to use than the software that came with my Maxtor's. It'll run a full backup tonight, so we'll see how things work out.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it.