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 Post subject: Western Digital MyBook Drives
PostPosted: February 19th, 2008, 19:03 
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Joined: February 19th, 2008, 18:57
Posts: 2
Do the 500GB MyBook Essential (WDH1U5000N) and Home (WDH1CS5000N) editions have the same drive inside? Do they use Perpendicular Recording technology? Are they reliable? What's the most reliable 500GB drive available today?


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 Post subject: Re: Western Digital MyBook Drives
PostPosted: February 24th, 2008, 15:53 
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Joined: February 24th, 2008, 15:27
Posts: 2
hey dude
I own two WD MyBooks. They work fine, but you have to be very careful with them - no shaking kicking... one of them fell during a copy operation, and now is dead. Im still working on it to figure out what to do. As far as the manner of recording data, the WD Green Power drives, used in MyBooks >500G use perpendicular recording. The technology itself I suppose is reliable, if that is what you ask. The drives themselves are as reliable as you treat them good. I mistreated mine and it hit back big time... hope this helps. If you plan on playing around with them, make sure you read the text on changing drive heads on this site.

cheers
Igor.


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 Post subject: Re: Western Digital MyBook Drives
PostPosted: June 11th, 2008, 9:10 
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Joined: April 14th, 2008, 12:23
Posts: 29
Did you figure out how to open it without enclosure damage?


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 Post subject: Re: Western Digital MyBook Drives
PostPosted: June 14th, 2008, 20:03 
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Joined: June 12th, 2008, 1:53
Posts: 8
Judging from all of the people seeking WD drives and what I've read in many reviews of the "my book" series of drives I would avoid it like the plague. I have a 1Tb MBpro2 that was never moved and has failed after about a year of operation, and it is not used commercially. I'm guessing that the enclosure design is flawed allowing it to overheat easily. When and if I get my data off and WD sends a replacement it is going on ebay.


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 Post subject: Re: Western Digital MyBook Drives
PostPosted: July 16th, 2008, 8:34 
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Joined: April 14th, 2008, 12:23
Posts: 29
For the record, my 1TB MyBook drive is working fine. I was asking in case I want to use is as an internal drive, or in an eSATA enclosure. Then I could give the USB enclosure to a friend.

I have lost a lot of WD drives, and I am just an end-user. Two WD5000KS drives bit the dust almost simultaneously, with no physical abuse whatsoever. I RMA'd a third just-in-case. One WD5000AAJS was DOA. In recent years, I have used and resold four 160GB and two 250GB drives which had no problems. Still, that's a high failure rate, and it cost me a lot of trouble for backup and data recovery. What does 1 million hours MTBF mean any more?

It's easy to blame temperature, especially after touching an operating drive. Given tight tolerances and dissimilar materials, I also blame temperature fluctuation. It's very difficult to arrange for air flow over drives in most PC cases, and these drives get HOT, even doing little. I'm glad to see the new GP models with automatic turn-down, and I hope for longer life along with power savings.

Interesting news from Google research: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6376021.stm


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