WD - My Book 1.50 TB External Hard Drive - Black

Let me give it to you straight. I working in the software field with sensitive data. I bought this drive to transfer sensitive data from one location to another. What they fail to tell you on the label is that sometimes this HD will auto add a password without telling you. Here are the string of events leading up to this inevitable conclusion: 1. You can no longer find your drive in Windows Explorer 2. You open Disk Management and see your drive is offline and without a drive letter. 3. You right click and try to bring the drive online, this fails because the disk has not been initialized. 4. You try to initialize the drive but it fails because the drive has a write protection. 5. You open the WD Smartware software and see that the drive wants you to enter a password. You realize that you never assigned a password but you try a few anyway. 6. After 3 attempts it asks you to format. Finally you're getting somewhere. Nope it Fails!! 7. You A. Throw the drive out the window. B. Call WD support and they blame you but send a new one to you anyway. And the cycle repeats. Either way you waste 2 hours and end up with the same result. No Hard Drive, No Money, All of your backup data....GONE!!!! Let me save you the trouble.

II bought this drive on a great sale and overall I like it. 1.5 TB of storage space is more than enough for my needs. Setup was faiirly easy. Be aware that you need to download and install their SES driver for the drive to work with Windows; previous versions of this drive didn't require this. Still checking out whether or not I want to use the WD backup software, which isn't required to connect the drive to a computer. I've been told the software is a resource hog. The major problem with the drive is that it hangs Windows at reboot. I still use Windows XP (can’t afford a new computer# but the problem occurs with later versions of Windows, too. Also happens on both desktops and laptops. The monitor displays a blank screen and there's no hard drive activity. Because of the blank screen I can't see where the boot process is getting hung up. So far, the workaround is to disconnect the drive before reboot, and then reconnecting it at the Windows logon screen #I have Windows setup so that I’m required to type in my password before it boots to the Desktop.) WD is aware of this problem but none of their suggested fixes that I’ve tried--BIOS settings changes, BIOS & external drive firmware updates, trying a different USB port--work. I've gone into their support community an also onto other message boards and it's been universal among users with the same problem that nothing WD suggested has worked. One user did post that while she had the problem with one computer, another laptop booted up with no problem with the drive attached. It’s ridiculous that WD hasn’t been able to come up with a fix for a problem this widespread that’s been around for a couple of years at least. I contacted WD Support and their latest suggestion is that I have them replace the drive. Not sure if they would want me to ship it back to them, which is a deal breaker. I bought the thing at Best Buy and if I decide to replace it, I’m taking it there. But, I plan to contact BB Geek Squad to see if they’re aware of the problem. Really don’t want to try another drive, though. It would be a great hassle to wipe this one, re-package it, drive out to the store, get a new drive, drive home, unpack and then reinstall it, only to have the same problem occur. If I do decide to do the exchange, I’ll update this review with the result, if possible. I can’t recommend this drive until this problem is resolved, unless you don’t mind the hassle of unplugging the USB cable from the back of the drive case before each reboot and then having to plug it back in again.

I make record original music on my computer. I need LOTS of storage for music files. This hard drive is the third identical one I've bought. One stopped working because it was knocked off my desk to the floor (a drop of about 3 feet). I realize it is not good to drop a hard drive, but I was a little surprised that it broke from one incident. So, my recommendation is that if you buy this item, you do what I do, and be very careful about storing it safely. Once you have it configured for use in Windows, it loads via USB as a storage device pretty fast, So I leave it disconnected and safely stored until I need to back up something, at which point I connect it, perform my back up, and then put the hard drive back safely away. Aside from it being prone to break easily, the unit is quite large (1.5 terabytes) for the price. It's being phased out for a 2 terabyte unit that will cost about the same, from the same manufacturer, and I recommend the unit to anyone who has to consider price carefully before buying.

This is a really nice external HD and I've always had good things to say about the reliability of WD drives both interior and exterior. My only complaint on this drive is the software. It is not user friendly nor is it intuitive and simple as claimed. On the contrary, its hard to use and slow and when you seek out the user's guide for answers, its vague to say the least. It didn't detect all my drives, even though my two exterior drives are both the same WD drives on a USB interface. I ended up bypassing the backup software, which was a little bit of a disappointment, and doing my backups manually. But the drive itself is fantastic. The hardware is easy to install and auto detects very well. The price point was excellent as well. The price was good to start with and a sale made it even better. For a supplemental drive to use for backups its great. I just wish the automatic backup software was easier to use and actually worked in my environment.

I bought this drive because I ran out of space for my iTunes purchases, I had an old 300gb drive that was full of music and Video's and I needed more space for subsequent purchases. It took 4.5 hours to transfer my iTunes Library but after the transfer I choose the new drive a my main iTunes library and it work like a charm. I love all the space and for only $80! Now I can consolidate all my video's on one drive. I may actually buy another one of these to act as the back up of this one and store in our fireproof safe.

I purchased this 1.5 TB drive 4 days ago. I'm running Windows Vista, with all the updates installed. My computer recognized the drive, and installed it "properly." Then, I installed the Smartware software required to run the Western Digital (WD) drive. So far so good. The Smartware got installed, and immediately told me an update was available. I went to the update page, where it said I had to update the firmware on the WD drive, and then download the software update. Well, the firmware never installed properly, and the software got hung up. The WD drive made a single backup of my C drive, and then stopped working. I uninstalled everything and reinstalled everything, but nothing worked. I called WD, and the initial tech was not well informed about how to handle the issue, so my situation was escalated to a "Level 2" case and I then spent about an hour and a half with the support guy. He used a thin client Citrix utility to take over my machine, and went through way more than I can go through in this review. He thought he got everything working. I have nothing but good things to say about the WD guy--he tried everything and spent plenty of time and effort on it. However, at the end of the process, the fact is the WD drive did not work. I tried to let the backup happen overnight, and the WD drive was unable to finish the job. I spent another 2 hours going through all the steps the WD tech had gone through, including reformatting the WD drive, updating the firmware, uninstalling and reinstalling the software but to no avail. I finally had to use a special utility I have to unlock and delete all the many application files, dll files, system-related files, log files, shadow files (and so forth)) lodged deep on my machine before I could uninstall the device and its related software. YOW, what a waste of time. If you buy this drive, I hope you have better luck than me. Get ready for a frustrating experience!

This hard drive was perfect for what i needed it for. I only needed extra room for my movies, music, pictures, etc. and 1.5 tb is PLENTY of room. I would recommend this for anyone who needs extra space on their pc.

I am a Mac user and user this drive for Time Machine back ups. I have noticed Time Machine errors that the drive becomes unreadable and that the back-ups fail. After unplugging the USB cable and reconnecting the problem clears. The cable seems to be touchy. I did not have a problem with the previous drive, so the port, software and laptop are considered good. I'll keep an eye on it and make a decision to return if this keeps up. I bought a second drive 2TB that is working without incident.