Time Machine/Western Digital My Book Mac Edition Incompatibility Issues

[jaw1034]

Warranty on box: "Compatible with Apple Time Machine"

Reality: "Will perform initial backup with Apple Time Machine and before the next backup will enter sleep/standby mode. This will require you to manually drag the external hard drive icon to the trash, unplug the drive, shut down your computer, restart it, plug the drive back in, and backup with Apple Time Machine manually. Good luck, sucker."

Can anyone help alter my reality so that it conforms more closely, preferably identically, to the express warranty provided by Western Digital?

 

[Cave Man]

You've discovered why I don't buy WD hard drives anymore. I've had three fail within three years of use. One gave me problems at 11 months and their tech "services" had me reinitialize the drive. That worked for another 2 months, then it died completely. Guess what? They wouldn't honor the 1 year warranty because it was 1 month out. WD is a bunch of ba$tards and will never get another penny from me.

Sorry about your troubles.

 

[mstam]

You've discovered why I don't buy WD hard drives anymore. I've had three fail within three years of use. One gave me problems at 11 months and their tech "services" had me reinitialize the drive. That worked for another 2 months, then it died completely. Guess what? They wouldn't honor the 1 year warranty because it was 1 month out. WD is a bunch of ba$tards and will never get another penny from me.

Sorry about your troubles.

I use over 50 WD drives in servers and @home w/ relatively very little trouble. @home a PC is on 24/7 for over 4 years now w/ 4 HDs. Only had issues w/ a RAID5 array of 4 drives in a server in the last 5 years and WD exchanged them all at once for free.

Apple also uses WD drives and I just installed a 1TB external WD Green Edition in an Icy Dock enclosure for my iMac for movies and a 640GB Green Edition in my Linux home server for TM backups.

And btw. WD's warranty period is 3 years up to 5 years for their black edition and enterprise drives. They cross ship replacements w/o issues.

 

[Cave Man]

And btw. WD's warranty period is 3 years up to 5 years for their black edition and enterprise drives. They cross ship replacements w/o issues.

It may be now, but two years ago when my drive failed it was only one year. Here's the message from them:

Dear blah blah,

We sold your desktop drive as part of a retail kit. The warranty length of our retail desktop drives is one year when built after October 1st, 2003 and before August 1st, 2007. You bought your drive on xxx.

I spoke with my supervisor and she said that your drive is too far beyond its warranty expiration date for us to accept.

Sent in my receipt showing the date of purchase (13 months prior) and got the WD two-step. "Too far beyond" was one month. No WD drives in my future. Ever.

 

[mstam]

Sent in my receipt showing the date of purchase (13 months prior) and got the WD two-step. No WD drives in my future. Ever.

You should have read the T&C. Not WD to blame.

My PC's monitor also recently died so I'm never gonna buy a monitor again

 

[5DollaFootlong]

really, i have a myoook set up as a time machine. however, recently it has been extreemely slow. it takes literally 2 hours to back up 5mb. Before it was 50 mb/s with USB 2.0. Could this be a sign that my drive is slowly failing. I have too much valuable information to risk losing. Hope you get a working backup system

 

[mstam]

really, i have a myoook set up as a time machine. however, recently it has been extreemely slow. it takes literally 2 hours to back up 5mb. Before it was 50 mb/s with USB 2.0. Could this be a sign that my drive is slowly failing. I have too much valuable information to risk losing. Hope you get a working backup system

Max practical speed of USB2 is 35MBs. It might be possible the sparsebundle has grown very big and so it takes TM a long time to open and add data to it.

To test, simply copy a file of a few hundred MB to the drive and see what the speed is. If it's OK, it's the sparsebundle making things slow.

 

[5DollaFootlong]

Max practical speed of USB2 is 35MBs. It might be possible the sparsebundle has grown very big and so it takes TM a long time to open and add data to it.

To test, simply copy a file of a few hundred MB to the drive and see what the speed is. If it's OK, it's the sparsebundle making things slow.

alrite, i copied a 905 mb file to my mybook in 25 seconds. i guess that means the sparsebundle thingy is big. how do i fix it? can i fix it? thanks for helping a noob like me

 

[jaw1034]

really, i have a myoook set up as a time machine. however, recently it has been extreemely slow. it takes literally 2 hours to back up 5mb. Before it was 50 mb/s with USB 2.0. Could this be a sign that my drive is slowly failing. I have too much valuable information to risk losing. Hope you get a working backup system

Although no one has answered my question, I will answer yours. Is it possible your USB port is fried? I have heard of situations similar to yours, and a shutdown of the computer and reconnecting the drive to another USB port solved the problem. I, however, am still upset about my Time Machine/sleep/standby problem. Western Digital, so far, is crap

 

[5DollaFootlong]

Thankyou for your assistance. the usb port is not fried because i can transfer data without time machine at extremely fast rates. However, this is your thread, so it is only fair for me to answer your question. Personally, I have not had any difficulties using Western Digital drives. When I first plugged it in, I used Disk Utility to clear the pre-installed windows software. If anything, I think your drive is messed up. Call WD, and they would be more than happy to help you.

 

[Phatpat]

Format the drive and start Time Machine fresh, would be my next suggestion. I use TM on a WD My Book without any problems.

 

[mstam]

Format the drive and start Time Machine fresh, would be my next suggestion. I use TM on a WD My Book without any problems.

Correct. In TM properties, turn TM off and change disk to none. Format drive and setup TM again. It'll start with a fresh backup.

 

[Sebby]

I am using a WD MyBook Home (I believe the Mac edition is the same, but pre-formatted in HFS+) with no problems at all.

All I did to stop the drive shutting off was go into System Preferences > Energy Saver and unchecked 'Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible'. Also make sure you have the latest firmware and WD Drive Manager, but don't bother installing the Turbo drivers.

 

[trip1ex]

I just bought a WD 1TB My Book. Same as Mac edition one except FAT formatted out of the box. USB 2.0 only.

I have zero problems.

When I sleep the computer the drive shuts down.

When the drive hasn't been accessed for 15 minutes it sleeps.

When TM is ready to backup the drive awakens.

When my computer wakes up the drive starts up again.

Works perfect.

I did not install any WD software/drivers at all. I just reformatted HFS+. I had to make sure the GUID partition format (for Intel iMacs) under options in Disk Utility before formatting.

 

[Goots 88]

I just bought a WD 1TB My Book. Same as Mac edition one except FAT formatted out of the box. USB 2.0 only.

I have zero problems.

When I sleep the computer the drive shuts down.

When the drive hasn't been accessed for 15 minutes it sleeps.

When TM is ready to backup the drive awakens.

When my computer wakes up the drive starts up again.

Works perfect.

Trip1ex - would you be so kind to let me know what your Energy Saver settings are set to... I currently just purchased an iMac and I'm looking to purchase the exact same drive; however, I have read contradicting arguments about how the sleep function works when connected to the WD External.
My current settings are as follows:
Computer Sleep: 1 hour
Display Sleep: 15 mins
"Put the Hard Disk to sleep when possible" IS Checked

I guess what i'm asking, if anyone could help is, how will the computers sleep function affect Time Machine? Because from articles I have read, some say that the computer will not sleep until the back up is complete. Others say, never put computer in to sleep mode (display is ok) because back up will cause errors. I'm at a loss here, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.