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WD My Book external drive system any good???

S

Spike88

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 25, 2010
662
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I should receive my wife's new iMac 21.5 i3 3.2 1 TB HDD system before Aug 20th. Soon after (for her birthday), I plan to get an external drive (Backup Drive) for her new toy. Was thinking of the WD "My Book" 1 TB / Mac model.

re: http://www.macworld.com/reviews/product/405169/review/my_book_mac_edition_1tb.html

If wondering, it will be used for weekly "background" data file backups. Thus, USB 2.0 is "good enough". Quality / "Ease of Use" and low cost is higher criteria then data transfer speed.

From your experience, is this device any good? Better external backup drives instead?

thanks.

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When you plug in that external hard drive the first time, the computer will ask you if you want to set it up as the 'Time Machine Backup' drive. Time Machine is a built in backup system that occurs every hour. After the first whole computer backup, it will only add the things that are new/changed. You will also be able to go into the 'Time Machine' and look at files that have been changed in the past.

USB2 is perfect for backups. The first backup will take the longest as it is copying all the contents of your Mac, but since it is new, it shouldn't be more than about 40 GB.
 
I actually have that same model EHDD, and I have time machine running hourly backups and I also use it for movie storage, aside from taking a couple seconds to spin up after being asleep for a while it's just as fast as I am.
 
I'd go with a Seagate FreeAgent. It comes with a 5 year warranty (the My Book has a 2 year) and the FireWire is a lot faster.
 
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I have several mybook drives and a couple studio iis for raid. Great for backusps and archiving and reliable as well. USB2 is sufficient. FireWire 800 is better. You can daisy chain the studio iis in Fw mode.
 
Many thanks for your feedback.

Was thinking of getting "bundled" My Book for Mac or getting a lower cost generic external HDD, then format it for Mac. Thus, possible saving a few dollars. Sounds like getting the "My Book for Mac" is a simple plug into USB port, configure Time Machine and let run in the background. No Fuss / No Muss things in life. I like that. Especially in computers.

Thanks for your feedback....

.
 
Spike88 said:
Many thanks for your feedback.

Was thinking of getting "bundled" My Book for Mac or getting a lower cost generic external HDD, then format it for Mac. Thus, possible saving a few dollars. Sounds like getting the "My Book for Mac" is a simple plug into USB port, configure Time Machine and let run in the background. No Fuss / No Muss things in life. I like that. Especially in computers.

Thanks for your feedback....

.
Click to expand...

Yeah, TimeMachine works really well if you just want to have a backup without any hassles. It's a bit too simple if you want to do all kinds of crazy stuff like backup up to different sources at different times with different content and so on.

I'm using TimeMachine nowadays and is completely happy. I have an external WD Studio II for storage and it's working very well over FW800 (haven't tried USB) and then I have a WD Studio Passport for my TimeMachine.
 
If you're going to go with a My Book, take a look at the My Book World Edition II, you can use it as a USB storage (I'm 99.9% sure), but it works as a network hard drive. It isn't much more expensive and can provide RAID 1 redundancy and data protection. As a result, for example, when my wife and I go on vacation we can take one of the Hard Drives from the Network Storage with us, and if our house is burglarized we have a complete copy of all the data. We got the 4 TB version (so 2 TB capacity set as mirrored) but if you get it online you can get it pretty cheap. Our Macbook Air and PCs can access it and use the data.
 
I wanted to add I picked up MB 4TB w/ Firewire. I searched around and just the name recognition of the WD MyBook is good. I have 2 old MyBooks and they have been flawless. I have toe admit the FreeAgent looks pretty pimp but only up to 2TB.

Personally I would stay away from Lacie. If you do a search there are always comments about reliability.
 
Spike88 said:
In a simular thread, it sounds like the much better drive is FW800 based "LaCie 1TB d2 Quadra Hard Disk".
Click to expand...

I have this drive attached to my current iMac and it has been great. I use it to archive AVCHD files from my HD camcorder. I just ordered another 1.5TB version to use for Time Machine on my new iMac (21.5 i5).
 
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