The world's best-selling external hard drive now features a new, smart, visual backup solution that protects your data automatically.
Smaller, sleeker, more streamlined design - WD has made these award-winning drives even smaller, sleeker, and more elegant. As always, this book-like shape takes up less space on your desk and allows two or more My Book drives to nestle neatly together like volumes on a shelf.
WD SmartWare - A control centre for your drive that gives you the power to protect your data automatically. Relax, your data is secure. Automatic, continuous backup will instantly make a second copy whenever you add or change a file. See your backup as it happens. Visual backup displays your content categories and shows the progress of your backup. Bring back lost files effortlessly. Retrieve your valuable data to its original location whether you've lost all your data or just overwritten an important file. Take control - customize your backup, set drive security, run diagnostics, manage the power settings, and more from the WD SmartWare control centre.
Drive lock give you peace of mind, knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and military-grade 256-bit hardware-based encryption. Illuminated capacity gauge lets you see at a glance how much space is available on your drive. USB 2.0 interface - A simple connection that offers convenience and compatibility among multiple computers.
Power miser ensures that My Book external drives are designed to save energy. WD GreenPower Technology lowers internal drive power consumption by up to 30%, a sleep mode reduces power during idle times, and a power-saving feature turns the drive on and off with your computer. The hard drives are planet friendly. We designed a small box to minimize waste and used recycled material. We encourage you to recycle it.
Ready to plug-and-play with Windows PCs - if you're a Mac user, check out our Mac version of this product.
Product Description
My Book external drive is an elegant, high-capacity storage solution for all the chapters of your digital life It features visual, easy-to-use, automatic, continuous backup software and drive lock security protection At last, beauty, brains, and simplicity together Smaller, sleeker, more streamlined design - My Book external drives are made even smaller, sleeker, and more elegant As always, this book-like shape takes up minimal space on your desk and allows two or more My Book drives to nestle neatly together like volumes on a shelf
Product Description
My Book Essential WDBAAF0010HBK - hard drive - 1 TB - Hi-Speed USB
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme(What's this?)
This drive is really a desktop drive, although Western Digital probably thinks of it as a semi-portable drive. It needs a separate power source, which comes in the form of a 12V DC transformer moulded into the power plug (which incidentally comes with exchangeable UK and European plug fittings). The drive itself is about the size of thick paperback, and it stands upright on two rubber feet. There are large air grilles on the top, bottom and most of the back. A fair amount of the inside of the case is empty space for convection cooling of the drive - there is no fan. The front is curved shiny "piano black", with a white activity light, a padlock light (to show whether your data is being encrypted) and four bars of white light that indicate how much of the diskspace is in use. Some of these lights only work if you have the backup software installed.
Other than the power, the only other socket is for a standard-shape mini-USB plug. I see that some other people have experienced problems with the sockets on the back of the drive not being aligned properly. My unit doesn't have this problem - the sockets are aligned correctly. There's a power button on the back, but it's unnecessary - the drive automatically powers down when you shut down your computer, and it also (optionally) goes to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity. There is also a hole for a Kensington lock on the back.
The drive is very quiet in operation. It makes occasional ticking sounds as the head moves over the drive, but they're virtually inaudible. I think (although I haven't opened up the case to check) that the drive is one of Western Digital's "green" drives, with low energy consumption and a relatively low spindle speed. The limitations of USB 2.0 means that this is unlikely to affect the overall performance, and will hopefully make it cheaper to run as well as quieter.
BACKUP SOFTWARE
The drive is actually 931GB in size, but about 700MB of this space is partitioned separately, and appears on your computer as a virtual CD drive containing the backup software. Whenever you plug the drive into your computer, the backup software tries to install itself onto your computer. Western Digital describes it as "backup software you'll actually use". That's perhaps a little optimistic on their part. It's not bad software, but backing up your computer may not be what you want to do with your new disk drive.
The software is noticeably slow to back up, but that may be partly due to the 256-bit encryption. I tried it on a Sempron system running Windows XP, and it was very slow indeed, and then on a twin core Centrino laptop running Windows 7, and it was much faster (but still slower than you'd expect). It runs at low priority by default, which may mean that it takes a couple of days to back up your files for the first time, but it will continue to run in the background, taking copies of any new or changed files, without getting in the way of what you're doing. Note that it only backs up data files (documents, pictures, music and so on), not your operating system or programs. As far as I could ascertain, it only lets you back up one drive at a time.
The options to restore software are reasonably intuitive. You can search within folders or by filename, and you can choose to restore to the original location or to somewhere else. One nice feature of the backup software is that it keeps old versions of files (defaulting to five versions) and it also keeps copies of files that have been deleted.
If you set a password, your data is encrypted, and you need to enter the password each time you plug in the drive. It is capable of backing up more than one computer, but you can only set one password.
DISABLING THE BACKUP SOFTWARE AND VIRTUAL DISK DRIVE
If you don't want to use this drive to back up your computer, you may find that the backup software gets in the way. Western Digital has listened to its customers' feedback and has made a software utility available that allows you to turn off the virtual CD, which in turn means that the drive doesn't keep trying to install the backup software where it's not wanted. The easiest way to get this utility is to install the software, open it up, and click "Software Update". You can download a firmware update for the drive, an updated backup program and a utility to hide the virtual CD drive (there are Windows and Mac versions of these files). You *must* install the firmware update first, then you need to power-off the drive for 10 seconds, start it up again, and you can now run the utility to hide the virtual CD drive. Once you've done that, you can uninstall the backup software if you wish. And you have a plain vanilla external disk drive, to use as you see fit.
I've tried using the "plain" drive with Windows Backup and Restore (the one that comes with Windows 7, and lives in the Control Panel under "System and Security => Back up your computer"). The backup takes about the same time as it takes to back up the same data to my Buffalo Drivestation, which is also USB 2.0 - it's much quicker than using the Western Digital backup software.
The Western Digital drive is quite plasticky, but it's also conveniently small and quiet. With the addition of the recent firmware update and the ability to turn off the backup software, it is quite a good little drive.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme(What's this?)
I was a little apprehensive about this product after reading the reviews about build quality. However, when the unit arrived, it was nowhere near as bad as what I was expecting. Yes, the power socket was slightly out of alignment, but the lead still went in with no problems and without force.
First of, the drive is pre-formatted to Windows NTFS. As I have a Mac, this was useless as I could read from the drive, but not write to it without extra software. The first think I had to do was format it for the Mac. If you do not know how to do that, in Utilities, start Disk Utility. Highlight the drive in the volume list on the left and click on partition button. You will need to change the volume scheme from current to 1 partition and then options. Depending upon which Mac you have, either select GUID Partition Table (Intel) or Apple Partition Map (PowerPc). Enter a name for the drive if you want one, then you need to select a partition type. If you intend to use this as a bootable drive or for Time Machine, select MAC OS Extended (Journaled) and for just data like movies, music and files, select MAC OS Extended. Click Apply and the drive will be configured for your Mac.
The drive overall is fairly quiet and is about the same size as my other WD Drive used as Time Machine backups. When the computer goes into sleep mode or turned off, if the drive is attached, it powers down too until the computer is switched back on again. If you do not intend on keeping it permanently connected, there is a separate on/off button at the back. There is a small power light on the drive and a lights that also show a quick visual display of how full the drive is. When the drive is accessed, the lights flash. If you have it on a desk facing you, it can be a little distracting.
Speed is nothing to shout about, average really for this type of drive. No slouch in file transfer but would not break any speed records.
My only criticism, like my other WD drive, I cannot chain them together. It would be nice if there was a standard USB port on the back so that you could connect 2 drives together and use them as a RAID drive, or even a double backup. Instead you either have to use another port on the computer or get a USB hub.
The drive is partitioned in such a way that there is a small 153Mb space that is used as a virtual CD drive. This contains the WD SmartWare software. Even after formatting above, it is still there. I have not tried the different pieces of software there such as backup, but it is handy to know it is there if wanted. This means that the total free space available after formatting is 930.54 Mb.
Overall, a good drive and worthy storage device. It does what it is supposed to do.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
I've used WD internal drives for many years so when it came time to buy another I decided to try an external one for the added ease of moving data about.
There was just one reviews complaining about poor build quality so I discounted that and ordered the drive.
The comment on build quality was right, the sockets were not aligned in the case. Poor Start. However, sitting the unit on desktop "moved" everthing in the case into alignment and plugs went in easily.
This comes with a quick start instruction leaflet and following the instructions - not difficult - installed the drive.
Started scanning my drive, then popped up a message saying it had "no mounted drive". It had died. It could see my drive but its own had died within minutes.
I'm pretty sure the noise like dustbin lids being hit with broom handles coming from the unit may have been a bit of a clue that all was not right.
I've initiated a return and waiting for my dhl van to arrive. Now just need to decide whar to purchase.
Overall, a very dissapointing start to using WD external drives.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
