Home > Consumer Reviews > Western Digital My Book Mac Edition 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDH1U10000AN (Black/Silver)

Paired with Apple's Time Machine backup software (which is part of the current OS X.5 operating system), backup are a breeze! I bought this to use with my MacBook which lives in the living room most of the time but does move around. When I want to run a backup, I just plug in the USB cable from the hard drive to my Mac and the rest is automatic. If you would be using this with a desktop model, you could leave it connected all the time. I just hook it up every few days and it backs up everything that's changed on my computer. (Also, part of the great thing about Time Machine is that it keeps more than just the most recent backup. It keeps all the past backups as well until you start running out of space.)

Also, this drive is whisper quiet which is great since I keep it in the living room. Don't notice it at all!

Setup: VERY easy. Hook up power source and USB, and then drag the files/folders I want backed up and drop them on top of the My Book icon on the desktop. And that's it! With Time Machine, it backs up regularly on its own and is working pretty quietly.

Aesthetic: Small, does not take up much desk space at all. Sleek. I like the narrow white/light blue activity light. The drive also shuts off when the computer shuts off/goes to sleep, which is a) an energy saver and b) prevents the light from glowing at night when I am sleeping.

Value: 1 TB for $119 and pre-formatted for Mac? Waaaaay better than Time Machine, which is both a hard drive and a wireless router. Why pay for a wireless router when I already have one?

Con: I am on OSX 10.5 with a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1 GB of memory in a MacBook Pro. The *only* complaint so far: my computer slows down a bit when the automatic back ups run sometimes. I may get the pinwheel for 3-10 seconds, especially when I am switching between applications. I usually have no more than 2-5 apps running at once. But nothing freezes up or crashes. Just slows a bit.

Besides that, highly recommend for ease of setup and seamless use with Time Machine.

It literally took under a minute to set it up out of the box, and it syncs perfectly with time machine! So far, I have had no problems with it. I would definitely recommend this if you have a lot of movies or large programs that slow your mac down that you want easy access to.

I use this drive on computers running Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6. We have a number of these drives where I work and they are flaky at times, unmounting or not waking from sleep at random times. Sometimes the write speed becomes unbearably slow until you unmount and remount the drive.

I just bought one of these drives for personal use. Foolish, I know, since I had problems before. I figured I could deal with occasional hick-ups. The drives are inexpensive and easy to find, aferall.

In the middle of copying files to the drive, the drive "unmounted". OSX popped up its warning message. I checked the cables, all were seated properly. I unmounted the drive and changed to a different USB port on the computer and tried again. The drive unmounted repeatedly while writing files. It unmounted about 5 times within 3 minutes, each time popping up the OSX message warning you against unplugging a drive without unmounting it first.

I ran disk repair on the drive and restarted the computer. The next time I attempted to copy files to the disk, it said it would take 12 hours to copy 40 GB of data. I restarted again. Then the time dropped down to 1 hour.

What I am saying is this: these drives are flaky at best. I've used a number of them. Yes, you may have no problems with them, but it is a gamble buying these drives. They are not very reliable. I'm not sure I can recommend alternatives on Amazon, but I have been much happier with the OWC Mercury Elite Pro line of drives. They are robust, well-made and reliable. I Know video editors who swear by them. They also have great customer support. I guess you get what you pay for. I will never buy a WD drive again, seriously.

Powerful, so quiet that it's virtually inaudible (unless, that is, you put your ear right next to it, which is a pretty unlikely situation in any "normal" environment!), huge capacity, simple set-up (plug it in and it's immediately recognised and available for use on your desktop), looks great, unobtrusive read/write light and reasonably priced... what more could you ask for?

The only question is will it last the course or pack-up in a year or so's time? Judging by other comments on the Internet, Western Digital drives are among the best for longevity & reliability so there's good reason to believe that it won't... time will tell.