WD My Book Premium 500GB USB 2.0 / Firewire400 3.5″ External Hard Drive WDG1C5000N

Pros: Sleek look, quiet operation, quick seek time, both firewire and usb.

Cons: None

Overall Review: I don’t know how the other reviews complain about heat, this drive runs cooler than my other external which still has not failed. They must have smothered the drive with a pillow to make it hot. In which case someone should tell them that the vents are there for a reason. Other than that, this is a great drive, no errors, no weird noises, very cool running, very quiet and a great price. Not to mention the really nifty case that doesn’t make your desk look like a modified server rack. This is my career so I actually have a level 5 understanding of this type of product, unlike the garage geeks with complaints.

Pros: Good capacity, works well out-of-the-box.

I get sustained transfer speeds of about 18MB/s when using rsync on a firewire connection.

Having the software just sitting on the disk is a clever way of distributing it (no CD to deal with).

I’m a person who values function over appearance, but I have to admit this is an attractive enclosure.

Cons: It gets a little warm. When the weather’s been warmer, though I’ve made sure it it stands vertically like other posters have recommended.

Overall Review: I decided to spend the few extra bucks on an integrated solution instead of buying an empty enclosure and a separate hard drive. Too many horror stories about compatibility problems. It’s nice to have a high-capacity drive and enclosure that are guaranteed to work and only cost a small premium over doing it yourself.

The software that comes with it isn’t that great. In the end I’ve just stuck with Microsoft Backup for most of my files and rsync (a unix-style works like a fancy xcopy) for my large media files.

Unless you have a really good reason to stick with FAT, make sure you convert the disk to NTFS or whatever filesystem is native for your OS. Otherwise you’ll waste a lot of space due to an inefficient filesystem.

The LEDs on the power button are a bit gimmicky. The capacity gauge requires extra software to be installed and is rather course-grained. It is useful though as a tri-state indicator: off (no light), idle (solidly on), and being accessed (spinning lights).

Pros: It’s cheap, fast, easy to setup, all as described in the product literature and reviews.

Cons: Sometimes fails to startup when the Dell Inspiron 9300 to which it’s attached is resumed from ‘standby’. I get an error message from WinXP that the USB device is unrecognizable. To fix, I disconnect the USB cable from the computer, power cycle the “My Book”, then reconnect USB cable and the drive spins up and the computer mounts it.
Will pursue the problem with WD Tech Support.

Pros: When it worked, it worked well.

Cons: The drive died in 1 year, three months. (just out of warranty!)

Pros: The drive spins down when not used, but spins up fast and reliably when needed. Using the IEE1394 interface under GNU/Linux 2.6 the drive is almost as fast as my internal ATA/133 Deskstar. I use it as storage for a MythTV backend and couldn’t be happier (I’m even thinking about adding a second). Oh, and the lights on the front are really neat.

Cons: Really bloody expensive, but at least you get what you pay for. The last 400GB external drive I had completely failed after 2 weeks and ate all my data – and it was more expensive than this one per GB.

Overall Review: This is my Nth external hard drive. I’ve tried mounting internal ATA drives in external enclosures and buying pre-packaged drives and in every case the drives have either failed or performed so poorly that I ditched them in favor of expanding interal storage. This is the first external drive I’ve owned in 15 years that I’m still happy with after 2 months of use.

Pros: -It’s fast using a firewire cable, there was no software to download, just plugged it in and my mac accepted it.
-If you accidentally shut down or disconnect it without quitting it first, it will not erase or damage any saved files.
-It doesn’t get very hot.
-It has 2 firewire ports for extra peripherals.
-It’s small and quiet and looks good.

Cons: No complaints yet, I’ve used it now for 3 months

Pros: Its 500gigs for not a lot of money. Many conection options. Works well for a back up drive.

Cons: None that I have found.

Overall Review: Format it to NTFS and you will be happy you did. Comes Fat32

Pros: Excellent drive from an excellent drive maker.

Cons: No cons. This thing works like a champ.

Overall Review: I was a little skeptical about buying such a large drive, but after using this for over a month, I have complete faith in it.