Western Digital My Book Premium
Comments
Yeah, ever since the introduction of the Raptor, I’ve always thought highly of WD in general, but never owned any of their external drive--and this one is very different from their other external series.
As for fans, LaCie’s drives use the case design for both aesthetics and as a heat sink. Everything they have under 500GB is a single drive as well.
And I don’t think I would mind an occasional fan, especially if it were as advertised: “ultra quiet”. This fan seems to have only one speed, and comes on seemingly with no reason. I can hear it from my living room.
Still no response, btw. I’m getting a bad feeling that I’m one of the early adopters in what will become a “WD appliance drive My Book Premium series a failure” headline in a few months.
Just an update since this entry is now high on Google’s search results for “my book premium” --
WD’s service agents pulled a drive out of the warehouse and said that they thought mine must be bad, because theirs wasn’t noisy.
Eye of the beholder, I guess. I returned my to Best Buy in the hopes of exchanging it and giving it another shot, but they were out. A buddy that works there tried the new one when they got restocked, and he agreed with me that it sounded “normal” but was redonkulously loud.
I instead got a 500GB internal SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 drive and am insanely pleased.
He-he Ha-ha! I laugh at the poorly engineering attempt of the My Book Premium. It is the work of lower human sub-species. Nothing like the far advanced hardware we are in possesion of at this very moment. Galactic Raiders beware! We have a new arsenal http://www.lenovo-tapes.com/
I own two 500GB WD MyBook Premium drives and they are quiet. I recently bought the 400GB WD MyBook Premium (because I didn’t need 500GB) and noticed that the fan on the 400GB model is louder than the 500GB model… a lot louder. Whether or not this is a defect or the normal fan noise, I’m taking it back to the store.
I would have to say 400gb on one set of platters is the problem. Not to mention, anything over 150gb may not NEED a fan, but it will sure as hell extend the life of the little guy. I have 2 250gb HDDs with fans on each. They both run like tops. when i didnt use fans with them, they would make clicking noises after too much use and have to be ejected (both external drives) and reconnected in order to work again. One is a western digital, the other is a maxtor.
As far as thd credibility of the brands, i am using a 100gb WD that is 5+ years old and has been in non-stop use for 2 years now, (since my discovery of Bit torrent :D) and has yet to even hickup on me. I have always kept internal HDDs near the in-bound fan.
By Greg Ferrell on March 13, 2006 at 04:23pm link