Category — Consumer Protection

Words can’t describe the frustration that has revolved around this poorly engineered external hard drive. Long story short, the MyBook Firewire external hard drive will not play well with other Firewire drives on a Mac running Leopard.

This drive (and the two that preceded it) would only mount sometimes, would hang for no reason, and worst of all be responsible for entire system crashes. Recovering, backing up, sending back, and waiting for replacement drives has cost me countless hours-even days of lost productivity.

How do I know this wasn’t just a fluke? Well, I’ve had these drives on multiple systems, along with different drive arrays, and it has wrecked havoc every time. I’m done paying $13 dollars to send these poorly designed products back to Western Digital. Today I ripped open the case, took out the drive, and shoved it into a cheap-o USB 2 enclosure. It’s nearly 1/3 faster, mounted instantly, and is showing no conflicts with my system or other drives. As much as I dislike USB2 for storage devices – this is a welcome breath of fresh air. I will never buy a Western Digital product again. For as long as I live. (apologies for all this pent-up anger, but it has been brewing for quite some time now)

So what would I recommend if to a user requiring multiple Firewire drives? Stick to LaCie or Mercury Elite (OWC). I have yet to have a drive from either of those manufacturers cause me any trouble.