Tech Gear: WD My Book 1TB Hard Drive

As an internet entrepreneur, my files are my most valuable assets and it is paramount to keep them backed-up and protected. Here is an un-paid review of a product we love and use in our entreprenurial lives - The 1TB WD My Book.

I’ve had my 160 GB My Book drive for over 6 months and have been enjoying the extra storage for my desktop. When I found the 1 TB version I knew it would be an ideal solution for backing up my important documents and files. The $400 price tag on the drive is a little spendy, but the data protection is invaluable.

The best part about buying this drive was taking it to the check-out. The teenage guy who was ringing me up gave me a typical forced happy BestBuy-ism greeting and “Whoa! You can store a lot of music on this!” I wasn’t in the mood for the conversation, so I thought a reply of “Yeah! and a lot of porn!” would make things awkward for the rest of the check-out and save us both the forced chit chat… it did.

Transferring Data

The drive has 3 connection interfaces: USB 2.0, FireWire 400 & FireWire 800. It was a smooth process moving all my files over with the FireWire cable, but it still took me about a day to move my 150 gigs of web documents, pictures, music, TV shows (Mostly Bought on iTunes), Etc.

Raid

With raid configured on the drive you have two separate 500 GB drives that mirror each other, providing you extra protection in case one of the drives dies. It really is a mixed blessing for me. I love the fact that I can set-up raid and have even more protection for my data… but I hate that I cut the size of my new drive in half. I decided that the protection was more important than the added space and configured the Raid on the drive. I know nothing about this sort of thing, but the included software for WD made it a snap.

Bonus

The circular blue lights on the the front of the drive actually give you a visual representation of how much space you are using. The inner blue circle grows with the more space you’re taking up. I’m not sure how much practical use this has, but I thought it was a fun little doo-dad.

World Edition Warning

To be honest I first found the My Book 1TB World Edition that gives you “Remote Access” to your files from anywhere in the world… but it was painfully slow to transfer files to the drive. The World Editions only have WiFi & Ethernet connectivity and I couldn’t get through moving a few gigs of files over without some folder problem and having to start all over again.

If the World Edition came with FireWire & USB ports it would be amazing… but until that comes out, go with the Pro Edition.

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About the author, Darius

Website: http://www.colourlovers.com

Darius is the creator of COLOURlovers, the largest community of it's type, and Hands On Worldwide, a wonderful disaster relief organization.