Comments on: Western Digital MyBook World Edition 1TB Review

By: DieselDragon

DieselDragon — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:14:49 +0000

> The failures started after about 6 months.

I’ll warn my friend about it then and point him to this page. Generally speaking, he only powers up the drive when he actually needs to use it and leaves it off the rest of the time (Maybe these drives aren’t intended by WD for 24/7 usage?) but it might start going screwy once it hits the cumulative six-month mark.

> I sent the drive back on an RMA. It was received and signed for on 9th January. It is now 27 Feb and no sign of the replacement.

That might just be normal for stuff returned on RMAs. I sent a faulty router back to Belkin about a month ago for repair/replacement, and called them two weeks after to enquire what was happening with it. I was told that it had been “authorised for replacement, but it hasn’t been labelled for shipping” or something like that.
Another two weeks down the line, and I’ve still yet to hear from either Belkin or their courier firm.

By: SH

SH — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:17:47 +0000

The failures started after about 6 months.

Another warning, I sent the drive back on an RMA. It was received and signed for on 9th January. It is now 27 Feb and no sign of the replacement, although I have an email saying it was shipped! It took almost a month before they acknowledged they had it.

By: DieselDragon

DieselDragon — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:16:14 +0000

I’ve never owned a Western Digi NAS drive so far, but my previous experiences with WD internal hard drives – Especially the Gods-forsaken “Caviar” series – Have made me think twice and thrice about buying one. Looking at the reports above, I’m now thanking the Gods that I havn’t wasted my money on one of these pieces of [crap]!

All I have to do now is warn a close friend of mine who went and bought the 500Gb model a while ago. In fairness to the same though, we’ve been streaming hour-long video files off of it many times and it hasn’t been cutting out as described above. Did that behavior start happening right away, or did it occur after the drive had been in use for some time?

To summerise my personal views though:
I’d strongly recommend *against* using Western Digital products for storage and back-up of critical data. For storage of CD/DVD collections (Stuff that can be ripped again from the original disc if lost) they’re generally OK…But for user-data that couldn’t be recovered from published media or the Internet, run right past WD’s products.

By: Zath

Zath — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:58:59 +0000

Thanks very much for all your comments and opinions guys, it’s good to hear your thoughts on your bad experiences you’ve had, perhaps it will help others out to avoid that, cheers!

By: SH

SH — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:08:32 +0000

Bought a Western Digital MyBook World Edition 1TB in July. Now waiting for WD to replace drive A as it failed. Lost the data as I was using it as Raid 0.

I think it overheated as the fan didn’t seem to run as often.

Needed a Multimedia Network box so I bought Buffalo. Much sleeker!!!

By: Andy C

Andy C — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:16:16 +0000

I have two of them, both with the same problems, the power management is crap. I want to remove the SATA drive from the enclosure and connect it directly to my PC simply so that I can get my files off this thing, then scrap it. I find that its a Linux file format (wtf is the point of that when the machine is for use on Windows computers). Im gradually managing to get the drive to stay on for 10 mins at a time, and taking weeks to back up my files. My advice? Don’t buy this piece of sh*t. … and if you DID buy one, get your files off it, before you lose them permanently.

By: Bhaskar Dasgupta

Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:10:02 +0000

absolutely not recommended, it is the most sh*te piece of kit that i have ever bought, total waste of 150 quid. Unbelievable. Disgusting, only stays up for 10 minutes and then drops off all connections.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:31:06 +0000

I own a MyBook World Edition and I would definitely NOT recommend it. After about 6 months it has gotten to be nothing but a problem It disconnects itself every 20 minutes or so and in order to reconnect I have to pull the plug and restart it. Totally useless for backing up large amounts of data (which is the point of a drive so large.) I love that it is NAS but that only matters if you can access the drive when you need it. I am going to have to sit here while it copies all 600gb to another drive a few minutes at a time. Ridiculous.