- This drive is formatted and the pre-loaded software is designed for a Macintosh operating system
Speed is what you need for video editing, big design projects, or managing photo shoots and that’s what this drive delivers with FireWire 800 and eSATA connectivity. With our automatic backup capability your creative masterpieces will be backed up the minute you save them…. More >>
I needed a nice big external hard drive of at least 1TB and with and eSATA port to take advantage of the one on my Dell XPS 420. That narrows the field considerably in the world of external hard drives.
So, I read the reviews for all the finalists, and it seems that all external hard drives have their devoted fans and the occasional review from the person whose drive failed in a few weeks and their data is gone and so on.
I tentatively decided to buy this drive, but then I went to the Western Digital site and downloaded the user manual. It was discouraging to me to see how much this product is slanted toward the Mac users, with Windows seemly an afterthought. Sure, it’s supposed to work with Windows, and I’m sure it does for some people out there, but the way the manufacturer seems to treat Windows as an afterthought made me uncomfortable buying this drive.
So, why don’t they just serve all of us equally. I looks like a really nice drive from a company that is a legend in the hard drive world. At least I’m not buying an enclosure containing who-knows-what-drive, as is the case with a lot of these new external hard drive manufacturers.
I’m typing this review while my Dell XPS 420 formats the drive that I eventually ended up buying. Beats watching the little blue bar get bigger I guess.
Not worth paying all this unless u have a mac that has esata or firewire 800. Unless u dont have this then jus buy the essential external hardrive with jus the usb or if u want just convert it to something else to be used on different OS’s or something with partitions and stuff. either way meh!!
Product works wonderfully. I am completely satisfied with every part of my purchase. Thank you!!!!
I purchased this device at Best Buy. I paid the extra money, because of the lure of the 3GB/s data transfer rate. I was EXTREMELY disapointed when I realized that the ACTUAL data transfer rate will NEVER exceed about 60 MB/s. I discovered that after being on hold with customer service for about 45 minutes. As the member of tech support informed me, the transfer rate tops out at about 60MB/s. However, that is ONLY if you are transferring files that are several gigabytes in size. If you are transferring a bunch of small to medium sized files, you will get the crappy performance that I received, which equates to a data transfer rate of 3-12MB/s. The 3GB/s, as stated by tech support, is only a THEORETICAL data transfer rate that MAY be available when solid state drives become available. It would be nice if this tid bit of information were on their website, or their packaging.
To their credit:
I purchased this device for a windows PC. Speaking of which, there was no information inside of the box for how to format the drive for windows (why put a windows logo on the outside of the box if you’re not going to show how to make it pc ready on the inside???) However, one quick call to tech support showed me how to get it up and running in like 5 mins. Makes me wonder why I had to wait 45 minutes today.
Bottom line, I gave them 1 star, because had I known what I know now, I would not have spent the money to buy this drive to try and get an unattainable transfer speed. With that transfer speed, it will take like 6-8 hours to back up my laptop. That means that I’ll be backing up my HD like once a year
Good price, good hard-drive but cheap case plastic
Need an firmware upgrade !