Western Digital's My Book family updated to 1.5TB

Western Digital just upped their My Book family of storage solutions to 1.5TB. The update apparently applies to the magnificently confusing range of products including the World Edition, World Edition II, Pro Edition, Pro Edition II, Premium Edition II, Premium ES Edition, Premium Edition, and Essential Edition... which isn't all that essential considering the alternatives. However, the obtusely worded press release and lagging web site and on-line store has us scratching our collective heads. So let's just say that the My Book World Edition NAS products have been updated and call it a day.

[Bizam! @ Jun 11th 2007 11:30AM]

That's a serious chunk-o-hard-drive! Some of the previous MyBook drives have been decent, but this one looks huge, is it just me?

[Carnaval13 @ Jun 11th 2007 11:36AM]

The drive on the picture is a 2 drives enclosure (2x500GB or 2x750GB), that's why it looks bigger than your single drive MyBook (250GB - 750GB).

[Jon @ Jun 11th 2007 11:34AM]

I own the 1 TB version .. This is a perfect addition to back up and stream my Dvd collection to XB 360 Media Center .. Nice bring on bigger and better HD's

[John @ Jun 11th 2007 11:35AM]

What I need is to put 4 of those in a little used bedroom on their own switch... now that'd be something.

[Son @ Jun 11th 2007 11:43AM]

Hmm, thats a lot of porn storage room.

[Andrew @ Jun 11th 2007 11:46AM]

I own one of the 1TB models as well. It's a great drive with the exception of the fan noise -- it runs far too often and it sounds like a freakin' 747 taking off; the loudest piece of electronics I have ever owned, bar none. I seriously hope they did something to fix that in these new ones, because on the whole it's a decent drive.

[Carnaval13 @ Jun 11th 2007 11:54AM]

Had the same problem and they issued a firmware fix to correct the problem. Go on their web site and you will find the instructions in the support pages. It worked for me.

[telepheedian @ Jun 11th 2007 12:29PM]

Had the same problem, screwed up the firmware update, lost all my data, never buying agian.

[Bizam! @ Jun 11th 2007 12:01PM]

Ahh, alright yeah, that's two 750GB Drives. Two drives just doubles the risk of drive failure. If you really want to be secure, you've got to use the RAID 1 functionality, that drops the capacity down to 750GB though, a necessary evil i'm afraid.

[seung @ Jun 11th 2007 12:32PM]

I have 2x the 500gb mybooks. I think they are aesthetically one of the nicest ext HDs out there, but mine have an annoying problem of spinning off and on repeatedly for some odd reason. Makes me wonder how long theyre gonna last. Daisy chaining also works like a$$ so i just gave them each their own port in the end.

[ThePete @ Jun 11th 2007 1:19PM]

I bought a 500GB MyBook Premium ES this past weekend for use with my MacBook (Get it? A MyBook, for my MacBook? Heh--sorry). Sadly, I couldn't get this thing to consistently mount on my Mac even after I reformatted it for the Mac. I thought this was very strange--and one other thing that I didn't thoroughly test before I returned the drive to Best Buy was that while the thing was on, I got absolutely no cell phone reception at my desk. My SLVR gets crappy reception anyway, but I can usually get a single bar and my SK3 usually does allright but while that MyBook was spun up I could get no bars at all on either phone. I turned the MyBook off and immediately got 2 bars on my SLVR and full bars on my SK3.

Not sure if this is a common problem or what, but since I couldn't get the damn thing to behave consistently on my lappie, it went back to BB. They sure do look purdy though.

[The Aggie CEO™ @ Jun 11th 2007 5:17PM]

hmmmmmmmmm

a friend of mine gave me the idea of buying like 10 of those and actually sitting them on a bookshelf like books and run them all togther

[Mike @ Jun 11th 2007 8:24PM]

Wow, a 1.5TB storage system, I can't imagine what they'll think of next. Oh, wait I just had an idea, maybe 2TB! and THEN 3 or EVEN 4!!! Will the excitement ever end?!

[Tim @ Jun 12th 2007 12:04AM]

I have 3 of the 500GB my books and love them to death they work amazingly well mount everytime works better once its mac formatted, FAT32 is not the best on mac especially with large files.

[Tom @ Jun 12th 2007 8:18AM]

If this drive is like the other World editions, it can only be connected via ethernet to a router (or, in an emergency, to your PC). No USB, SATA or firewire conncections possible.

WD uses Mionet to communicate with the drive and it must be installed on any computer that accesses the drive. Otherwise, your PC won't see it as a network drive.

I had problems reading and writing to the 1TB version. I bought it to store TiVo recordings, but the TiVo desktop could not connect to the drive. I suspect othe software may have the same problem.