Western Digital My Book Premium Edition WDG1C2500 Hard Drive

Overkill for it's purpose and size

By Steve  Jan 21, 2007

Pros: Bundled Backup Wares, fanless cooling, quiet

Cons: Finicky 1394 connection, USB solid but slower

Picked this up right after it came out during a "backup crisis"... Anyhow, it comes bundled with a sweet backup bundle, very easy to use, backs up and restores from extremely compressed files flawlessly... It comes with an "autoplay&qu...ot;, that launches the installer for the WD wares (on Windows, the Mac wares are in a folder.) - you may wish to move those files elsewhere after setup. The disk is preformatted to FAT32 - so either Mac or PC should have no problem to this stage. I eventually backed up the warez and reformatted to NTFS to overcome the 4 gig limit on Fat32, and it's been workin' fine. It's quiet as can be, with no fan - only time you'll hear it is during spin up, and spin down - it doesn't stay spun up during use, so it gets warm, but not hot, thanks to cooling vents (that get dusty quick due to static, keep the compressed air handy) - cooling works better when it's stacked like a book, but it also takes up less space that way. While the backup software is great, I found the "Button Manager" to be finicky with the 1394 connection - and although it comes with both USB and the 1394 cables (a big plus) - to really utilize the 1394, you have to install the 1394 driver from the bundled software. XP will detect and run it in USB mode, and occasionally in Firewire without any "wares", but you'll lose the power management functions, and the coolish blue "fill circles" (they'll still be blue, but won't show you how much is in storage, and while it will still spin down after a couple of moments of non-use you can no longer turn it off using the button on the 'book.) Without the 1394 driver, it's finicky as all heck, one boot it's there, the next it's gone. You can daisy chain the 1394, but not the USB - XP detected it as a "SCSI device" in Firewire mode, without the driver. It's a whole lot cheaper than when I bought it new a year ago, and now that WD has a network storage server premium 'book, it's kinda redundant, but has proven to be reliable and fairly fast, even over USB, just slower than the 1394. A minor flaw is in the finish, oily/sweaty fingers will leave lasting marks, making your pretty Premium 'Book look kinda non-premium. While you could build something similar for far less money, for those needing a quick "plug and play", this is a good option, considering the included backup software, which is easier to use, and smoother than Ghost, albeit not as feature rich. If you totally screw something up - like deleting the 1394 driver, or button manager software before installing it, you can go to the Western Digital site, enter your serial number, and re-download the original software bundle. You can run it completely, and successfully, under USB mode, as an external storage device - just have to use the "disconnect device" feature on the windows toolbar, or lose whatever is in cache, or potentially corrupt the NTFS system - but I've made this error many times, without loss of data or corruption. The Button Manager doesn't take much resources, so I have chosen to leave it on, and am using it in the slower USB mode - which has proven flawless. I won't be getting another one tho - I had originally envisioned rows of "Premium 'books" and the very cool circular blue storage gauges, but will be going to NAS next, consigning this to field use, movie transfers/photo storage. Read more Less