On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 2:14 AM, Joseph McAllister <[email protected]> wrote: > I have a 1 TB MyBook, and although it still works (at times), if my iMac > goes to sleep for any length of time, when I awaken the iMac, the drive does > not. Frequently, when Time Machine started to back up to it (it was my main > BU drive at one time) it would not be able to "find" the drive, even though > it was up and running. If I turned it off using the switch at the rear panel > of the drive, then turned it back on, it would then mount to the desktop and > back up fine - until the next time. So, I do not use it anymore, because, as > Western Digital says, it was no longer responding to a wake up signal. They > said I could ship it to them and they would replace it. > > I never have, so it sits, a full backup of my drives & system as of last > summer sometime.
I bought two of the WD MyBook Deluxe 2T RAIDs (1x1T devices) some time ago as they were available at an unbeatable price for 2T storage units. >From the point where I installed the WD management software onwards, I had problems. Lots of quirky, unreproduceable errors with the Finder, slow bootup, etc. I stripped the system (Mac OS X Tiger at the time) and rebuilt it without their software: all the problems were gone. Re-installing it caused all the problems to resume. I contacted WD and was told there was updated software and new firmware for the units. I downloaded everything and re-installed their software per the provided instructions. I then did a firmware update on one of the drive units. It never awakened again. I stripped out all their software again, opened the dead enclosure, and stripped out the drives. I binned the dead enclosure. The other unit is still operating in the configuration it was originally set to and has been reliable, but I don't trust it ... I never write anything to it that is not also immediately backed up onto another volume as well. The drives are fine, they're operating today with perfect reliability, two years later, in OWC "Mercury Elite PRO" enclosures. Quiet, good cooling, good power supplies, easy to get drives in and out of. IMO: The WD drives are good, their enclosures and software are crap. I recommend and install enclosures and RAID units for Mac OS X systems from OtherWorldComputing.com (I've never had a problem with them, neither have any of my clients). I plan to replace the WD enclosure with a five-slot Drobo S unit (for its self-redundancy and self-repair capability) as soon as the next big ticket job rolls through, and will reconfigure my system to back up that to a set of OWC enclosed standalone volumes or mirrored RAID units. (Despite the WD 2T unit and even a Seagate startup drive going belly up, I didn't lose any files at all. My data backup policies and procedures are very thorough and complete ... they have to be given that I have to manage and am continually growing my library of image files which is already over 1.8T in size!) -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
