I was originally planning on buying an Apple Time Capsule hard drive since we have 3 macs and I try to buy only Apple-branded accessories as they work well together. But after researching it, a lot of people don't like the Time Capsule because it dies almost always around 18 months. (right after the warranty expires) So I searched for an alternative and found the Western Digital My Book for Mac which I ended up buying. The hard drive is small, quiet, and didn't feel cheap. As soon as I plugged it into my Mac, a pop-up window appears asking if I would like to use it as an Apple TIme Machine. I clicked okay and it backed up everything on my computer to the My Book. The first back up takes several hours, but after that, backing up is very fast via USB 2.0 and with 1 TB of space, I don't have to worry about filling up with space soon. I mainly use this to back up my machine, but also use it to temporarily store large files to transfer from one mac to the next. Western Digital is known for reliable hard drives so in retrospect, this is probably a smarter purchase than buying a Time Capsule which was much more expensive.
It comes bundled with it's own software, but I do not use it. Time Machine works well with this hard drive so I don't need any other type of software. Some people complained about not being able to delete the software, but its not a big deal. Whenever you plug in the hard drive, the software icon appears on your desktop, but you can unmount it or just ignore it. Doesn't really take up much space on the hard drive. Western Digital My Book for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
This is supposed to be a Mac Edition external HDD and it still doesn't have a FireWire connection. I don't see how this is a "Mac Edition" with no FireWire options.
Other than that, the features in the drive are good. With Time Machine you won't need WD's extra software. As soon as you plug it in you'll be asked how you want to use it.
Choose Time Machine and it'll do the rest.
Just a quick chat about my initial impression of the WD My Book for Mac 1TB USB2 edition, but first, a word on my current environment. I have an early 2009 iMac with 4GB RAM running Mac OS X 10.6.x and plan on using this drive exclusively for TimeMachine backups.
My first impression was actually pretty negative in that I was surprised at how low-rent the case is for the My Book. Compared to the aluminum skinned previous WD external USB/FW400 drive I have, this My Book represents the worst in Chinese manufacturing. Also contributing to my woes, is the included wall-wort being the typical "too big to fit any normal powerstrip" size. Again, all my previous external drives had external powerbricks with regular wall plugs making extremely convenient to plug into a powerstrip or UPS.
With the overall aesthetics out of the way, I was happy to see a USB2 cable included for the single USB ported device and it seems to live up to the USB bandwidth rating one would expect. Yes, it would be nice if Apple had some type of eSATA connection for the iMacs and one must give up the first born child to afford a FW800 enclosure right now (about 40% more as I write this). But with all that being said, USB2 does fine for archival purposes and should be thought of as such.
A note regarding the sound, this is not an especially loud drive but its far from silent. Somebody made a comment about it sounding like mice trying to gnaw their way out of the crappy case their stuck in and I would agree with that. But again, its not all that bad and especially for TimeMachine purposes.
Finally, I am convinced that one could skip installing the WDsmartware software that comes with the drive. Outside of the encryption part, there doesn't seem to be anything here better than what TimeMachine delivers in OS X 10.5 or 10.6 and I have chosen to uninstall the software (of course it now want to fill my logs with launchd warnings but I'll take care of that soon enough). I think the only reason one would want this bloat is if they want to mirror files on the local drive with this external drive because one may carry this drive from machine X to machine Y and have the files 'restored' to a similar directory on machine Y? I don't know but that's my only guess.
I have two other WD (500GB) drives for my Imac that I use for external storage, but I kept having problems running my Time Machine backups.(not enough space on External to backup). I ordered my 2TB WD from Amazon and hoped for the best. Well I received it and opened the box and plugged it in. I went to my System Preferences and clicked on Time Machine chose my new HD and set it for my backup. That was it, of course it is going to take a bit of time for the initial backup, but that was it. No problems and it runs like a champ. I have already reccomended it to my niece for her mac.
Picked up one of the Western Digital 1TB backup drives after we suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure last month. Should have bought it online and saved some cash but we wanted to get it right there in the Apple store as they were installing our new hard drive, so we plunked down $129.99 retail for it.
We've had it up an running for almost a full month now and haven't had any issues with the device at all. It's as plug-n-play as you can get. The drive has already been formatted and indexed to work with the Mac. You can use WD's bundled software or choose the Time Machine option right at the start. I'd recommend the Time Machine choice. From that point you just let the drive do it's job. Files are backed up any time you modify a file for any reason.
It's unobtrusive and intuitive to use. Connects via USB cable. Not pretty or flashy in appearance, but who cares? Runs quiet and the case stays cool. This is a way cheaper backup option than Apple's pricey Time Machine drives. The 1TB of space is perfectly sufficient for our needs, but this also comes in a 2TB model for those who want or need the additional storage capacity.
Highly recommended. - 1 Tb - Time Machine - Mac External Hard Drive - Mac'
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