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(More customer reviews)This review covers the family of My Book Pro II/Premium II drives from Western Digital, since the primary differences between the 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0Tb dual-drive models involve the size of the drive pair only, as far as I can tell. I own the My Book Pro II 1.5Tb drive and have only configured it for the factory-default Raid 0 mode, since I wanted as much non-redundant storage as possible.
Anyone not familiar with external USB or Firewire drives may be surprised at the significantly slower data transfer; the USB or Firewire interface is the bottleneck, not the drive itself. For bulk storage at still-reasonable transfer rates and for the purchase price per byte, these large capacity drives can't be beat - as long as they are reliable and the user observes all the rules about making sure the drives are safe to physically disconnect from the computer (I won't cover the rules here; the operating system has its own Help section that can assist the user who is unsure of how to physically disconnect their drive without turning off the computer itself).
OK, back to the Western Digital My Book II drive... when the drive is received, the Raid Manager software package should be installed before plugging in the drive. After I did this and plugged in the drive, I had one problem after another with the drive disappearing in Windows, the fan going very loud when there was no heat issue to make it do so, then the drive would act like it over-heated and shut down. Twice I received replacement drives and both replacement drives acted the same way.
I figured the problem wasn't the drive, so I tried the second replacement on a second PC running Vista; same problems. I next moved the drive to a PC running Windows XP; no problem - the drive ran quietly and reliably.
It turns out there is currently (12/22/07) a problem with Windows Vista and the way it stores driver information. The fix is found in their technical bulletin 1708 (go to www.wdc.com, support, frequently asked questions and enter "1708" in the "Search by Keyword" field. This has solved all my problems with my drive and I can now recommend this drive without reservations, however Vista is due for its first significant "patch", SP1, in the first half of 2008 and these sorts of patches have sometimes provoked new problems. I do think the solution presented in technical bulletin 1708 would still be helpful if the SP1 patch caused further problems, however.
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Western Digital WDG2T15000N MyBook Premium II 1.5 TB Hard DriveDesigned for creative Professionals and small offices with big storage needs, WD's My Book Premium Edition II dual-drive external storage system combines 1.5 TB of storage, versatile RAID capability, backup and system recovery software, tripe-interface, and user-serviceability to make it the preeminent storage system in its class. Use it to archive vast photo libraries or edit and exchange massive audio/video projectors. Edit multiple streams of video without dropping frames in RAID striped mode, or dedicate half the capacity for mirroring and automatically and instantaneously back up data every time you save it.
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