Noise/Heat
Noise wise, I couldn’t really hear the drive in operation although I do admit that I have a moderately noisy room so any noise it does emit will probably be drowned out. The only sound I do hear from the drive is when it spins up/down. Read/write operations aren’t audible for the most part, as the drive itself sits on a dampener mechanism to prevent any shocks, should you drop the drive. Western Digital had to build this drive with portability in mind and it works well. There are no cooling fans present within the unit so there isn’t an annoying hum that some external hard drives have.
The My Book casing does get warm to the touch but never any hotter then that. The large amount of perforated slots along the rear and sides of the case keep the hard disk well ventilated and cool at all times. Even after lengthy file transfer operations, the case was warm to the touch. To maximise hard disk life and to also keep heat levels down, the drive switches itself off after approximately 13 minutes. In addition to this, you can also manually switch the unit on and off manually by pressing the button within the inner ring. The drive will always write any data residing in the cache before it spins down, and of course at this stage you can hear the drive shutting itself off.
Conclusion
I’ve had my fair share of problems with this bit of kit, although that could be due to the fact that this new PC I’ve built is still in its early build stages so it’s a little flaky. So far I’ve had just two problems with this drive. Firstly the blue ring of light is meant to act like a capacity gauge as shown on the Western Digital Product Page, yet I can’t see this on my system even with the button manager installed. Lastly, sometimes the My Book has odd issues being recognised by Windows XP via USB 2.0. I’ve used this drive to transfer data to three different computers and on occasions while the drive was connected, it would suddenly vanish for no apparent reason. I never did find a solution to this, but I’ve had no issues with it being connected to my main PC via Firewire.
Aside from the minor issues above, this is a superb bit of kit. It has a simple job to do and it manages that with style, thanks to a very attractive case. The average consumer with today’s expanding digital media content requires a portable large capacity hard disks with very good connectivity options and portability. The My Book excels here with dual Firewire ports and USB 2.0 connectivity. That’s all the consumer needs to tell the truth, the included one touch backup software makes it easy for consumers to easily backup their data via a clear, clean interface, If you travel around the world with this device, fear not - Western Digital have been thoughtful enough to include both UK and US AC Adaptors too.
On the whole, I do recommend the My Book. It’s simple to use, appealing to the eye and does everything with ease, and simplicity. You seriously cannot go wrong here.