[bazaa2]

This Drive is the biggest piece of crap I have ever bought. I would advise you to stay as far away from it as possible!!
And I hope Western Digital gets shut down or sued or something.
I received this hard drive for use with my MBP today, and within 2 minutes of this piece of junk starting up, it died.
I connected it via the firewire 800 port whereupon it was detected. I then tried to update the firmware, during which process I was asked to connect the USB port. For this, I ejected the device, and shut it down.
However, after connecting the USB port, when i again powered up the device, it just refused to switch on.
This is the first time EVER that I have bought an external hard drive and it has stopped functioning within 2 minutes. This is the most unreliable piece of crap ever, from a dodgy company. Unfortunately, I am not going to get a refund, so i am stuck with replacing this piece of crap for the next five years. I suppose that at the rate things are going right now, by the time my five year warranty period is up, I`ll have replaced at least a 1000 of these drives.
PLEASE STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS CRAPPY DRIVE!! cannot comment on the company, because this is the first time ive ever bought one of their drives, but needless to say Im never buying anything from them again.

[artfoundry]

I'm pretty dissatisfied with this drive as well. In fact with WD as a whole. This is the third problematic drive I've had of theirs (the first two were internal drives I had on my PC - the first one died w/in warranty, they sent a replacement and that one died as well - the third one was fine). I won't be buying from WD again if I can help it.

Re. my Mybook (Home edition 500GB connected through FW400), it's been having problems waking properly from the Mac's sleep mode - it'll seem to be mounted but not really. If any app. runs that accesses the drives (like Time Machine), the app. becomes unresponsive and can't be force quit, which means I have to hard reset the computer. It doesn't happen all the time - maybe a couple times a month, but that's enough. WD first told me to install the WD Drive Manager software, but that didn't fix it. So today I installed the firmware update and the new Drive Manager software (which btw is pretty poorly done - no documentation, no standardized Mac installer, and no app/file to launch if the software doesn't launch by itself!!), so we'll see how that goes.

[humanengr]

I see WD posted an update (11/12/08) that separately identifies those models that 1) don't boot via USB or 2) don't boot via Firewire.

Answer ID 1715:
Power PC based Macintosh computers are unable to boot to a My Book external hard drive.

Why am I unable to boot to a WD My Book external hard drive using a Power PC (PPC) Based Macintosh computer?

Answer
Problem:

The following external hard drives are not bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through USB:
My Book Essential Edition
My Book Essential Edition 2.0
My Book Home Edition
My Book Mirror Edition
My Book Office Edition
My Book Premium Edition
My Book Premium Edition II
My Book Premium ES Edition
My Book Pro Edition
My Book Pro Edition II
My Book Studio Edition
My Book Studio Edition II
My Passport Studio
My Passport Elite
My Passport Essential
WD Passport
WD Passport (Silver)

The following external hard drives are not bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
WD My Book Premium Edition
WD My Book Premium ES Edition
WD My Book Pro Edition
WD My Book Essential Edition
My Passport Studio

Intel Macintosh computers are not affected by this issue and are able to be booted from My Book external hard drives if the partition on the drive has been setup as a GUID partition scheme.

Cause:
This issue is a Macintosh bug cause by the Mac ROM code of the computer and how it attempts to boot from the first SCSI LUN it detects (LUN 0). In the case of the aforementioned hard drives, the LUN 0 device is dedicated to the button board and safe removal tools of the hard drive case and not the internal hard drive, thus causing booting to be impossible.

Resolution:
There is currently no resolution to this issue. If a resolution is found by Apple, this answer will be updated with this information.

[humanengr]

Re the bad Firewire 400 cable reported above:

Western Digital Service and Support indicated (in response to my email):

"The bad cable only came with the My Book Pro, Pro II, Premium, and Premium II's that were manufactured in early 2007."

[Kingteddybear]

Has anyone tried the "Turbo" usb / firewire mac drivers now available for this drive from Western Digital?

http://support.wdc.c...sid=108&lang=en

[floridagrillgal]

I've been sifting through all the reviews and threads for purchasing a replacement for my broken external drive for the last day. I'm not a techy. Just when I think I know what to buy, I read horror stories about that product or customer support. Thanks for the common sense advice about being prepared for the worst.

[Terese]

I have a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition, 1TB, that I've had for about a year and a half. It worked fine for a while. Now, it turns on but it won't mount on my desktop. I have another, identical My Book Studio Edition that DOES mount, so I know it's not the computer or the interface. It's the drive itself. The tech support at Western Digital was friendly but wrong. I was told to download firewire drivers and try the firewire interface. The guy at Apple said that was incorrect information. There's something wrong with the drive and while it's still under warantee, and Western Digital offered to replace it, that would mean I would lose around a year and a half of photos that I've backed up on this drive. I would not buy another drive from Western Digital.