[MW Forums]

WD has introduced a 1TB RAID version of its My Book external hard disk drive, with FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces -- for $549. more

[cksandberg]

"Whats more, the My Book Pro Edition II is user-serviceable if one or both of the hard drives fails, they can be replaced without voiding the systems three-year warranty, according to WD."
Why would a user want to replace a failed hard drive DURING the three year warranty period? The whole point of a warranty is that the manufacturer takes care of problems for that three years!

[extra88]

If they would send me the replacement drive instead of requiring me to ship the whole thing off to them, I would take them up on it, especially since I would run it in a RAID1 config so my data was still intact on one drive. If you can remove the drives you can also use disk tools that don't work over FireWire or USB to diagnose it.
"User-servicable" also means you can take out one or both drives for other reasons, like connecting one inside a computer to copy files or clone it. This is in contrast to most (all?) multi-disk LaCie devices which have to be treated like a single unit, even though you know there's more than one disk in there.

[Peter Cohen]

There's another practical reason for this too -- if one of the drives fails and you've got the system configured in mirrored format, you can send WD the defective unit and still continue to work.

[frankworld]

yeah, this thing looks pretty nice. i like the compact form factor. i like the user replaceable-ness of it all. the problem is, yesterday i plunked down $369 for a 500gb g-tech g-raid 2 and now i'm all torn up about it. the g-raid 2 is HUGE in comparison, but it has a fan, which i don't think the my book does which, in the long run, will prevent drive failure. but i've got to void the warranty if i ever want to upgrade the unit.
someone tell me i'm better off with the g-tech, please!