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Western Digital External USB 120GB 7200RPM Hard Drive (WD1200B05-RNN)

Western Digital External USB 120GB 7200RPM Hard Drive (WD1200B05-RNN)

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great - once it was formatted.
Review: I tried this drive on two XP and one Win2K PCs and they all detected the hardware but didn't recognize it as a drive after following the installation instructions. Long story short, there are apparently some situations where Windows doesn't recognize the factory-set FAT32 partition. The Western Digital support Website has a knowledgebase with a nicely written answer about the issue (ID 207) that takes you through the steps for initializing and formatting the drive. It took about 20 minutes to chug through the formatting with a single NTFS partition, but now it works as advertised. Happy ending.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Solution
Review: I wanted a simple back-up option for my "older" PC.
I had tried Zip and CD-RW but was unimpressed with the speed and puny size. DVD offered a bit more, but still meant a continuing outlay in bucks. The solution seemed to be a USB disk...but I had only USB-1.1 on my Dell desktop. After a $$ clone USB 2.0 PCI card, my PC was ready. I was using Windows 98SE but intended to use the USB disk as my backup repository as I shifted to Windows XP.

The Western Digital disk arrived as requested (from amazon.com, of course!). I have had great luck with this brand in the past and would have no other. Setup was simple with Windows 98SE. I used a $$ shareware backup program to move both PC hard disks to the USB disk. I then installed XP "clean". Once XP was installed, I reconnected the USB disk and moved all the old files I wanted back to my desktop disks.

The disk is now 5 months old. It still works perfect! I back up my system each week to the USB disk. I then remove the disk from the system and keep it in the closet. I keep 2 full monthly backups on the disk and one that I "refresh" each week. The solution is extremely painless and quick.

By the way, this disk is FAST! There seems to be no speed difference (I have not tested it) between my quality internal disks and the USB disk.

A great product!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not Reliable
Review: One day, the drive made funny noises and all of the data was lost. Luckily, I used this as a back-up. Add this to the fact that I recently had a problem with an internally mounted Western Digital drive and I will be trying different brands from now on. Seagate, Maxtor, and ACOM drives work fine. One more point, the warranty expired two weeks before the drive failed.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Broken
Review: This hard drive worked REALLY well for me until it broke. I would have given it 5 stars. It's fast, it looks nice, and Firewire AND USB compatible. One day it just stopped working. I hadn't moved it or messed with it at all, it just gave out 5 months after I bought it. grrrrrrrrrr Western Digital mailed me a new one in about a week, and now I've got to pay shipping to send the original one back. Great hard drive until it breaks.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Broken
Review: This hard drive worked REALLY well for me until it broke. I would have given it 5 stars. It's fast, it looks nice, and Firewire AND USB compatible. But now its broken and the 90 day Tech support is long gone. One day it just stopped working. I hadn't moved it or messed with it at all, it just gave out 5 months after I bought it. grrrrrrrrrr

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Broken
Review: This hard drive worked REALLY well for me until it broke. I would have given it 5 stars. It's fast, it looks nice, and Firewire AND USB compatible. One day it just stopped working. I hadn't moved it or messed with it at all, it just gave out 5 months after I bought it. grrrrrrrrrr Western Digital mailed me a new one in about a week, and now I've got to pay shipping to send the original one back. Great hard drive until it breaks.


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