WesternDigital 250GB USB 2.0 FIREWIRE 7200 RPM ( WDXB2500JBRNN )

Rating:
Summary: A lot comes in the box!
Review: I was pleased to see that there is much more to this product than the description on this web page. (The description of the sister product - the WD Media Center - is better. That product is the same as this except with a memory card reader built in.)

I bought this drive because I'd been wanting an external storage option that I could use with my desktop and laptop and the unit was on sale, making it quite the deal. Now that I see what else comes in the package, I think it's a good value at the standard pricing.


First, the big thing is that this is also a USB 2.0 and Firewire (1394) hub! I thought I'd have to buy a separate firewire hub to use this with my laptop and video camera since I only have one port there. But, there's an extra firewire port in the back of the unit. For USB 2.0 - two ports are made available - so you actually gain one when you plug the unit in (it's like a 2 port hub): one in the front (convenient for flash memory keys/etc) and one in the back.


Cables are included! A USB device cable and a 6 pin to 6 pin firewire cable are included! This works fine for my desktop. I need to use a 6 pin to 4 pin cable to connect to my laptop (which I already had).


I tested the unit with USB 2.0 only and firewire only and at least on my Dell desktop, the firewire speed was superior. Copying a folder with 42 image files totalling 273 MB took 20 seconds with my internal WD drive (also 7200 rpm / 8MB cache), 30 to 40 seconds with this external drive and firewire, and 60 seconds with USB 2.0. I was surprised that the USB wasn't as fast as the firewire given that the specs are so similar, but there it is.


So, I've ended up plugging both the firewire and usb cables into my desktop which gives me firewire speed for drive access, and two convenient USB ports within easy reach.


Finally, the package includes Dantz Retrospect Express 6.5 for performing backups - automated or manual. Using this software doesn't preclude using the drive freely as you wish. Retrospect can also be used with CD and DVD burners ... not just this WD drive.


The drive unit has two buttons on it that are linked to scripts (that you define) in the Retrospect software for automatic backups (you set the schedule and what/where) or manual backups (you make the settings, and any time you want to update your backup, you just push the button). This is actually pretty slick. I'd seen this advertised for some time with Maxtor units, but having had so many Maxtor drives fail over the years, I was holding out for WD to come out with a unit such as this one.


I set up my manual backup to create a 'duplicate' of my data drive - which contains 22 GB of info at the moment. The first backup took quite some time ... the speed slows down quite a bit with lots of small files and is blazing for large files. The cool thing though is that for subsequent backups (via pushing the manual backup button), ONLY files changes are copied, so the speed is REALLY fast ... no excuse not to have good backups anymore. Because the format is a duplicate of the file system, the drive can be plugged into any other machine and the files can be accessed normally. (Retrospect has some more sophisticated backup mechanisms and formats that I won't talk about here!)


Looks: I think it looks fine ... but it is definitely meant to blend in with PC designs - with Dell/HP colors (including HP-blue power light). Colors and style might not suit a Mac user.


Sound: I can hear the drive spinning and haven't decided how much it annoys me yet. It is quieter than my tower fan ... but the fan is sort of a white noise, and the drive is a little grating. The drive will spin down after a period of inactivity though (not user-defined).


So: it's a fast, big drive, a USB hub, a firewire hub, comes with USB and firewire cables and backup software. Such a deal.

P.S. After 3 weeks of use, just a few glitches to add: With my Dell XP Pro tower (all updated drivers/BIOS/etc), if I go into suspend mode with the WD drive powered on, then the computer won't wake up again (drives sping, but desktop never comes back). So, I have to be sure to turn the drive off first. Turning the drive off is a little odd. The drive spins down after inactivity. Pressing the power button to turn it off causes the drive to spin up, and then immediately power down. Often, pressing the power button results in a message from the WD driver warning me that I might lose data if I power off ... even though the drive has not been used for quite some time and the cache has clearly been flushed. Either respond 'yes', or continue to hold the power button to shut down. Finally, once you put on the R2D2 legs (which do work well) ... good luck ever getting them off. Be sure you want them before snapping them on! It's not very portable with the legs on.