( 7 reviews )
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Posted: Jun 28 2008
I've owned this drive for about a year now, and I'm about to throw it in the trash, where it belongs. I'm using it with Windows Vista with SP1. About once a day, the drive goes into overdrive mode. The fan spins up to full speed for about 15 minutes, then the drive shuts down (presumably from overheating). The strange thing is that the "overdrive" mode starts even when the drive isn't being accessed particularly. It just decides it needs to cool down, and the noisy fan fights a losing fight to cool the dumb thing off. I updated the firmware. That didn't help. Steer clear. There are plenty of other low-cost RAID solutions that work.
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jun 24 2008
I ordered this drive because it was so cheap, and I couldn't find any other external RAID 1 solution with similar prices. When I first got it, it worked flawlessly as I formatted it and loaded over 500GB of data on it. However, when I came to use it, I found out it likes to go into hibernation mode very quickly. It goes offline and cannot be accessed through my laptop PC in any way. This has crashed the software I was using to work on the drive (such as DJ software, audio production suites, etc). The only way to get my software to see the files on it is to "violently" disconnect it from its power supply and plug it back in. At this point, it goes into "overdrive" mode. The fan starts spinning at high speed and it becomes very noisy. It's recognized by the Operating System just fine, but never goes back to normal: after about 8-10 minutes of being plugged back in, it overheats and shuts off, with the light indicator blinking (which means overheat/malfunction according to the manual). I immediately lose all my work and have to give it a good 20 minutes to cool down, restart my computer and start using it again. If I don't allow it to go into hibernation by accessing the drive every 10 minutes, everything works fine. WD Tech Support suggested I flash the firmware to a newer version, which didn't improve ANYTHING at all. At this point I'm looking at having to ship my drive from Costa Rica to the USA and pay over $200 for a replacement - and all the reviews I've read that mention an RMA procedure indicate that the problem is never fixed. I will NEVER purchase anything from Western Digital in my life again. Not only a previous 320GB SATA drive I ordered 3 years ago died without any previous signs of distress, but now I face having to deal with this problem forever. I feel like ripping the 750GB drives out of the unit and shoving them into my desktop computer, but that would defeat the purpose of buying an EXTERNAL drive for my laptop.
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Posted: May 16 2008
This device constantly goes offline and can take many frustrating power cycles to bring it back to life. WD support has been responsive, but my issue is still not fully resoloved after 1 RMA and many many emails. When it works, its beautiful, but for primary storage to be not reliable is not something I am willing to take. Finally got a firewire 800 card for it 1 day ago, and it has been stable since then. If you google "WD My Pro II sucks", you will see many others have had similar issues. Great concept, if it works for you fantastic, but if it doesn't, well, be prepared for some frustration.
