Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External Hard Drive

Hi,

although I don't have the Essential version but the Pro Edition, I have to say that the drive works very well.
Fast, reliable and relatively quiet.

To partition or not to partition depends on you and the data you want to backup.
I have two external drives for both of my Macs and I had partition them just to make a bootable backups of my internal Startup Drive in case something goes wrong with it, so that I can boot from the external and do repairs.

I don't think waiting for Leopard to buy the drive does make any sense other than the drive could be a little cheaper then.

Regards

Stefan

Partitioning is fine if that's what you prefer. Its neater for organization but you do lose some hardd drive space.

Waiting for Leopard does not gaurantee if your new firewire drive will be compatible.

WD My Book is a wonderful external drive for intel macs.

I have a challenge with a WD MyBook Pro 500GB and my IMAC '24which runs on OS 10.4 when using firewire 800 . The drive shut off during my initial data transfer and was giving trouble and not mounting on my firewire 800 port. It has been working fine on USB 2.0, but that defeats the purpose of me getting a drive with firewire 800. I even got a replacement MyBook 500 pro and the same thing happened. I have read that some people attributed these challenges to how the drive interfaces with the operating system.

I think I am going to replace it with a G-Raid2. Any insights?

Hi,

you're absolutely right.
In order to be able to boot from the external drive, you have to use GUID with Intel Macs.
The GUID is a partition scheme and does always applys to the whole drive, not certain partitions.

Have Fun

Stefan

Hi, I am new on this list, but have used Macs since 1989. I am using a 20" Core Duo, and my wife uses a 20" G5, both iMacs. Both have 500 GB SATA II internal HDs. I bought Icy Dock enclosures with FW 400 interfaces and installed 500 GB Samsung SATA II HDs in each. It was not easy finding an external enclosure that had both a SATA II converter board inside (Oxford 924 chipset) and FW 400 interface. I bought both the HDs and the enclosures from newegg.com, my favorite supplier. They work flawlessly. In fact, I cloned the 250 GB internal on my wife's iMac G5 onto the 500 GB in the case before swapping them out. I wanted SATA externals just in case the internals failed, as I back up nightly, and that way, if an internal were to fail, I'd have an external ready to swap. The G5 is user accessible. The Core Duo is not (nominally) user accessible, though I'd cross that bridge when I have to face it.

iMac 20" Core Duo and 13" MacBook Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.9) loads of peripherals via connected powered hubs; Win XP via Parallels

iMac 20" Core Duo and 13" MacBook Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.9) loads of peripherals via connected powered hubs; Win XP via Parallels