My Book Mirror Edition RAIDs your data
There's no such thing as too much protection for your valuable files. Although external hard drives can provide backup copies of files on your hard drive, what if you use external drives for primary storage? Sure, you can use yet another external backup drive, but a better solution might be a RAID array with two drives. Western Digital offers such a system with its new My Book Mirror Edition ($549.99).
Packed inside a 6.5-by-6.1-by-3.9-in. black enclosure are two hard drives that connect to your system via a single USB 2.0 port. The My Book is preconfigured as a single Windows NTFS partition using RAID 1 (mirrored) mode for a total capacity of 1TB. Files saved to this "primary" partition are automatically copied to the "secondary" drive, which is hidden from view. In fact, files on the second drive can't be directly viewed by, say, a file manager, and cannot be accessed from applications). An additional note: Mac users must reformat the NTFS drive to HFS+ (Journaled) or FAT32 formats.
If you're not interested in RAID mirroring and prefer a single 2TB drive, you can use the included WD RAID Manager software (there are separate versions for Windows and Mac systems) to switch to RAID 0 (striped) mode. You gain the full storage capacity of both drives combined into what appears to your system to be a single drive, but there's no mirroring of your data.
Installation is a simple matter of plugging in the power and USB cables. When you insert the accompanying utility disk into a CD drive to begin installation of the RAID management software, the installer automatically (and silently) installs the WD Drive Manager software. After that, if you mouse over the WD Drive Manager icon placed in your System Tray, you can see basic facts about the drive: Percentage used, RAID configuration (0 or 1) and status of the drive (healthy, RAID 1 degraded and so on).
Right-click on the WD Drive Manager icon and you can launch the WD RAID Manager to see specific property information, including the serial numbers of each drive, each drive's status (for example, whether the installed drive isn't RAID compatible or is missing) and each drive's RAID status (for example, whether it's degraded or there's a RAID rebuild in progress). WD RAID Manager is also the tool you'll use to switch between RAID modes 0 and 1 (doing so erases all data on both drives, however).
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WD EXTERNSL HARD DRIVE PROBLEMS
I spent almost an hour trying to trouble shoot a broken drive today on the phone until we were disconnected. Then when I tried to call back your office was closed. This has frustrated me to no end. The warranty is good until 2-2011 and nothing we did worked. It's not my job to trouble shoot it with your technician but I tried but to be a good sport disconnected even accidently was the last straw. I want what I purchased him. I want a working 150gig external portable hard drive, not one I have to work on. I have made the effort to be cooperative and try to see if we could fix it but I don't want to go through all that again. Please help me return it to you so that you can fix it and we can use what I purchased. It didn't say "assembly required", when I bought it as a present for him, I don't even buy things that say that as Christmas presents. Please tell me where to get a return box so I can return it to you and what the procedure is. I told your technician that I don't work on computers much and I don't want to start now. Please send me the information I need to send it to you and approximately how long it will take you to fix it and can you save the information on this one? Thank you for your prompt response. LeeAnn Grubbs 707-498-9126; 3498 A Street Space 4 Hydesville CA 95547 for Chandler Grubbs. Please note that he has moved since date of registration so the information maybe slightly different, but the billing address is the same.