Over the weekend I bought a Western Digital 1TB My Book Home Edition from Officeworks. It was cheap. Real cheap. But sometimes, I guess you get what you paid for, and in my case I think by the end of the week I will be returning my said item. It’s been shit.

First of all, the drive is unrecognised on my 2007/8 Macbook Pro OSx Leopard. By chance (or miracle) I got it to work once with continual rebooting on my part! And it hasn’t worked since. Now the lights aren’t even coming up – I’ve tried several outlets and even the wall plug. Still nothing.

I contacted WD who told me to hook up my usb and update the firmware and stuff… HOW!? It’s recognised my USB connection NEVER as opposed to my ONCE with Firewire! Enough ranting. I’ll just post the angry letter I just sent WD.

Oh, and I most definitly don’t recommend WD external hard drives. I’ll update this post should they resolve my issue or the drive starts working properly from here on. But I ain’t holding my breath.

My hard drive worked ONCE! I continuously rebooted my computer and it worked just ONCE with my Firewire and never with my USB!

Your suggested solution failed as the hard drive was never detected when hooked up with the USB. Therefore, I have been unable to install the suggested drivers.

Tonight I tried to backup again, this time not even the power would turn on. None of the lights turn on. Like last time I continuously restarted, and nothing.

I find WD’s support to be very average. The “thread” style of questions is intriguing, however confusing and thus flawed. The UI of your site’s Help section is disorganised and useless. I’m sure I am not the first customer to be upset and definitely not the last.

I researched what other users in my situation have done over the internet and have found many many others in the same situation as I over the last year! In all of the three days of having purchased this item I’ve been completely unsatisfied! This has been really frustrating and by far the worst external hard drive I have ever used! WD should release products they KNOW works – even now you would think with such a faulty product there would be a recall!

I will never be purchasing another Western Digital external hard drive – especially not the My Book series.

I hope you have other suggested solutions to my HDD issue, as I don’t know what to do with my dud paperweight.

The new theme is a modification of Grid Focus by Derek Punsalan 5thirtyone.com. Love the 5thirtyone stuff. I’ve also ditched the hot pink colour highlights – thought I’d keep it more uniform with my current site’s theme of grey tones with yellow post-its.

It got me thinking: What’s the nerdiest/geekiest thing you’ve done?

I know I’m a geek because:

1. I love my computer and technology than most pets I’ve had.
2. I like reading the Icon section in the Sydney Morning Herald.
3. I use to collect stamps as a child.
4. I was a library monitor TWICE. Once in Primary School and once in High School.
5. I plan to go back to uni one day to do a Masters at least.
6. I sometimes wear glasses.
7. I was the first of my friends to get the internet – I was 14.
8. I was 9 when we got ourfirst computer – The Blues Brothers and Shinobi the game were detrimental to my geek cultivation.
9. I remember playing the video games before my first Nintendo… I think, was it the Commador 64?
10. I still like learning and all my fiction and non-fiction history, sci-fi and fantasy…

I think that’s enough for now.

EDIT
11. Sometimes, when I’m on the train in the underground tunnels and I can see out to the lights we speed past – I imagine I’m on the star ship Enterprise at warp speed…

need to get few more gidgets to work.

lots of bells and whistles – you can never have too many of those!