Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: mybook, mirror, raid | Themes: Business Notebooks, Desktop Computers
2. Usability
Like the earlier Premium Edition II, the Mirror Edition is Western Digital’s consumer-oriented RAID drive with mirroring. That means you can use it in one of two ways: In RAID 0 mode as a single hefty 2 TB drive, or, in RAID 1 as a 1 TB storage drive — the capacity is halved when mirroring kicks in, which means the other drive exists as a mirror-image backup of the first one. If one drive fails, you’ve got a safety net. Switching between modes is easy with software that comes with the drive — we’ll cover that in the software section. Without altering any settings, the drive defaults to RAID 1 mode, meaning only 1 TB of data is accessible for storage.
The Mirror Edition is not a network-attached storage device, so if you want to allow more than one computer to place data on the drive, you’ve got to get all those computers on one network so that a other computers can access the USB 2.0-connected Mirror Edition from the main computer. The inclusion of NAS capability would make the Mirror Edition a much more compelling product.
Even without any backup software installed, the Mirror Edition is fully operational from the first plug-in. When we pressed the power button on the back of the drive, we expected that the blue LED slit would not be visible. The front of the drive’s box packaging advertised that the LED was an indicator that would display how full the drive was, so it would’ve made sense to see something signifying “empty.” Instead, the whole LED was lit up. We added about 100 GB of data, and still, nothing changed on the LED indicator. Eventually, after we installed the Western Digital Anywhere Backup software and added several hundred more GB to the drive, the LED showed itself as half-full (or half empty, depending on your point of view).
Usability Score: 4.5/5
it's not called a drive...the drives are inside...it's called an "enclosure"
Actually, it is an external drive.
It looks like Morse code, and you can desipher letters in the plastic, but they read nothing (just two lines, read forwards and backwards) ETENESTT, TTSEANETE, EHSETENT, TAETESHE. In Morse code, some letters (like A and N) use the same digits, just backwards
It looks like Morse code, and you can desipher letters in the plastic, but they read nothing (just two lines, read forwards and backwards) ETENESTT, TTSEANETE, EHSETENT, TAETESHE. In Morse code, some letters (like A and N) use the same digits, just backwards
It looks like Morse code, and you can desipher letters in the plastic, but they read nothing (just two lines, read forwards and backwards) ETENESTT, TTSEANETE, EHSETENT, TAETESHE. In Morse code, some letters (like A and N) use the same digits, just backwards
It looks like Morse code, and you can desipher letters in the plastic, but they read nothing (just two lines, read forwards and backwards) ETENESTT, TTSEANETE, EHSETENT, TAETESHE. In Morse code, some letters (like A and N) use the same digits, just backwards
Yeah, I know it's an external drive...the part you call the drive, in the article, as in, "handling the drive (moving it from place to place) and grasping the sides, the plastic walls creak a little bit and give slightly under pressure. You don’t want to stack anything on top of this drive.", is actually the "enclosure" or "housing"...as in ENCLOSING or HOUSING the drives.
Sure, I am nit picking, but say the drives are great and the electronics are fine, but the housing falls apart; you cannot then correctly state that the drive broke because the "drives" are still fine and would still work.
It’s tough to make a 2 TB external hard drive look cute.
from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital_My_Book
The Morse Code message written into the drive case is made up of a selection of the words 'personal', 'reliable', 'innovative', 'simple', and 'design'.[15] The first occurrence of 'innovative' on the My Book Pro and My Book World Edition features an error and reads 'innovateve'.
I'm assuming they've kept the morse code message uniform throughout the mybook series.
royalcrown a word's meaning comes not from it's hard-line definition, but from how it's used by a majority of people. Language is not mathematics. Most people would call Western Digital's system here a 'drive'. They would not be wrong, and neither is Rachel, except in a technical sense. Calling it an 'enclosure' is not only incorrect in a technical sense it is incorrect in the way people speak; to most of us, 'enclosure' would mean something provided that you put things in to, not something that comes already filled.
If you want to nitpick then be right; Western digital calls it a system, and that's what it is - 2 hard drives in an enclosure with software and hardware so it can be used in a 'Raid 0 or 1' configuration. If you want to be right, technically, call it a 'hard drive system'. If you want to communicate correctly, then use the language people understand; most would call this device a 'drive' over an 'enclosure'. Western Digital calls it a 'System'. Since I like to be right technically and say things in a way most would understand, I'd call this thing an external hard drive backup system. Off the cuff, though, I'd call it a 'drive', certainly not an 'enclosure'.
It’sQuote : STILLQuote : tough to make a 2 TB external hard drive look cute.