| | |  | Computer Accessories | Home » » Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 2TB USB 2.0 (WDH2U20000N) | | | | | | | Description: | | WD's My Book Mirror Edition dual-drive storage system automatically mirrors your valuable data for extra protection. The USB 2.0 interface and a powerful combination of features make this system the storage solution of choice for photographers, home users, small offices, and anyone looking for extra assurance that their data is safe. | | | Features: | |
• The safest place for your data
• Automatic backup software
• Cooler, quieter, eco-friendlier
• Easy to set up, easy to use
• Capacity Gauge
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 8.5 inches | | Product Width:
| 7.5 inches | | Product Height:
| 8.5 inches | | Product Weight:
| 3.5 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.6 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.6 inches | | Package Height:
| 7.5 inches | | Package Weight:
| 5.55 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 54 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 54 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 49 found the following review helpful:
 Great drive, but defrag thoroughly and oftenOct 06, 2008
By Joe Skrote
"Joe Skrote"
I've owned this drive for about five months at this writing, and use it to store all my video and music files (both mp3 and wav). And I still have 400GB of free space!
Its USB 2.0 interface is fast enough for video playback in a RAID 0 configuration (since it's actually two 1TB drives it can also be set RAID 1 to automatically back up everything you put on it).
It's a fairly small and very attractive package that doesn't get overly warm; if it has cooling fans inside I haven't heard them running yet. I much prefer its keyhole-shaped fluorescent-looking indicator light to the blinking bull's eye I've seen on older MyBook drives. Its up-and-down motion is actually kind of soothing.
Opening the box to replace a drive, if necessary, doesn't look too difficult if you're so inclined. It's quiet but not totally silent -- there's a soft clattering sound when it's working but I don't find it annoying and it's totally masked by movie audio or music.
One bit of advice, do NOT assume that Microsoft Vista's automatic "Defrag Lite" will do a good job on a drive this huge. I started to experience playback problems with recorded video and discovered that the drive was severely fragmented, even with Vista set to defrag it once a week. There's no easy way to analyze the drive for fragmentation with Vista defrag's dumbed-down user interface. And it would be great if WD included a defrag utility in its Drive Manager or Diagnostics Tool -- it doesn't. But there's freeware out there (Auslogics or JKDefrag) that will do a thorough job and, even better, actually show you what it's doing. So defrag this drive thoroughly and often, especially if you copy, move, delete and convert a lot of large video files.
19 of 21 found the following review helpful:
 Unreliable and questionable RAID softwareJun 13, 2009
By J. Davey
"justin09"
I purchased this drive with the intent to backup all my family videos, photos and other files. Currently my file server actually has a RAID 1 setup but I thought redundancy can never be too much.
Well - The My Book Mirror Edition was not the answer. At the end of all of this I purchased two of these units, having each one successively fail on me.
I probably only ended up loading 300+ gigs on the drives. They would work well for 2-3 days and then when transferring a large file (typically video) all hell would break loose with the WD raid manager saying I had issues (red icon). After each incident the external drive would not be recognisable by my PC (running XP). The drives would also not work on another of my PCs. I would get dialogs of Unknown USB something and couldn't get the drives to mount.
In both instances I had to take out the physical hard drives to remove my personal data and the actual drives ran without issue. Therefore I can only surmise that the WD system for the RAID setup or the manager is not ready for prime time.
Given my personal experience I would highly recommend people to not consider purchasing this ext. drive if they want peace of mind.
18 of 20 found the following review helpful:
WD MyBooks Drop ConnectionsJul 09, 2009
By DanJo
We've got about five of the 2TB Western Digital MyBooks for our IT department. We've had them a couple years, approximately. We've learned it's a bad idea to try to use them for anything more demanding than, as advertised, storing photos. For instance, we've learned it's a bad idea to use these in association with backup-to-disk applications. No Go. These USB devices seem only suited for static data that doesn't need to be referenced often. They're far too slow, and they are far too ready to drop their connection to the PC to which they are attached. We've tried them on a variety of PCs and servers. Even today, for example, I'm just trying to copy data to them from across the network -- the device cannot maintain a connection long enough to copy an 800MB folder to it.
We have not tried the firewire connection to see if that works any better.
31 of 38 found the following review helpful:
 CAREFUL! 64 bit OS's not supported!Mar 17, 2009
By A. Swanson
I recently upgraded my laptop to a Dell XPS M1530 - running Vista64. I bought a 500gb WD Passport which would work perfectly on my 32bit XP and 32bit Vista boxes, but not my new Dell. So I went to get this drive. I figured the Raid-1 option would end up being safer anyway.
Ho boy! Nope. Freeze after freeze. Took me quite a while to find on WD's site (it's in the Downloads, not FAQ's, not KnowledgeBase) that no 64 bit os is supported. In this day of 4gb+ boxes and the needed 64bit OS's, that's unacceptable.
Too bad. I have 3 others of this model hooked to my network (via NSLU2) and it's a great drive setup. As long as you never connect it to a 64bit box!
25 of 32 found the following review helpful:
It's not easy being greenMar 09, 2009
By Steve W
I bought this product for it's simplicity and the mirror drive. The problem I have is it fails at providing the basics of what one would buy this product in the first place. The My Book I received is clearly defective but for obvious reasons. I was OK with the cheap plastic enclosure since I just plan to have it sit on the desk in a cool well ventilated spot. I like that it would do some power savings since I was not going to be using it all the time. I wanted a mirrored drive since drives fail and even if I can rebuild the data I rather spend the extra now so I would not have to. I am sending my drive back it is defective but I learned something in the process that I can share.
First the product is about the enclosure. Mirror drives Raid 1. I did not have anything fancy planned for this drive. All I needed was a USB connection and to format it for my MAC. No problem. The problem I encountered was the drive kept dismountnig. It would drop on writes and reads. There is no mention of this on WD's knowledge base or help. I checked the forums and there are many accounts of people having the same problem. Some say remove the software, update software, update bios, others say that does not help. I read it happening to both windows and mac users. The claim is the power saving feature causes the drive to go to sleep and unmount. I tried the power button on the back to wake it up but it did not do anything. I pull the plug and re power the device. drive came back. In playing with it I experienced a wide variety of behaviors.
-press button and I have no idea what the button is for.
-Ah when working properly the button wakes it up.
-It does not matter if the drive is in use it will go to sleep.
-setting everything in the OS not to sleep makes no difference.
-The power light flickers when I plug it in and then no light
-update bios not change, new drive manager software no change
-No software still dismounts
Basically it is this the the controller that has the power conector and the USB is incredibly cheap. It seems prone to having problems and WD is not being straight up about this. Out of all the parts of the enclose to be sturdy and reliable it is this component. It would be a better choice to buy two separate drives then this one. For me the main point was to have a nice neat package with one power cord and one box with mirrored drives. This is defeated by making the one critical part a liability above the drives failing. I only wish they took the time and money for the fancy flashing light and put it into making the power and USB component better quality.
See all 54 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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