I have the WD Backup (My Book H), and I want to get rid of the Recovery D....?

anonymous

2010-09-05 21:10:51 UTC

This is obviously meant as satire, but it's disturbingly close to reality for me. I suppose everything in my life that's worth capturing... well, let me put it this way: you're reading it. When I said make it public, I really meant it. Still, I'm fairly sure Jamie was kidding, and while Google may be a great service, it's only a so-so backup mechanism. Let's proceed to option 2, which goes something like this:

1) You have a computer. It came with a hard drive in it. Go buy two more drives of the same size or larger. If the drive in your computer is SATA2, get SATA2. If it's a 2.5" laptop drive, get two of those. Brand doesn't matter, but physical measurements and connectors should match.

2) Get external enclosures for both of them. The enclosures are under $30.

3) Put one of these drives in its enclosure on your desk. Name it something clever like "Backup". If you are using a Mac, the command you use to back up is this:

anonymous

2010-09-05 14:42:13 UTC

You should have a program in your menu that will burn your Recovery CD. It's not B.S. that's how OEMs are doing it these days. They don't have to supply the media, just a way for you to recover.

I would creat the disk and remove the partition, but that's just me. It'll consolidate your 6GB into the rest of your HDD and you'll have one big happy HDD.

Just be sure to burn/test your RecoveryCD before deleting the partition.

Last night I did a system recovery through a XP recovery partician that was hidden on a Dell system. The fellow brought it to me hoping I could do something for him but feeling that he was going to have to pay for a re format and a new OS. He had no discs. Had that partician been gone.....he was trapped and would most assuradly have been out some serious bucks and time. The only thing I had to do was access that hidden partician and he was home free. About two hours later he was carrying his laptop home and I was watching my favorite television show on the DLP.

My point is.......be sure to have a plan B in effect before you drop the gavel on an item that the factory deemed necessary to the system. My experience tells me that restore discs can be very handy......as long as you are good about keeping up with them.

If I had a customer asking me about removing the partician, I would advise against it. Simply because I like having that bird in the hand. To me, that is worth a whole bush full of birds. I would howerver create the back ups as well. They are a last line of attack.

The thing about vista that I don't like so far is that I have several customers who tell me they have already had to restore the system more than once. That may be because I'm in the sticks of Kentucky......or it could just be that vista has a few problems. Time will tell........lol

anonymous

2010-09-05 16:46:21 UTC

A few months ago, I wrote this review of the WD My Book Pro Edition II drive. I hereby rescind anything positive I said about it. I am at the end of my patience with this drive, and Western Digital’s technical support has failed me. My three BIG problems with the drive are as follows:

1. It crashes my Mac (iMac G5 running Tiger). My iMac does great otherwise, and I have plenty of other external drives. When I connect the drive to the Mac, it will crash it either within minutes or within an hour or so. It’ll crash it so badly that I’ll need to do a hard reset.

2. It’s falsely advertised. It’s supposed to be a three-interface drive, and it isn’t. It DOES NOT work through Firewire 400 on the Mac. The computer just won’t see it, even if I connect the drive through USB first, initialize/reformat it through the Disk Utility, then reconnect it through Firewire. It seems that other Apple users are experiencing the same problems, even with Firewire 800 connections, as evidenced by their posts in the Apple forums.

3. The drive will overheat, its fan will go into overdrive, making a horrible noise, and it will shut down randomly, even during file transfers.

This drive is a failure. It’s marketed as a Pro drive to Mac users, but it can’t be used on the Mac. While it’ll work on the PC, one can only use it there in RAID 1 or RAID 0 when it’s formatted with FAT32 NTFS. If you want format it in FAT32 and RAID 1, so it’s usable on both PCs and Macs, you cannot do that with WD’s RAID Manager software. Of course, when it’s formatted in FAT32, keep in mind that files larger than 4 GB can’t go on the drive.

For the past few months, I’ve been going back and forth with Western Digital support. I’m now on my third replacement drive, which I’m shipping back today. It has the same problems outlined above, just like the other two drives.

What’s more, I’ve been getting crappy, used drives in replacement from Western Digital. They’re scratched, scuffed, and generally in bad shape when they get to me. I kept my original drive in pristine condition, and I’ve had to put up with progressively worse drives from them, aesthetically speaking. I refuse to keep doing this.

My desk has been a wiring mess since I made the horrible mistake of buying this really expensive paper weight. I’ve had to keep shuffling my data on and off the drive, and transfer it between my other drives to keep it alive. This drive, which was supposed to promote data safety and reliability through its RAID 1 capability, has made me feel extremely unsafe about my data.

I recorded a video last night to show you what I’m going through. I’m at the end of my patience with this product and with Western Digital, who seem bent on sticking their customers with this dud and refuse to do the proper thing and acknowledge they’ve messed up.

anonymous

2010-09-05 13:06:11 UTC

A few months ago, I wrote this review of the WD My Book Pro Edition II drive. I hereby rescind anything positive I said about it. I am at the end of my patience with this drive, and Western Digital’s technical support has failed me. My three BIG problems with the drive are as follows:

1. It crashes my Mac (iMac G5 running Tiger). My iMac does great otherwise, and I have plenty of other external drives. When I connect the drive to the Mac, it will crash it either within minutes or within an hour or so. It’ll crash it so badly that I’ll need to do a hard reset.

2. It’s falsely advertised. It’s supposed to be a three-interface drive, and it isn’t. It DOES NOT work through Firewire 400 on the Mac. The computer just won’t see it, even if I connect the drive through USB first, initialize/reformat it through the Disk Utility, then reconnect it through Firewire. It seems that other Apple users are experiencing the same problems, even with Firewire 800 connections, as evidenced by their posts in the Apple forums.

3. The drive will overheat, its fan will go into overdrive, making a horrible noise, and it will shut down randomly, even during file transfers.

This drive is a failure. It’s marketed as a Pro drive to Mac users, but it can’t be used on the Mac. While it’ll work on the PC, one can only use it there in RAID 1 or RAID 0 when it’s formatted with FAT32 NTFS. If you want format it in FAT32 and RAID 1, so it’s usable on both PCs and Macs, you cannot do that with WD’s RAID Manager software. Of course, when it’s formatted in FAT32, keep in mind that files larger than 4 GB can’t go on the drive.

For the past few months, I’ve been going back and forth with Western Digital support. I’m now on my third replacement drive, which I’m shipping back today. It has the same problems outlined above, just like the other two drives.

What’s more, I’ve been getting crappy, used drives in replacement from Western Digital. They’re scratched, scuffed, and generally in bad shape when they get to me. I kept my original drive in pristine condition, and I’ve had to put up with progressively worse drives from them, aesthetically speaking. I refuse to keep doing this.

My desk has been a wiring mess since I made the horrible mistake of buying this really expensive paper weight. I’ve had to keep shuffling my data on and off the drive, and transfer it between my other drives to keep it alive. This drive, which was supposed to promote data safety and reliability through its RAID 1 capability, has made me feel extremely unsafe about my data.

I recorded a video last night to show you what I’m going through. I’m at the end of my patience with this product and with Western Digital, who seem bent on sticking their customers with this dud and refuse to do the proper thing and acknowledge they’ve messed up.

?

2010-09-05 10:43:13 UTC

Hello,

following the articles on this forum, I got SSH access to my Mybook, my harddisk to run silently, got up an ftp server, got rid of useless services running etc. woo!

Just when I was feeling proud of myself as a Linux noob, I had the 'brilliant' idea to edit my ssh-login username in passwd into lowercase since it was in capitals. In hindsight, this of course broke my ssh login name and unfortunately I closed my running shells without proper testing. Now I'm unable to login back into my MyBook. Since I disabled the webserver + interface I can't create another user to enable SSH login again. :(

The passwd file contains these users too:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/bin/sh

bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/bin/sh

sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/bin/sh

sync:x:4:100:sync:/bin:/bin/sync

mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/spool/mail:/bin/sh

proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/bin/sh

www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/bin/sh

backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/bin/sh

operator:x:37:37:Operator:/var:/bin/sh

sshd:x:103:99:Operator:/var:/bin/sh

nobody:x:99:99:nobody:/home:/bin/sh

default:x:1000:1000:Default non-root user:/home/default:/bin/sh

guest:x:1001:500:guest:/home/guest:/bin/bash

Is it possible to use one of these for ssh access? (I tried a few, but was unable to) Or did I just brick my mybook and do I have to connect my MyBook HD to a different system and use a live cd to repair my passwd? (not very funny when you only got IDE HD connections available)

Thanks in advance…