[jqp]

This 1TB external drive may look tempting at $299 $200 with free shipping but...this is an amazing and outrageous rip off


Western Digital drive is DRM-crippled for your safety

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/07/western_digital_drm_crippled_harddrive/

[jermmd]

Why would Western Digital get involved in the whole copy protection issue? What could they possibly gain from this? The media providers certainly couldn't coerce them in some way, could they? This make no sense to me and, of course, I have to wonder who would buy such a device?

[dB Cooper]

WD drives suck even without this. They sell them where I work and they fail at amazingly high rates. just one more reason to avoid them.

[lonewolfny42]

WD drives suck even without this. They sell them where I work and they fail at amazingly high rates. just one more reason to avoid them.

Would you rate Seagate a better HD ?

[dB Cooper]

Yes, Seagate and Hitachi are good ones (going by an Apple tech who I trust).

[bpape]

Guess that's a matter of personal experience.  I've had WD drives for years and quite honestly, never had a single drive fail.  The Seagates that were in a couple of machines family members had have all been replaced at least once. 

I also noticed that FLAC isn't on the restricted list of file types. 

The DRM thing does suck though.

Bryan

[dB Cooper]

I've seen quite a few come back at work, but you are correct that it is a matter of personal experience. You pays yer money and you takes yer chance...
Gotta wonder about promoting a drive as a networkable media drive when it is hampered for this though.

[richidoo]

I like Seagate. Their Barracuda drives are fast, reliable, and quiet. They have lesser models for the "family PC" (cheapo) market.
Rich

[Thump553]

I've been reasonably happy with my Western Digital drives, but if they continue this policy I won't ever buy anyone one.

I can see Sony pulling this kind of BS, since they have such a vested interest in the distribution side, but WD astonishes me.

[Cacophonix]

I just bought a 320G maxtor drive for under $60 ... i've installed XP on it, and it seems to work just fine there.

And for an external drive, i went with buffalo. This too seems to work fine, and is reasonably quiet. I've heard horror stories about its software, so i didn't bother installing it. I just use it as a backup for my FLACs.

[Steve Eddy]

This 1TB external drive may look tempting at $299 $200 with free shipping but...this is an amazing and outrageous rip off

I did some research on this and it turns out that those restrictions DO NOT apply to the OWNER of the drive as seems to be implied here.

As the owner of the drive, you can put whatever files you want on it and have access to all of them, regardless of file type, from anywhere.

The restrictions only apply to other users. This apparently to prevent people from putting their music collections or other copyrighted materials on the drive and allowing anyone on the Internet to be able to access it.

Of course as bpape mentions, FLAC isn't among the restricted file types. Nor is MLP or WAV. It seems only lossy compression schemes are restricted.

Also, if you want to share your files with someone you know and trust, you can simply give them your username and password and they can access all the files as well.

se

[Jon L]

This 1TB external drive may look tempting at $299 $200 with free shipping but...this is an amazing and outrageous rip off

I did some research on this and it turns out that those restrictions DO NOT apply to the OWNER of the drive as seems to be implied here.

As the owner of the drive, you can put whatever files you want on it and have access to all of them, regardless of file type, from anywhere.

The restrictions only apply to other users. This apparently to prevent people from putting their music collections or other copyrighted materials on the drive and allowing anyone on the Internet to be able to access it.

Of course as bpape mentions, FLAC isn't among the restricted file types. Nor is MLP or WAV. It seems only lossy compression schemes are restricted.

Also, if you want to share your files with someone you know and trust, you can simply give them your username and password and they can access all the files as well.

se

Meh, just the same.  WD should work on producing better drives instead of getting into this kind of crap. 

In all likelihood, the restriction is designed into the external hard drive case and the circuitry/program inside the case, not the HD itself.  One can continue using WD hard drives in other cases/PC's if you so choose.

[Philistine]

It doesn't make a difference who the manufacturer of the HD is, based on the mechanical nature of the design one day it will fail.  Based on this fact then its prudent to have a back up drive for when this happens, my recommendation is to invest in two similar sized drives as opposed to one large drive.  My 900,CD's are now on two 500GB drives.

NB
Does anyone know where to find third party stats on drive reliability? I have a combination of Seagate and WD, but have no clue who makes the most reliable.

[timkeeler]

Independent site that reviews hard drives: http://www.storagereview.com/  Personally, I have had nothing but good drives from WD over the last 10+ years that I have used them almost exclusively.  That said, I won't buy another one based on this new policy of theirs.

[Imperial]

I generally like Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung.

But again, WD does have loads of satified customers as well.

Imperial

[pm314]

The NY Times has an blog entry that goes into a little more depth on this. The drive itself has no restrictions whatsoever. Like almost all drives it comes optional software you can load. One of those bundled software is call mio and it allows you to make your files available, for your own use, on the internet. It is within this software that there are restrictions...makes sense.
Sounds like a bad PR move by WD but nothing more.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/more-on-wds-hard-drive-that-wont-share-video/index.html?th&emc=th

[bpape]

Please keep in mind that my comments on WD vs Seagate were NOT for external drive packages - but rather for internal bare drives.  I have no personal experience with any of the external drive packages.

Bryan

[Skipperrik]

I have this drive so I'd like to clear up a couple of things.

1.  Yes, the owner (or anyone with the owner's username and password) can access any file on the drive remotely.
2.  Even though flac files are not listed as a type that cannot be shared with other users, they are prohibited as well.  Changing the extension to something else does not circumvent it.
3.  Since the drive consists of two 500 gb drives, it can be configured as either a 1tb conventional drive, or in a 500gb raid configuration.
4.  I had a very difficult time getting my Squeezebox to work with the Mionet file sharing software.  In fact, I ended up removing Mionet and using the drive configured as a SAMBA drive.  I don't recommend the Mybook World for both sharing files remotely and for using it as a music server for a Squeezebox.
5.  The transfer speed is painfully slow.  This does not affect its performance with music playback, but transferring large files takes more patience than I have.  For this reason alone, I would not buy another one.

I also own a Western Digital Mybook 300 gig remote hard drive that I use for backups.  It uses a USB connection and is very fast and reliable.  I highly recommend that one.  I wish I had purchased the 1tb USB Mybook.