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Customer Reviews for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
This product is no longer available. Continue shopping at Best Buy.
Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Model: WDH1CS15000N
SKU: 9540687
UPC: 718037741505
Learn more about this hard drive.Save your important documents and photos with this My Book Home Edition triple-interface external hard drive that features up to 1.5TB capacity and an automatic backup feature for added security.This model meets our Professional Series criteriaShop all products in our Small Business Center
Average Customer Rating:
4.1
out of 5
(144 Reviews) 144
Rating Snapshot 144 reviews
5 stars
81
4 stars
38
3 stars
4
2 stars
6
1 star
15
83% of reviewers would recommend this product to a friend
(
119 out of
144)
Customer Reviews for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Review 1 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
eSATA is a must
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
4.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: eSATA & firewire are the only way to go. USB 2.0 is too slow. Drive works great - no problems.
What's not so great: None yet - I now have 3 of them. Note- all cables should be inculded with the drive.
Fast read and write speed with eSTATA and FireWire - I will never use USB 2.0 unless I have too. I have had 4 Seagates (250 GB to 1.5 TB) fail and will not purchase another. All drives should have eSTATA and FireWire connections - the marketing hype for the very slow USB 2.0 connection is a disservice since it limits how a drive can be used.
The WD dirves have given me no problems and are working fine. The on-off button is nice and I turn off the units when I don't use them. I do photography and do not use back-up programs because of the large files I use. The units should come with eSTATA and FireWire cables included.
I would recommend this to a friend!
+4points
5out of 6found this review helpful.
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Review 2 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Great Product
Customer Rating
5.0
Posted by: vamonticello
from Hampton, Va
on 11/20/2009
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: ton of space, easy to use
What's not so great: nothing bad to say
I have a 1T WD that I bought years ago, it works perfectly so when I wanted more space I wanted to get another WD. This WD with 1.5T is GREAT, it was actually cheaper than my 1T I bought years ago. There is no need for a disk to set up, it is all plug and play PLUS you dont have to worry about turning it on and off because it does it automatically.
I would recommend this to a friend!
+1point
2out of 3found this review helpful.
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Review 3 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
No eSATA, Windows 7 support
Customer Rating
1.0
Value for Price
1.0
Ease of Use
1.0
Performance
1.0
Ease of Installation
1.0
What's great about it: Quiet, high capacity
What's not so great: Doesn't work with eSATA cable, no eSATA cable provided, WD support says not compatible with Windows 7
Don't buy if you're interested in using the eSATA connection or using it with Windows 7!
I just got off the phone with WD support, and they told me that this drive is not compatible with Windows 7. Windows 7 doesn't even see the device when it's plugged into the eSATA port.
No wonder why BestBuy is clearing these out two weeks after releasing them. They don't do what they're supposed to. eSATA connections do not work with Windows 7.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
-4points
0out of 4found this review helpful.
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Review 4 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Great for backup, video
Customer Rating
4.0
Value for Price
4.0
Ease of Use
4.0
Performance
4.0
Ease of Installation
3.0
What's great about it: eSATA, Firewire
What's not so great: Comes formated in FAT32
Plug and play with Windows 7, but only run the software to register the product. It comes formated in FAT32(this probably why people are having problems with Windows 64 bit)You will have to reformat the drive to NTFS, which takes less than five minutes. Great for back up for Windows 7, since it does a system image backup along with your files, which takes a large amount of disk space. A must is the eSATA connection, backup with this took a little over two hour vs. the eight plus hours using a USB drive. The software is useless but it be ersased when you reformat.
Just remember FIRST YOU MUST REFORMAT THIS DRIVE TO NTFS FORMAT. IT COMES FORMATTED IN FAT32.
If this doesn't solve your problems it's probalby broken.
Just remember FIRST YOU MUST REFORMAT THIS DRIVE TO NTFS FORMAT. IT COMES FORMATTED IN FAT32.
If this doesn't solve your problems it's probalby broken.
I would recommend this to a friend!
0points
1out of 2found this review helpful.
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Review 5 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Awesome Hard Drive
Customer Rating
5.0
Posted by: BBuser101
from Hawaii
on 11/30/2009
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: eSATA support, lots of room, good price
What's not so great: No eSATA cable. Had to buy one.
Dont pay attention to GSM. Has no idea what he/she is talking about. I just bought the new ASUS G72GX laptop from Best Buy, which has Windows 7 and has an eSATA port. I did have to go and buy a $20 eSATA cable, but when I plugged it into the laptop, I had no issues. This hard drive works flawlessly with Windows 7 and eSATA. I didn't even test the firewire or usb cable that came with the hard drive because eSATA is so much faster. You DO NOT have to use the software that comes with the hard drive. Maybe that's what isn't supported with Windows 7.
Great hard drive. I might even get another one.
Great hard drive. I might even get another one.
I would recommend this to a friend!
+2points
3out of 4found this review helpful.
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Review 6 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Good - For A Day... boo
Customer Rating
1.0
Posted by: bradleyt78
from Chandler, AZ
on 12/03/2009
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
1.0
Performance
1.0
Ease of Installation
1.0
What's great about it: It worked for a day as it should. Quiet.
What's not so great: After just over a day of use, my the drive worked VERY SLOWLY - returning.
After just over a day of use - where I partitioned about 250 GB for Time Machine automatic backup and the rest for personal media and document storage, I was very happy after my previous Maxtor drive failed. Luckily, I use mozy.com and all of my information was backed up online.
After combining what was backed up online and the two months of photos of my young son onto the drive, it simply stopped being recognized on the Time Machine partition and the larger partition, while recognized, runs very, very slowly. Luckily, I can still access the information, so I am not in the process of taking my newer pictures from the MyBook and throwing them onto my MacBook to the tune of 40 minutes for 38.8 MB. Fun times.
Based on other reviews, I might chalk it up to being a bad apple ... but it put a sour taste in my mouth.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
+1point
1out of 1found this review helpful.
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Review 7 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Stay far away from Western Digital
Customer Rating
1.0
Value for Price
1.0
Ease of Use
1.0
Performance
1.0
Ease of Installation
1.0
What's great about it: nothing
What's not so great: everything
This is the 4th My Book i've purchased. I still have the original running on usb. I purchased another one, had to return it. Kept disappearing from windows. Replacement did the same. Xp 32bit and Win7 64 bit. So, about 8 months later i see this deal, and i jump on it. Guess what? 3 days of headaches and of course, no response from Western Digital. Hundereds of others i have found online with the same problems and no answers. Can't even upgrade firmware. "Error while loading generic library".
Western Digital will never be installed on any future machines i build.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
0points
1out of 2found this review helpful.
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Review 8 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Very versatile high-capacity drive
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
4.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Three interfaces for performance and flexibility
What's not so great: Comes in FAT32 format (with 4G files size limit).
Having USB2, eSATA and Firewire is an important option. Even if your current computer does not have eSATA, your next one probably will - which will give you the performance of an internal drive. And the firewire interface give you flexibility and some performance boost over USB2. It is very easy to hook up and does not require any drivers to be installed for any of the interface choices.
One possible negative for some people is that it comes formatted in FAT32 which has a file size limit of 4G. This causes software packages like BeyondTV DVR software and R-Drive Image or Nero backups to split files into many smaller ones which I find annoying. It can be reformatted to NTFS easily enough with Windows Computer Management / Disk Management if you prefer to avoid file splitting.
One possible negative for some people is that it comes formatted in FAT32 which has a file size limit of 4G. This causes software packages like BeyondTV DVR software and R-Drive Image or Nero backups to split files into many smaller ones which I find annoying. It can be reformatted to NTFS easily enough with Windows Computer Management / Disk Management if you prefer to avoid file splitting.
I would recommend this to a friend!
+1point
1out of 1found this review helpful.
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Review 9 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Huge, Fast and Cheap
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
4.0
What's great about it: Speed and Size
What's not so great: No Included eSATA cable
The headline says it all, got this as a Black Friday deal and I am loving it.
The a couple of small hiccups, first the FAT32 formatting was inexcusable, but that was quickly fixed by a format to NTFS.
The only other problem i see is the lack of a eSATA cable in the box. Some less tech-oriented people might struggle without one.
I would recommend this to a friend!
0points
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Review 10 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Slow, Slow Hard Drive
Customer Rating
1.0
Value for Price
3.0
Ease of Use
4.0
Performance
1.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Lots of Space
What's not so great: Slower than a snail
Bought this drive on 12/11/09. Purchased it specifically because it had firewire & eSATA ports.
I needed to transfer about 500 GB of files off of my raid so that it could be reformatted. Started off OK saying it would only take about 6 hours. Went to bed, got up in the morning and it said it would take 3 days. I've been trouble shooting it ever since and if you restart the transfer, it starts off quickly, but then drops to an almost dead crawl. I tried both the USB & Firewire ports, but they have the same problem. I have 5 other external drives, so I know this is not normal.
I did a disk benchmark on this drive, and the read speeds are normal (30 MB/s) but the write speed is non-existent.
I am transferring the files back to my raid right now (2 hours 33 minutes for 300 GB) Oh wait, it just slowed down, 22 hours and climbing.
I'm going to Best Buy right now to get a different drive, but I can't return this one until it gets cleared off.
Saw a couple similar reviews that said this drive works at first, but becomes slow.
I've used a couple other WD Mybooks before, so this might be a problem with this drive model. You'd think since this is the "professional series" it would have a little more reliability.
Stay away.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
+1point
1out of 1found this review helpful.
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Review 11 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
eSATA port is broken
Customer Rating
1.0
Value for Price
4.0
Ease of Use
1.0
Performance
1.0
Ease of Installation
1.0
What's great about it: Nothing
What's not so great: Everything
I bought this drive for its eSATA and USB interface and the cheap price. But eSATA connection did not work. It was really loose and did not hold the wire. Overall, it seems to be a cheap quality product. USB connection, however, did work but if I wanted a USB drive there are cheaper and better quality products out there.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
0points
0out of 0found this review helpful.
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Review 12 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
A very fast drive
Customer Rating
5.0
Posted by: Merkwurdigliebe
from USA
on 12/29/2009
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Speed, ease of use, WD quality, great sale price
What's not so great: FAT32 formatting, but that is easily corrected
Purchased 12/29/2009. This is my third My Book drive.
I was impressed most by its very high USB write speeds.
It writes 50% faster than the 1TB My Book drive I bought at Best Buy last month. It holds a consistent 32 MB/s on writes; the 1 TB drive runs at about 21 MB/s.
I see some reviews saying it is a slow drive, but they are not assigning the blame accurately. The drive is fast, it is the operating system that is slow.
Certain mainstream OS's tend to run themselves out of buffer RAM on large copy operations to external drives with large caches, especially when using the shell to do the copying, That is the true cause of the infinite copy time syndrome noted by other reviewers, not the drive.
There are several free high performance disk copy utilities out there that are much faster than the native utilities and are not subject to these memory depletion problems.
This is a nice, solid, and very fast external drive. I'd recommend it to anyone.
I would recommend this to a friend!
0points
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Review 13 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
figured out the eSATA
Customer Rating
4.0
Posted by: nck114
from Richmond, VA
on 12/29/2009
Value for Price
4.0
Ease of Use
3.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: good price, good transfer speed with eSATA
What's not so great: have to do a little work to get eSATA working
So, it took me about a day to figure out how to make the eSATA work, therefore I figured I would share with everyone so you don't have the same frustration. I'm running this external on a Gateway FX series laptop running 64 bit Windows Vista. The problem I had was not with my laptop OR the external, it was with the chord. The problem was that the plastic guards at the ends of the chord were too long, so I cut a little bit off of the plastic and it went far enough into the eSATA port and worked like a dream. The chord I bought was a Belkin eSATA chord. I hope this helps a few people out, because once you get that problem solved this external is really nice.
I would recommend this to a friend!
0points
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Review 14 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Why The Bad Reviews?
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
4.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Big, Fast, 3-way Interface, Great Value
What's not so great: eSata stil buggy
Bought the first one on black Friday; kicked myself for not buying 2 at that price. Went on sale again ($10 more, but still a bargain), and picked it up at my local BB 45 minutes later; was waiting on me, checked out in less than 3 minutes...love the easy combination of paying online and local pickup.
Yes, the drives get "lost" after an extended period of non-use if hooked up via eSata...not a biggie with me. One drive is used exclusively for backup of documents, pics, etc. (files that are non-replaceable and treasured); these files reside on my Mac Pro, which I dual-boot and work with both OSX and WXP Pro. I have around 600G of studio files from Logic Pro and the other mentioned files. Via eSata, I transferred ALL these files to my 2nd WD external in about 2 hours (estimate, didn't time it, thought it would take all night). If the drive "disappears" overnight, I will just reboot, or ignore it since It is for file backups. WD is aware of the problem with eSata, and will most likely provide a flash for it soon...don't let a small problem like this deter you from getting the best deal anywhere on an external.
The other drive has been in use for the past month via FIREWIRE, serving as a dedicated drive for ripped BluRay and standard DVD's; the huge files are available to my HTPC via ethernet cable hooked to my router, and also wirelessly to my daughters PC...the WD drive never skips a beat delivering the files, and it is CONSTANTLY seen by both Windows and OSX via FIREWIRE. Both drives are slightly warm to the touch, but nothing like the temps normally associated with internal drives.
So where are you going to find a 1.5T WD (or any other brand) FIREWIRE drive at this price?...nowhere. I am very satisfied so far...but the eSata problem needs to be resolved, otherwise it would have been 5 stars across the board.
ESATA UPDATE: While finishing my review, my comp locked up for about 30 seconds while contact with the eSata drive was lost. Now I'm not sure about YOUR comp, but on mine, all I did was turn the power off on the drive (did not reboot the comp), waited 20 seconds, and turned it back on...it once again shows up and is accessible in My Computer. Since the drive is exclusive for file backups, I will most likely just unhook it, and use it once a week or so for those backups...will also extend the life of it.
I would recommend this to a friend!
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Review 15 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Solid performer - Great price
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Tons of space, 3-way interface, great price, fast transfer (eSATA)
What's not so great: Other reviews, no eSATA cable included
Was going back and forth between this and the HP 1TB drive based largely on the reviews posted here. In the end decided that I would give this unit a try because of the speed of the eSATA interface.
The unit comes with Firewire and USB cables but for some reason WD has decided not to include the eSATA cable in the kit. Make sure you get this cable if your computer has the port as the speed differences are unbelievable. To give you an idea of the speed, I was able to copy over about 200GB of data from my system drive to the WD drive in about 2 hours. By comparison copying some data from a USB 2.0 attached drive took about 45 minutes for 20GB. One interesting thing to note about the USB connection on the drive is that they have chosen to go with the mini-USB style, so you will likely have to use the included cable even if you have another existing drive that you are replacing.
One other curious choice that WD made (though I presume it was to make it as compatible as possible with other computer types) is the FAT32 formatting. If you are running Windows, make sure to convert it to NTFS before you do anything else. With an empty drive it took less than 5 minutes to accomplish. Instructions can easily be found on the Microsoft website (or you can Google "Convert FAT32 to NTFS").
I am very satisfied with the drive based on my experiences so far, but will keep on eye on the issues that others have mentioned (particularly as they relate to eSATA).
Finally, make sure you check the BestBuy online price before you go into the store, if it is lower on-line, they will price match, but only if you ask. This saved me $43 between the drive and the cable.
I would recommend this to a friend!
-1point
0out of 1found this review helpful.
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Review 16 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Quality product, Excellent price, fixable bugs
Customer Rating
4.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
4.0
Performance
4.0
Ease of Installation
4.0
What's great about it: Has eSATA, Firewire, and USB2.0 works fast for media
What's not so great: MUST reformat file system to NTFS to save large files, eSATA is quirky with Windows XP
What it comes down to is it's an awesome product for the price (paid $129.99). It works great as USB2.0 or firewire without compatability issues, mounts up just like any other external USB flash drive. Transfers are fast and plays blueray movies from the drive with no lag. I did have the problem of some windows launch failure in Windows XP while mounting the drive usung eSATA. Be aware that you may have compatability issues relating to the troubleshooting of mounting multiple SATA bootable drives. If you are going to backup large files (I use the drive to download blueray and DVD movies onto) You MUST reformat the file system of the drive from FAT32 to NTFS. Otherwise your file size limit is 4GB per file and you will get an error if you try to save, copy, or unpack a larger file onto the drive. This can be done without data loss even if you have already used the drive. You just have to go to start > Run > and type Convert E:/ fs:ntfs hit enter then type the name of the drive when prompted and hit enter. It will take about 5 minutes. Then your 10GB blueray movies or any other file larger than 4GB can be saved onto the drivewithout issue. Overall it's a solid product that will grow with your needs but requires some customization for compatability. I have recommended this product to several people and have been happy with the performance.
and windows will fix the drive automatically
and windows will fix the drive automatically
I would recommend this to a friend!
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Review 17 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Excellent Value...
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
4.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Price vs Capacity (Great Value), Speed, Reliability, Convenient Design
What's not so great: eSATA Cable sold seperately (as expected), but still worth it
Initially, I was discouraged from purchasing this hard drive because of the mixed reviews I read concerning this product. However, I found that those negative reviews I found were over concerns that are easily fixed if you are technologically competent and/or take the time to read the manual (pre-installed) on the hard drive or downloaded from the Western Digital website. Most of the commonly mentioned problems are fixed by formatting the hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS (as stated in several previous reviews).
Personally, I have had no problem with this external hard drive whatsoever, and I strongly suggest investing in the $20 eSATA cable so that transfers are that much faster between your computer and hard drive. I have used several other brands of hard drives including Seagate and Maxtor, yet Western Digital is the only brand I find myself returning to for my data storage needs. If you're looking for high capacity hard drives at a low price, go with Western Digital, and especially go with this hard drive if you want added speed using eSATA.
I would recommend this to a friend!
+1point
1out of 1found this review helpful.
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Review 18 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
External HD
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
4.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
3.0
What's great about it: The 1.5 TB space
What's not so great: Some software issues during boot.
Performance of the HD is great and would suggest that you consider for purchase, however I've had some issues with the software not loading on boot.
I would recommend this to a friend!
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Review 19 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Great external drive at great price
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Great price, up an running in a matter of minutes
Great price, quick delivery, and got it up and running in less than 10 minutes!
I would recommend this to a friend!
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Review 20 for Western Digital 1.5TB External USB 2.0, FireWire and eSATA Hard Drive - Black
Sweet
Customer Rating
5.0
Value for Price
5.0
Ease of Use
5.0
Performance
5.0
Ease of Installation
5.0
What's great about it: Powerful
What's not so great: Don't use files over 122mb
I really like it but it does not work on my folders over 122 mb.
I would recommend this to a friend!
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