[ale] Anyone using a Western Digital external HD ?

[JD]

I purchased a 2TB MyBook USB3 HDD a few days ago.  Connected it via rear-USB to
my main storage server here, wiped the existing partitions and created an EXT4
partition in sdh5.  Started a copy, this new drive is intended for backups only,
and after 135GB, it stopped copying. Kicked off an rsync a few more times with
similar results. Even provided a huge area for rsync scratch.

The USB bus started kicking out errors - LOTS of errors.  umount and mount
couldn't do anything with the mount point. It was ugly.  The entire system
started getting slow. Other USB devices work well enough on this machine and
were still working. Switched to a different USB port (front) and saw similar
results after a reboot.

Rebooted this morning and the HDD wasn't seen well enough to mount, but it was
seen well enough to prevent the boot sequence from continuing.

I expect to return the drive tomorrow.

Would prefer an internal drive over an external, mainly due to the longer
standard warranty periods, but the price diff is huge now.  (1 vs 3yrs) or (2 vs
5 yrs).  I need another HDD for backups and 2TB seemed like the sweet price
point.  Should we have gotten the Seagate for $10 less with only a 1 yr warranty
instead?




On 11/17/2011 05:02 PM, Courtney Thomas wrote:
> Mike,
> 
> Thanks for the reply.
> 
> How do you install it and under which Linux flavor ?
> 
> Courtney
> 
> On 11/16/2011 11:00 AM, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
>> On Wed, 2011-11-16 at 05:22 -0500, Courtney Thomas wrote: 
>>> If yes, under what system and how should it be installed and used, please ?
>>> I've been given one [500MB MyBook, USB & Firewire capable] that the 
>>> former owner says will only intermittently shutdown or be recognized
>>> by Windows Vista, so would like to use it myself if I can figure out 
>>> what's been the problem under winders.
>> IIRC, some of those WD MyBooks had problems with the spindown logic a
>> few years back.  I don't recall anything about Vista but Vista had its
>> own sets of problems so all bets are off there.  I've also seen some
>> comments about iMacs and the MyBooks.  I seem to recall some comment
>> from back then that the USB interface would disconnect when the drive
>> would spin down but, in retrospect, that really doesn't seen to make
>> much sense to me now.  If you do a google search on "western digital my
>> book linux spin down" you'll find lots of commentary on it with some
>> suggesting to set the spindown time to fairly long values.
>>
>> I've got some 750's that have never given me a problem under Linux.  I
>> guess I got lucky.  It was shortly after I bought those that I started
>> hearing that some people where having problems.  Mine DON'T have the
>> firewire port, though, so it may have been that particular model, which
>> was slightly more expensive when I was looking at them side by side.  I
>> bought these when Best Buy was clearing them out to make way for the
>> newer models that included the firewire port.
>>
>> I would hook it up and give it a shot and see how it behaves.  If you
>> need to, set the spindown timeout to a long value and see if that makes
>> an impact.  If it's been given to you, I would guess you don't have
>> anything to lose from playing with it and seeing how it acts.
>>