Western Digital My Book Home 500 GB USB 2.0 FireWire 400 eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDH1CS5000N
Preserve your precious memories with this ideal combination of elegant, reliable storage and automatic backup features. Your baby's first step, your wedding in Bali, all your important milestones?all captured in digital photos and video. What could be more important? Store them safely and keep them backed up on My Book Home Edition external hard drives.
Western Digital My Book Home 500 GB USB 2.0 FireWire 400 eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDH1CS5000N Features
- Sold Individually
$124.98
I originally bought two units because of the ESATA interface. I wanted to be able to move it easily and get Serial ATA speeds. HOWEVER, I found that where the IEEE 1394 and USB 2 interfaces worked (albeit at less than half the speed from a sata interface), the esata interface did not seem to work consistently. The drive was slow and sometimes disappeared from the disk manager on any of the four target computers. I had other esata configurations and tested the same cable and computer interfaces. These test configurations worked fine. So it wasn't the cable or the computer esata interfaces.
I just happened to read an article that stated that many early implementations of ESATA did not support the specified maximum cable length. I had gotten a shorter cable with another product, total length was about 26". The shorter cable length worked for both units and four computers. All units have worked fine ever since and I get speeds of up to 33MBs on both units.
I have not tried different lengths because this particular length works fine for my application. However in two computers, I am bringing out esata connectors using the motherboard's internal sata connectors and the additionl internal cables take the entire length up to 36", which is 3" short of a meter. I suspect a meter is the limit because that was the length of my original cable on which all the failures happened, even when the motherboard furnishs the external esata interface.
I bought these because docks at the time were relatively expensive and are more "imposing" for non computer people to move. So this works out great in the office.
So I downrated ease of use because WD should have known about the cable length issue and published it. -- ESATA Interface Reliability
