Simplify your laptop buying
- Average user rating: 1.5 stars out of 84 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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52 out of 52 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"If you want speed, reformat the disc as NTFS"
Pros: cost and Firewire/USB 2.0
Cons: have to install with USB to install firewire driver
Summary: Originally I had the same opinion as the CNET staff about the write speed of the Western Digital "My Book 500GB" external drive. It was sloooowwwww.
Then I noticed that it was shipped formatted as FAT32. I reformatted it as NTFS and the increase in speed was amazing.
Now we will have to see if the product is reliable.Updated
If your system is running NTFS on your internal drives, you can realize a singificant performance gain by reformatting the Western Digital MyBook Premium Edition 500 GB External Hard Drive from FAT32 (as shipped) to NTSF. If you are running FAT32 or your internal drives, do not make this change. Also, before your reformat to NTFS copy the Western Digital Files and folders to another drive before reformatting and replace them after. However, if you forget to do this, you can download these files from support at the Western Digital Site.
- 1 reply to this review
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You don't need to perform a three step process of
1)copy everything off,
2) reformat and
3) then copy everything back to your WD My Book drive.
You can simply convert it from FAT, or FAT32 to NTFS with the following command:
convert <drive letter>: /fs:ntfs
Refer to following Microsoft TechNet URL for details:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx
I hope this helps and saves you time and copying/restoring files.
Cheers,
Jeff Lumkin
Where to buy
Western Digital MyBook Premium Edition 500GB External Hard Drive:
$279.99
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$279.99 | Yes |
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