I wonder if it's just me, but every Western Digital "My Book" external drive product has failed on me. As we speak, I'm copying my last remaining My Book onto a new drive, hoping to get all the data before it fails completely.
To be fair, it doesn't seem to be the actual drive that fails -- it's the USB connection. They get to a point where you have to wiggle the usb cable to just the right position for the drive to work. I'm not sure how or why this happens; I don't move these around or travel with them.
The last time this happened, I excavated the physical drive from it's failing plastic cage and popped it into an external drive enclosure. Saving the drive for an extra $40 was a deal, never mind the ability to use the enclosure for other drives if needed. (Right now, the drive I'm actually copying to is the rescued WD in the Thermaltake enclosure.)
So anyway I think this will be the last "My Book" product that I'll buy -- though with drives, it seems to vary over time which manufacturers are putting out the best product
I don't mean to complain all the time. I just had some hummus, and it was quite good. And traffic wasn't bad today while I was doing chores!
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I've got a 1TB firewire mybook... kinda scary you've had issues.... that's my one big fear with External hard drives... I keep all my backups on these things. The last thing I need is for one of them to die on me.
I think i'm going to pick up a RAID array... like a Drobo (www.drobo.com) or one of those dual-drive RAID dealios they sell at the mac store. Can't go wrong with redunancy.
I buy all my externals in pairs and replicate data from one to the other for fault tolerance. Also have some drives offsite that are a also few months behind, but there for worst case situations.
The Drobos are nice though! I've been thinking about getting a couple.