I just picked up a WD MY Book capable of eSATA, firewire, and USB. The main reason for this is to transfer files from my old XP machine to my new Vista 64 machine. I really didn't want to spend $40 on what seems to be a throw away "easy transfer cable" Plus, I can actually use this for other things. I tried using DVD's but got some disk errors and some files won't load to the new machine.

First, the instructions just seem too easy. Plug it in and click on an .exe file which I assume is for the backup utility it comes with. Can it be that easy?

Here's my questions:

1. Seeing how I am going to use this on a XP machine and a Vista 64 bit machine, does it mater which machine I set it up with first? Formatting wise?

2. Beside storing files and backups. Is it possible to load an OS such as Ubuntu as a second boot option, or will that make thinks too complicated to simply store files?

3. On my old machine I have firewire and USB 2.0. Which is faster? I'll be using eSATA with the new machine.


Thanks!

You may have to format the hdd if it's not already formatted. You may have to install the eSATA driver, never used eSATA and not sure if it requires driver installation. If so, install the driver on the computer you'll using eSATA. My external drive has both USB and firewire and while firewire is supposed to be faster, I've haven't seen a noticeable difference Someone else will have to answer your question regarding installing an OS, I just use mine for backing up data

You will probably want to reformat the drive to NTFS because WD ships them formatted with FAT32. Firewire is supposed to be faster than USB, but I couldn't tell the difference. Using it to boot to another os could work, but....I would stick with using it for backups.

You will most likely have to format the drive just as you would any new HDD, but that should be the extent of it. I have several external HDDs that I use to move stuff from an XP machine to and from a Vista machine using the USB2 ports and have never had any problems. Good luck and I'm sure you will find plenty of uses for the drive!

USB allows for the hot removal of drives - it shuts them down.

ESATA does not.

Just format and go.

USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire. Usb 2.0 transfer speed is 480Mbps while Firewire transfer speed is 400Mbps unless you have installed a Firewire 800 PCI card then it will transfer at 800Mbps. I have an external 320GB HDD and I connect it to my XP Pro rig via USB 2.0 and then I connect the same drive to my Vista 64bit rig via eSATA, which is faster. Mind you, I do not have it connected to the two computers at the same time. Both are hot plug and play if you have the right motherboard, which I do. My eSATA connection on my ASUS P5K-Deluxe motherboard is hot plug & play.

Thanks!

I've decided against a bootable partition.
I left an empty 20 gig partition just for Ubuntu on my computers hard drive, so there's really no point.

I checked the specs on the motherboard and the firewire port was listed at 400MPS.

Not sure if my eSata is hot swappable or not. The manual didn't mention this, but did mention the eSATA connection was provided by JMicron which can do RAID. So maybe. I'll know when I hook it up. I may actually have some time to do that too! If not, I guess I'll just have to restart. If that doesn't work, auto detect in the BIOS?


Much appreciated!