Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsGarbage
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2018
I used to love this series of hard drives. I used the older generation - the all-black ones prior to the current generation. I don't know what happened, but for this generation of this drive, it appears that someone who was inexplicably and simultaneously color-blind, dyslexic, and was in the middle of a stroke did the aesthetic design.
Aside from re-defining how badly it was even possible to wreck a previously good design, this generation of drive seems to be plagued by problems. Others have reported numerous instances where the drive is either dead-on-arrival or stops working shortly afterwards, making data inaccessible.
My experience is where Western Digital decided that this trainwreck of a drive needed some more flavor for how awful it was:
For the drive I bought, I discovered that certain operations (e.g. copying directories with more than a certain number of files inside, data synchronizing operations, etc...) cause an instant SYSTEM REBOOT. No warning, no error, no BSOD - it just instantly shuts off and restarts mid-operation.
I've ruled out the cable, USB hub, motherboard port, and even the motherboard USB controller (as mine has two - used for different ports).
The older generation WD drive (the all black one) works completely fine with no problems. This one causes the entire computer system to spontaneously reboot, as if the stroke from this model drive's graphic designer is contagious.
I'm not even going to think about buying another Western Digital external drive until they get rid of this mistake and come out with the next generation - which better fix both the technical as well as aesthetic issues.
