This powerful, feature-rich Media Center from Western Digital combines a high-capacity USB 2.0/FireWire external hard drive, 8-in-1 memory card reader, and USB 2.0 hub for versatility and space-saving convenience. Dual-option Backup buttons let you choose automatic or on-the-spot backup. The front-mounted power button is equipped with Safe Shutdown, a WD-exclusive feature that ensures all data as been transferred before shutting down the drive. The elegant case can be positioned vertically or horizontally.
Ease of use, all-in-one convenience, and a high-speed hard drive make the Media Center an ideal external storage solution. Instantly increase storage capacity, easily download pictures from digital camera memory cards, DV camcorders, and MP3 players, or back up valuable data, music, photos, and movies. 8 MB cache buffer – fast data transfer from a cache four times larger than the industry-standard 2 MB size.
Product Features
* 8-in-1 memory card reader
* Dual-option Backup—automatic or on-demand
* USB 2.0 hub with two ports; one conveniently located on the front for easy connection of USB peripherals such
as a keychain drive, printer, keyboard, or mouse
* 7200 RPM rotational speed and 8 MB cache for maximum storage performance.
* Includes Dantz Retrospect® Express backup software
* Built-in USB 2.0 hub for additional drive connections
* Two FireWire ports
* Front-mounted power button with Safe Shutdown for additional data protection
* Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motor for near-silent operation with WD's whisper-quiet hard drives
* Cool running ensured by an elegant, heat-dissipating case
* Vertical or horizontal placement
* Kensington® security lock
To be honest, I don't know anything about mounting or setting up an external hard drive. I just plugged the USB cable into my computer, rebooted, and then the Mandrake bootup gave me something called the Diskdrake. It was a text-based configuration and I chose the option to mount it. I then clicked 'ok' and booted into my GUI (KDE). I went into the console and typed 'df' to see what was mounted, and behold my 250 GB external hard drive was there! I am now copying files onto it and backing up my data.
I have NOT tried the one-touch backup feature, nor have I tried the memory card reader built into the external hard drive, and this is why I gave it a 9/10 rating. I doubt it'll work, but that's okay. All I can say so far is that the basic 250 GB storage is there and it works fine. It is preformatted with FAT32 so it makes writing with Windows XP not a problem.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: $243.00 | Rating: 8
Kernel (uname -r):
2.6.9-1.667
Distribution:
Fedora Core 3
I have the WDXB2500JBRNE which is the same as the WDXF2500JBRNN except it has no card reader.
I use firewire to connect and udev, HAL and Gnome do a good job and place one icon for each partition on the disk on my desktop when the drive gets plugged in.
I wrote an own HAL storage policy file /usr/share/hal/fdi/95userpolicy/storage-policy.fdi to influence the mount options and labels used by HAL.
I currently try to get use of the buttons on the disk, but still have no idea how to catch the events. I guess I have to use libraw1394 but it does not work - testlibraw1394 says:
couldn't get handle: No such file or directory
This probably means that you don't have raw1394 support in the kernel or that
you haven't loaded the raw1394 module.
... but in fact the module is loaded.
Firewire related lspci -v output:
02:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 46) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at e8200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
I/O ports at ff00 [size=128]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Would you recommend the product? | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 0
Kernel (uname -r):
Distribution:
I did what described here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?postid=1398291#post1398291
and testlibraw1394 works, but I still have no idea how to catch the drive's button events.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: $210.00 | Rating: 10
Kernel (uname -r):
Distribution:
Debian/Testing
The card reader actually also works. I'm using with the usb port and I didn't need to do anything for it to identify the card. You can mount both media types simultaneously. I only tried mmc+, since I don't use the other medias (ms, ms-duo, compact flash, etc). The device identified (in my case) for the hd was /dev/sdc1 and for the card reader, as soon as I stick the card in, /dev/sdb1.
Fast hard-drive (7200rpm), good value for money, works out-of-the-box, it deserves my 10! My model is the WD Media Center 320GB (WDXF3200JB).
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