A Conflagration of Randomness

The Terrible (and big) Western Digital 500 GB MyBook

January 14th, 2008 Robert Kania 6 comments

Western Digital My Book In September, my 5 year old hard drive started making those clicking sounds that often tell of their soon to be death. And sure enough within the month, my computer had died and I was in need of reinstalling windows. So I had 2 hard drives and was planning on exchanging them, putting the OS on my 80 GB hard drive and leaving the 160 GB one completely free, but alas, as I was pulling the 80 GB out, it hit the platform on my computer and was thus broken.

So the next day I bid my father to go out and we’d buy an external drive, a Buffalo Brand 500 GB for $109, but since I knew of Western Digital (my hard drives at home were all WD) the man there was able to tempt to buy the WD 500 GB MyBook for $129 because he said he didn’t trust the Buffalos. Little did I know, the Western Digital 500 GB is considered one of the worst External Hard Drives. I had it for a few days and it started randomly deleting files, which would turn up a week later in the same folder, but others would disappear. I found one solution to the problem was to plug the adapter directly in the wall since it takes so much power. However, though that lasted for a few weeks, stuff once again started to disappear. And not more than two months after I had gotten it, most of my files were corrupted. So I started googling some answers.

I first started with data recovery tools since I needed to get the data back that had been lost on my drive (a load of music and other programs). After coming across GetDataBack for FAT (which I got for free *cough*), I backed up my whole drive to my G: Drive. It turns out the supposed 128 GB of used space was mostly just corrupt files. Then I turned my search to other tools to see just how bad the 500 GB MyBook is. I eventually came across this site which tells how you can break apart the case of a MyBook and recover the hard drive in there that can then be easily plugged into a SATA capable computer.

However, if you only have had the drive for a few months, you can easily return it to Western Digital who will send you a replacement one. I recently did this and am awaiting the return of the new drive. The process is called getting an RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) and you can start the process here.

My point is don’t buy a Western Digital 500 GB MyBook even if your local computer store salesman tells you too because it most likely will break. Many users complain about it also never starting up again though I never had that problem.

Categories: Technology Tags: 500, Byte, Digital, Drive, GB, Giga, Hard, hard drive, MyBook, Western

Ip Filtering with Utorrent

December 9th, 2007 Robert Kania 3 comments

Download IPFilter

I am not writing this post to encourage copyright infringement, you risk your own safety when you download illegal content, but I am writing this because there are legal things that can be downloaded through the Bitorrent method and if you are against the Patriot Act, or just like protecting your privacy then here is an overview of what I consider the best Bittorent Client out there.

Weighing in at a meager 263 KB is the mighty uTorrent, able to be customized to a great amount of personalization. It not only is lightweight but packs as much punch as its biggest rival Azureus. Utorrent allows you to sort torrents by % Completed, Date Completed, Seeder/Leecher ratio, and a whole variety of others. It includes a user friendly system that is not bloated with ads or unnecessary junk like Azureus and shows you a simple list of all your current torrents.

However to get the most out of uTorrent, you need to enable some hidden features of the software.

Utorrent Download: http://utorrent.com

IP Filtering

One of the best features to protect your privacy in uTorrent is to enable IP Filtering. It blocks out all the bad IP addresses that could compromise your privacy.

To enable this feature first open uTorrent and press CTRL + P to open the uTorrent Preferences and then go to the Advanced menu and find the setting labeled ipfilter.enable and make sure its value is set to “true”. If not double click on the value and it should change to true. A picture is below.

Once you have done that it is time to get the .dat file that includes the IP addresses. To do so go to http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TZ1D5ZI2 and download to a directory where you know where to find it. The old file I used to get was a tarball and needed Winrar to extract, however this version is a ZIP. Once you have the ZIP extract it to a place you know where it is. You should now have a file named ipfilter.dat . Now comes the final step. If you are running Windows XP (which is what I use so if you don’t you will have to check documentation, go to Start -> Run.. and type “C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR NAME\Application Data\uTorrent” replace “YOUR NAME” with your username on your computer which should be easily found at the very top of your Start Menu when you open it. Now copy the ipfilter.dat into this folder and restart uTorrent. When you look in your logger on uTorrent, you should be presented with “Loaded ipfilter.dat (# entries).” If not you did something wrong so repeat the process.

Other Preferences

If you wish extra protection go back to Preferences and set your settings to the following:

Bittorrent:

Queueing:

The rest of the settings are pretty much configurable based on your system and connection. Fiddle around with them to see what works best for you. Happy LEGAL Downloading!