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Just picked up this WD My Book 640 GB drive for use with Time Machine from Best Buy Canada, before I go all Reuserist in 2009. This is sorta my final call to buy new crap before my experiment kicks in. So a 640GB external for $109.99 is a pretty good deal[1].
This new drive does serve a vital purpose; acting as my Time Machine backup, replacing the 250GB drive that was starting to do the click of death, and the old drive was technically too small to actually back up the primary drive in my new iMac.. So all things considered I don't feel too bad about the purchase of this new awesome fast external. It also looks like a book. Pretty.
I ran into some challenges. If you just plug it in to your Mac, it's formatted as an MS-DOS filesystem. That's fine for compatibility because everything in the world can read that, but I'm trying to use it for exclusive Mac Time Machine backups. Opening up Disk Utility, I couldn't manage to remove the partition on the drive, which came up as the device "596.2 GB WD 6400AAV External Media", with the partition "My Book". After doing some digging I found the answer (macosxhints, always, awesome)..
Warning before you start: This procedure will wipe all the included files on this drive. Personally I had no use for them, but you may want to save them.
To clarify this URL, here's the visual;
Image 1:, rather than select the partition on the device, select the device. This will give you the "Partition" tab, between "Erase" and "RAID". Pick Volume Scheme: 1 Partition. Name your partition, pick "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" if you are going to use it for Time Machine as I am, and then select "Options..."
Image 2: Inside options, pick "Apple Partition Map". By default it will have "Master Boot Record" selected, which is where Disk Utility runs into trouble.
Click ok inside Options, and then Apply, and vavoom, you're off. If you want to feel safe about the change you can always remove the partition again and re-create it. From there you just have to configure your Time Machine.
This drive is also advertised as 30% more energy efficient than standard systems. I can guarantee that's the case for the drive that it's replacing.
Points of Interest
Footnotes
[1] Oh, yes Internet, I know... if I scoured the dregs of online computer stores I'm sure I could find some better door-smasher deal. I'm not going to weep tears over $15 worth of savings that would cost me a virtual $30 of hassle (and shipping perhaps). /snark_mode OFF :)
[...] After trying several standard tricks to get my Finder back, I finally rebooted. Upon rebooting, Timebook, my Time Machine drive, wasn’t mounting. [...]
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