Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased one of these units last December for use as expansion space to hold music and photographs. It failed 5 days ago, unable to "be seen" by either my Mac or Windows computer; it worked one day, failed the next without being touched or moved; in other words, no physical damage to it by me. I had about 40 Gigs of data on this 500 Gig drive. Suspecting either the power supply or USB-to-PATA interface card, I contacted Western Digital(WD) to see what I had to do to recover my data and have the defective unit repaired or replaced. I suspected that the drive itself was probably OK because of the nature of the failure to be seen at the interface. They told me that IF I tried to open the unit and recover the data from the drive, that that action would "void my warranty". Only if I paid one of their "preferred partners" [a minor fortune] to open the unit and recover my data to DVDs would they honor the warranty on their obviously defective product. If I had them send me a replacement unit, and subsequently returned the original unit in a "tampered condition" [i.e. I opened it to get at the hard drive to recover my data] they would then charge the retail price [$169, more than the current Amazon price for a NEW one] to my credit card. No person in their right mind would ever use this "warranty", so, in effect YOU HAVE NO WARRANTY for Western Digital products, unless you are willing to throw away your data or pay more than the price of a new drive to recover the data which THEY should have recovered for you in a repair department and sent back to you installed on a new drive. They obviously would rather just toss you another empty made-in-Thailand drive, or intimidate you out of using the warranty you paid for, than operate a proper repair service at US labor costs, to help you recover your data. So, AVOID THIS PRODUCT LIKE THE PLAGUE. Buy one of the many Amazon "external hard drive enclosures" and a separate hard drive from Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, or other manufacturers who support their products; then, if the enclosure fails, you can open it up without "voiding the warranty" and recover your data if the drive itself is OK. I went ahead and opened this defective unit, removed the hard drive and installed it on a desktop computer as a SLAVE drive, and am now copying the data to the main drive on that computer; nothing was wrong with the drive, only with their controller, as I suspected. I will buy an empty external enclosure from Amazon, and reuse this drive until it fails. I will also never buy another Western Digital product, because their warranty policy and customer service attitude STINKS. You can decide if you want to buy from this company at your own risk.