Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDH1U10000N
by Western Digital
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDH1U10000N
Customer Review: More than worth the $90!
Summary: 5 Stars
Backed up the 500 GB HD of mine and still got 450 GB left over, great buy!Customer Review: Poor Reliability
Summary: 2 Stars
I've had two of these units. The first one failed after 13 months (one month after the warranty expired). Although I should have known better; I purchased a replacement. Much to my chagrin it failed after only two months.
Prior to each drives failure it appears that the drive's cache stopped working properly. You can copy single files, but multiple file copies or even single file moves fail and lock up the drive.
Customer Review: My Firrst Backup Hard Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
A friend recommended this hard drive since I have no idea what to buy. I am very happy with this purchase. The installation took not time at all. Backing up file is as simple as copy to a USB drive. I had this item for last then two months. I can,t speak for its reliability. Since Western Digital offers a one-year warranty, I believe a four star for reliability is fair. Customer Review: It just works - and well.
Summary: 4 Stars
Like many others, I have a fairly large library of music in my iTunes folder...I was pushing nearly 200 GB between all the music and Podcasts and I wanted a way to move my iTunes library from my smaller (250 GB) internal hard drive. I have my library backed up on two separate USB portable Western Digital hard drives for safety. Obviously I NEVER want to have to rip all those CDs again, which took several months doing a few a day. But I wanted something larger to use not only for music but for movies, and all the other data files you accumulate over time, and having a whole TB of storage seemed to fit the bill perfectly. I've always had decent luck with Western Digital hard drives (even the ones that died were replaced under warranty quickly and easily without too much hassle), so I chose the Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop Hard Drive.
Like most people, the first thing I did was reformat the drive to the NTFS file format because that way you can directly address files larger than 4 GB - absolutely necessary for movies and the older FAT32 file format that the drive comes formatted as doesn't do that. The formatting wasn't hard to do and took only a few minutes. After that the hard drive was ready to use. I like the fact that it powers up and down with my PC, so once it is installed I never really have to think about it. It is just there like having an internal drive, but one that will be easy to move around and connect to another PC when the need arises.
Future drives will have better connectivity for faster transfers using eSATA and USB 3.0 interfaces, but I needed something now and didn't want to wait. I would recommend this drive highly. If you *move* your iTunes library to this external drive (as opposed to backing it up to this drive) always remember to let the drive get up to speed and be recognized before firing up iTunes, so that iTunes will find your library and not want to create a blank one on your internal drive.
As an aside, if you buy this drive you will have a huge space for all your music, so go ahead and rip them in higher quality (256 Kbps mp3 or m4a files )for better sound. Right now, you might be listening to your music on a iPOD compatible boom-box, but down the road, you will have a much better stereo with better fidelity sound quality. In other words change the default ripping quality in iTunes to be "custom" and choose 256 Kbps. You'll be glad you did. There's no use going through all the time to rip them in mid-fi 128 Kbps quality.
All in all, a good solid product. I just wish it weren't made in China. With unemployment pushing nearly 10% as I write this, there have to be some unemployed Americans who would love to make these drives and who would not ask for an unreasonable salary to do so.
Customer Review: As Advertised
Summary: 5 Stars
Everything is as advertised. Plug it in and it works. No hassle. Case is a little larger than some. For me this is a plus because I can set it upright without a stand. This drive is rock solid stable sitting upright. Most bases rarely work well and are usually at least 3X the width of the drive. I always seem to misplace the base as I move the drive from one place to another and then I am stuck using the drive in the horizontal format. Never a concern with this drive. In the uprighr format, it takes up very little desk space. Actually, less space than other "slimmer" drives I own when used with their required base. Makes no noise at all. Nothing complicated about this device. It just does it's job as advertised by the manufacturer and Amazon. I have used numerous external hard drives, including firewire devices, and this one is faster than any drive I have ever used. Will definetly purchase same or similar product from WD if I ever need another external hard drive.