Western Digital My Book Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
by Western Digital
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Our Price: $143.49 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $69.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My Book Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Perfect For My Needs
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the first reviews implies that this model is USB only....I don't know what that is about, but I purchased a Western Digital My Book Essential 2.0, and it uses a USB cord & a power cord. It is not a portable drive-you are not supposed to be taking it all kinds of places. It is meant to stay on your desk, not be a world traveller. The portable drives are the ones that only use a USB connection, & no power cord.
Anyhow, this drive has worked out perfectly for me. It is my first external hard drive purchase. I knew nothing about them before, but I went online, did some research & settled on this particular model. Mine is 750 gig capacity, which translates to 699 gigs upon hooking it up (this is normal, but too lengthy to explain here). I am running it on a Dell computer, Windows XP.
There are specific issues I want to address. First, the noise/fan/heat issue. So far, I have not heard a single noise coming from the drive. It is completely noise-less. There are complaints in the comments section about people complaining about noise, so the manufacturers reduce the fan capacity, etc. to keep the things quiet, but thus setting the drives up for failure. Well, I know nothing about this issue,& have no idea what kind of fans are in the My Book- but I can report what my experience has been. Like I said, I hear nothing coming from the drive. But also, the drive is completely cool to the touch. I don't feel any heat, anywhere. I have it sitting upright in an open space. So, I am very hopeful that whatever the issues are, Western Digital has figured them out. Having said that, I agree that it was always ridiculous to complain about noise in the first place-at least insomuch that noise reduction would reduce the life of the drive. But obviously there are a lot of immature brats out there who want every little last thing perfect, or they complain loudly. Maybe WD has figured out a way to satiate the frothing dogs without reducing quality. Hopefully.
Another issue I read about is speed of the drive. I have the My Book hooked up to USB-& I'm not even sure if it is 2.0, as I just kind of plugged it into the first one I saw, & I only have one USB 2.0 connection. Anyhow, so far the drive is very fast. I am actually impressed that it is so fast, considering this was also supposed to be an "issue." Well, it's definetely not an issue for me. My external drive is actually a lot faster than my internal one! And this is surprising, since all I read about was how internal drives are much faster, blah, blah, blah. Well not so here. I don't know know if they get slower as time goes on, & you add more stuff. So far I have transferred my entire music collection over to the My Book, plus some videos. I have a serious music collection.
I think the My Book is just about perfect. I use mine everyday as a second hard drive, because I ran out of space on my internal drive. It is working out beautifully for this purpose. I couldn't ask for more. It was a cinch to set up. They could have sent a manuel however, just to completely educate people about the drives, but it is not essential.
Lastly, I want to talk about backups. I read comments about purchasing a second one to backup the first, etc. Not too many people seem to be aware of this, but online backup is by far the most convenient, easiest, wonderful way to take care of all your back up need. Afterall, if there is a natural disaster or theft of your drives occurs, it won't matter what setup you have. It will all be gone. Look up Carbonite. It is a company that backs up all your stuff online. So whatever happens in the "real world," your stuff is safe online. It is perfect. Check it out. Right now, they are working on a plan to include external drives. So pretty soon, all of your backup needs can be taken care of, painlessly.
Customer Review: I don't understand the bad reviews
Summary: 5 Stars
I have one of these external hard drives, I received it as a gift, and I've been using it for almost two years. I connect via a USB mini cable, I run Windows XP OS.
I haven't had any problems whatsoever with this hard drive. It's been working since I first plugged it in. Take it out of the box, plug in the power and connect it to the PC. I've stored large files on it even in the FAT mode. I keep ebooks, videos, movies, music and pics on it, and I use it every single day.
I have no problem with the speed of downloads and transfers, and frankly I can't understand anyone who does. The only possible conclusion I can come to, is that some people are so used to instant gratification that any delay is intolerable. *Shrug*
I've had no problems with the computer acknowledging the drive, it operates quietly. But then again I have mine set up on a wire rack that doesn't impede airflow around the unit. There are airflow vents even on the bottom of the casing. I can touch it right now and it's cool to the touch. If you've got one set up on a solid surface you're blocking 1/3 of the cooling vents. I suggest investing in a small wire rack. They're cheap. It may not be sexy, but your external hard drive will thank you for it. And if you care more about how it looks than your data. Well what else is there to say?
Maybe all these people with horror stories just got bad units. It happens. There are lemons in any kind of manufacturing. But I can assure you that I will be buying another one of these units to back up the one I have just in case. If you're that concerned about your data, back up your stuff on DVDs or CDs as well, and keep them in a safe location.
There are no guarantees in life and that includes technology, but I've been very pleased with this hard drive. As much as I use it, you would think that if it was going to fail it would have failed already. But everything we buy does age and wear out, so before the next year is up I will be buying a new My Book to replace this one before the one I'm using wears out.
Having said that, I'll say this. Recently I discovered, to my shock, that good shills, and bad shills, haunt review sites and post good things and bad things about products. This disgusts me. The whole point of reviews is to get information from other people about the product.
I've seen competitors write crappy reviews and the seller shilling with good reviews. The only reviews I trust are my own because I don't spend enough time doing reviews to know who is who, I'm sure a great majority of other people don't either.
Amazon needs to make people reviewing these products sign an agreement that they don't work for the selling company or a competitor and prosecute those who violate the agreement.
I've gotten to the point where I don't trust the reviews here on Amazon. I just find someone I know that has one and I ask them about it. It's too bad corporate America can't produce products good enough to stand behind and feel like they have to put their employees online to tout their products.
If the flipping product is good, you don't have to shill it. And I'll die a thousand deaths before I buy any product I find being sold in that manner. And I won't buy anything from a competitor that uses dirty underhanded tactics to undermine someone else's products.
After all if a company engages in that kind of behavior, how are they going to treat their customers?
Customer Review: Avoid this product, their warranty is useless
Summary: 1 Stars
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.
Customer Review: Define your objectives
Summary: 4 Stars
The Mybook essential 500GB HD is an economical choice for PC users who have a need for extra storage space or external back-up capability but do not require a range of connectivity options as it only accommodates USB.
V2.0 has some changes in features from 1.0 and I am not convinced all of the variations are beneficial. First and foremost, V1.0 had a forwarded located on/off button that I found particularly useful with consideration to some quirky performance of the drive from time to time, where it tended to impede boot functions or seems to initiate untimely back-ups of revised files. This newer version lacks a physical power switch but has a blue-hued activity indicator lamp and is designed to power down after 10 minutes of inactivity, or upon recognition of a system shutdown. I have seen little evidence the inactivity power down facility is accurate.
While I have never personally encountered heat or overload issues with my V1.0 drive - I've used it for back-up only for 18 months - the new unit has a slightly smaller footprint ( approximately 4" x 6" x 2") but similarly configured for ventilation and heat dissipation with top, back and bottom air outflow slots. This version also features a mini USB cable that limits the distance the drive can be situated from the CPU and if you have a vertically oriented workspace as I do that may represent some challenges. Due to the USB configuration and potential heat related read/write issues, I do not believe this drive to be an efficient or viable alternative for productivity applications or as an external streaming server.
This drive is essentially plug and play. Upon installation a prompt is initiated to install a trial version of some back-up software, a diagnostic toolkit, a google bundle and another option I no longer remember and cannot get back to since I opted not to install and immediately reformatted from the pre-loaded FAT32 to NTFS with a single partition of 465GB, a step that is preferable for windows users but one you may want to defer until you have registered the device via that same install module as registration thereafter becomes a headache since the device serial number is printed on the label in a font only decipherable with a 10x magnifying glass.
My intent for the drive as well as the predecessor I own is as a dedicated resource for back-ups of individual desktops. For facilitation of services across a home network, a NAS unit such the Netgear RND2150 ReadyNAS Duo 500 GB Desktop Network Attached Storage with RAID capability seems to be a safer option.
Customer Review: It's outlasted two Laptops now
Summary: 5 Stars
I kid you not, I've had mine since Spring 2006.
I've been searching Amazon.com for a smaller External HD (because the external power source, while necessary is inconvenient for Laptop Users XD) and was shocked the majority of reviews left for Western Digital were negative.
Let me tell you, I don't do anything special with my Hard Drive: I've dropped it twice and the room I keep it in can get dusty at times. Before I got the Hard Drive in my current Laptop replaced last Fall, It was always connected to the computer (because I installed and ran programs of the External Drive). Prettymuch it was always on when my computer was and unplugged/disconnected when it wasn't being used.
No Power Surges, no Transfer Problems, nothing.
...Considering my current situation I guess that makes me a pretty lucky guy!
I've got about 75GB left on it now and like everyone else who said so, the included software is useless. Just Copy + Paste.
The included software has two fatal flaws I found while testing it: As long as the encrypted files are transferred to another WD Hard Drive, it can be decrypted and accessed. The "best" part is, no real skill is needed. The other, more obvious flaw with it is it "binds" to your computer. If, say you use multiple computers or your OS changes (Upgrade, etc.) it won't decrpyt the files.
Just do yourself a favor and reformat the drive as soon as you get it. It's my understanding MAC users have to do this anyway but do it if you use the Windows Family. You want to have FULL access to everything your Hard Drive, more so if you're going to back up alot of things in one go.
To those who play World of Warcraft, you can run the game plus all the Addons you want from this. Doing the Math, the combined size of The Base Game and the Three Expansions is just under 50GB (The largest group of files are the files that give you present-day Azaroth at 12GB!) so this wouldn't be a bad investment for that purpose alone.
About half my files are for my Zune (roughly 325GB worth of Music and Video) and with my current situation, this baby has kept me from going insane. While I understand the overwhelming majority of you have had bad experiences with anything WD (and I am in no way trying to insult you), it's like cars and burritos: Their effect varies from person to person.