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: Easy to use, but might not last too long
Summary: 3 Stars
I have had 4 of these Western Digital 500 GB USB 2.0 drives(and one also had the eSATA option). I also have 3 of their 1 TB USB drives, and I've used 3 of their older 80 GB USB drives too. As you can see, I've been pretty much a fan of this brand, but see below for some cautions. I've found these to be very easy to use. My experience has been that set up is 100% plug and play with Windows (XP).
One issue, be SURE if you are using this with a Windows based PC to reformat the drive to NTFS. A FAT32 drive of this size in these days is just asking for problems (and I've seen problems on systems that were not re-formated to NTFS, such as issues with long file names, and files that are very large, ex: video files!). You need to reformat the drive BEFORE putting any of your data on it. You can use the quick-format option under Windows Explorer - and it will do this pretty quickly (minutes, not hours).
The second issue is that these have not lasted very long for me. I don't know if the actual drive fails or if the enclosure fails, but I've had 3 of them go bad over a 3 or 4 year period of time. Twice this happened while it was still under warranty and Western Digital's RMA process worked fine for me; they sent a new or refurb'ed one to me, and I send them theirs back (no charge to me). This failure rate is odd to me, as I don't move these around - they are sitting on a desk top and never move (it's not like I bang them around in a back pack).
Bottom line, as one of the other reviews also said - use this as a backup drive, not as your ONLY primary drive!!
In my case, I have my primary data (and pictures and video's etc) on some internal and on some external drives. I then have a separate 1 TB external USB drive that I use each night to back my primaries up to. And then once a month, or more frequently if I'm adding lots of files, I back that 1 TB external drive up to a second 1 TB external drive that I keep in a fire-box. This way, if the primary or backup gets fried, I still have the fire-box copy of all my stuff. I use a product called, SyncBackSE, to handle the actual backup processes (it finds the changes and just copies those to the target). It works pretty well for me.
Customer Review: Had it for 2 years now, travelled the world with it and dropped it many times...still going strong
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not my first WD external drive and it won't be my last. I have had several and they all perform perfectly. This particular drive traveled the world with me; well over 130K sky miles internationally and I have not had any issues with it. It is almost to capacity and no boot issues ever. I have full on dropped it on several occasions, such that I had to re-seat the cover and there is now a tiny bit of the plastic cover rattling around inside and still no issues. It boots up every day without ever giving me any issues; formatted FAT32 and I have never had to reformat and I have never lost data. I, of course, have redundant backups of my data but for durability and ease of use with most systems this a solid drive.
Bit of tick noise and then a short high pitched whirl noise when the disk is first being read. It's normal, as other brands also do this, and doesn't continue once it's moving there is just a hum noise. I won't lie it's not whisper quiet but it's never given me any issues. Although, I am sure there are quieter drives out there.
Due to size and nature of the drive it needs an external power source. If you're looking for one that plugs and plays on 2.0 USB only try the WD Passport drives they need no external power supply and work great.
Note: I have had issues with aftermarket USB cables that are "portable." By portable I mean the ones that are under tension and you pull on both ends and it coils itself around a spring mechanism making it all neat and tidy. For some reason my WD drives do not like to work with them, even though these are properly rated. The drives are recognized by Vista or XP but when you try to access the data Windows asks you to reformat the drives. I would try a non-coil cable first before taking such drastic steps.
I am so impressed with WD that I purchased their VelociRaptor 10K RPM drives for my tower. They run in RAID 0 and I have never had problems with them either. I just purchased the WD 1TB Essential, hopefully that will prove just as reliable...it does seem a bit quieter.
Customer Review: Works very well with Dish Network DVR
Summary: 4 Stars
My only planned usage of this external hard disk drive (HDD) is attached to my Dish Network ViP622 DVR. The set up was very easy, following directions to connect the drive with the supplied cables to power and to the Dish DVR USB connection. I kept thinking that the cable needed to be able to push farther into the back of the DVR, but trying it anyway, it has been working fine.
After hooking the HDD up to the DVR, I navigated to the DVR menu to Manage USB Device and it displayed an error dialog box with the Dish phone number I needed to call to activate this service ($39.99 fee). I called the number and went through a series of recorded message menus to activate the service, never talked to a real person. I did have a phone line hooked into my DVR, and within a minute or two of hanging up, I was able to continue on and let the DVR format the drive.
A big advantage to me was the design of the My Book HDD's, they automatically stop the HDD after a period of time unused. When you go to use the drive, there may be a delay for the drive to start up, but this is acceptable to me knowing that in the long run this should make the drive last longer for my type of usage. I do not have to worry about separately turning on and off the HDD.
I read reviews of older models of My Book, some people had issues that sounded to be related to overheating, so I avoided doing too much data transfer at one time. I had hundreds of Gb's to transfer in programs on my DVR, but did the transfer in smaller chunks. It takes a long time to transfer a large amount of data, and you can not use what is on the HDD while the transfer is happening, so I would suggest this method.
The HDD has been working well for my intended purpose. The DISH DVR does a reasonable job of using the USB Device feature. It is a separate area of the menu system to get to the USB device recorded programs, which is a small pain, but worth the effort. If you find yourself wanting more room to record addtional DVR programs, this is a very good option to consider.
Customer Review: Beware - My Book drives fail if left on 24/7
Summary: 1 Stars
I'm an experienced computer technician with 20+ years of on the job experience. I am a firm supporter of Western Digital internal drives, and have always used them. When the My Book drives were released several years ago, I was enthusiastic that a low-cost external drive solution was available from my preferred hard drive vendor.
After years of using these drives in both a professional and personal capacity, and after having the last of my 5 personal My Book drives die today, I felt compelled to write a review warning people away from them.
In my workplace we had been using My Book drives exclusively for the last 4 years. Over that four year period, more than 50% of the drives we deployed for use in backup solutions died. We would always RMA the drives (they would usually fail within a year), but the replacements would also fail eventually (with a recurring fail rate of about 50%).
All 5 of the drives I have purchased for personal use have failed. The last drive to die was the one that died today. It's one month out of warranty (1 year). While WD might very well replace it (they have excellent customer support), I am throwing it away and giving up on the My Book line for good.
While I will continue using WD internal drives (they perform flawlessly over many years), I must strongly advise people to NOT use the external My Book drives, especially when using them in a 24/7, frequent write capacity (like backing up or transferring large amounts of data). There must be some inherent flaw in their design. Strangely enough, I have had great success with the Western Digital Passport line of drives. Those I can recommend highly. I have 3 of them, all over 2 years old and subject to frequent use, and all are performing flawlessly. I have also deployed many of these drives in a professional capacity and have yet to have a failure. The fact that the Passport drives are self-powered is a great added bonus. You have been warned!
Customer Review: Do not buy this - you may lose data
Summary: 1 Stars
Don't buy this if you think your power will ever go out, or you might pull the plug.
My hard drive was getting full. I had lots of family photos and music files and various other stuff. So i bought the Western Digital 500GB My Book and 'moved' 62G of files onto it. A week later I go to find something and there are no, zero nada files on it. I do notice that the drive letter shows that there is only 420GB free. First help person says, did you ever unplug it. Sure I say, afterall it's a hard drive like the one in your PC you should be able to turn off power. He says oh your data is gone then!!!!
I tell him that there must be something on there taking up that space but he doesn't understand me so i ask him to escalate (we're dealing with India now). Finally after several hours and requests to escalate since I know there is data on there, I get a very smart person who understands right away what i am saying regarding only 420GB free, must be data on the drive. He has me run some sort of scan and it finds all my files!!!! Whoohoo right?
Wrong, it just finds the data, and gives them new filenames like 000001.chk, 000002.chk, 000003.cha and so on for 30,000 files or so. The help desk guy then sympathises and recommends some software, you can purchase, that will go through all the files and put the correct extensions on them.
So hour and days later i have 3,000 .txt files with no names, and 2,000 .jpg files and 5,000 .ppt .... and so on. Now i get to open each one and name it appropriately.
Do you want to go through this experience? If you have no fear that your power will ever go out, or you'll accidently pull the plug then go ahead, buy it.
I do own a Maxtor exernal for my other PC, 2 years now, multiple power downs and no data loss.