Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000
by Western Digital
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000
Customer Review: Manufacture Defects Leading ToTerrorists' Attacks and Finally Law Suits
Summary: 1 Stars
This letter of complaint is to identify both the technical and administrative issues at Western Digital's customer service.
A Western Digital (WD) 500GB MyBook External Hard Drive, serial # WCAPW 4211705, was purchased in December 2007 and was opened in January. Between January and April 2008, almost 200GB of personal and work confidential information were stored in this hard drive. In the end of March 2008, the hard drive became dysfunctional; every time when the power line is plugged into the hard drive, there will be an irregular buzzing noise from inside the protective case. Since then the G drive (designated for Western Digital 500GB MyBook) stopped popping out on any computer screen. There was no prior symptom of how and why this hard drive would become dysfunctional.
The WD customer service was contacted on May 1, 2008. The customer service representative, named Akshy, stated that the only two options for fixing the problem are (1) contact outside data recovery service companies that are contracted with WD and (2) receive a "clean" replacement, meaning nothing pre-stored inside the hard drive, from WD. However, it was found out that, although these data recovery service companies are associated with WD, the service still costs from $900 to $1,500, depending on the size of data being recovered.
It is unfair for customers who are innocent and do not know what goes wrong with their brand-new WD hard drives to pay for repairing the manufacture defects. A replacement can be easily done with simple shipping and receiving methods, but data recovery, again due to manufacture defects, costs plenty of customers' money as well as time.
Now, a strong recommendation is given to WD as the following: This product should be labeled "Warning: NOT for Confidential Information Storage".
If customers choose the first option given by the WD customer service representative, there is no way customers can ensure that their confidential information that was stored in the defected hard drive was not released to the public or, in worst case, terrorists and be used as part of the terrorists' attacks.
Unless WD can 100% guarantee its hard drives' quality, customers should not take their risks of having their private and/or work confidential information landing in others' hands. If this worst case does occur, WD can possibly face law suits and be liable for not only customers' monetary losses but also WD's reputation.
For WD's best interest, I strongly recommend WD to cover my entire cost of data recovery from the 500GB MyBook External Hard Drive due to manufacture defect(s).
Customer Review: Cheap storage and easy to use!
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this drive a week ago for $110 and think it's a great value. At $0.22/gig, it's relatively cheap storage, although still nowhere in the ballpark of home-burned DVDs, where a 4.7 gig disc costs approximately $0.25 per piece (or about $0.05/gig). Of course, the home-burned DVDs are not reliable for long-term storage and aren't always practical for archieving media that you want instant access to. I'm backing up everything on both formats (DVD and my new WD external HDD). Truly critical media (wedding photos, video of baby's first steps, etc.) are backed up on duplicate DVD's and/or my computer's main internal hard drive. Neither format (DVD or HDD) is going to last forever, but hopefully my redundancy will prevent me from loosing any media.
As for the drive itself, I'm very happy with its performance. It runs quietly, other than the sweet creaky/frog/cricket sound of any HDD. It was 100% plug-and-play on my Windows XP (SP2) home system. It took me maybe 45 seconds from the time I plugged it in until I was writing data. I chose not to install the optional Google software yet. Until I upgrade around the holidays, my system is a dinosaur and I don't want to give up any computing power for background indexing.
Speed would probably be my only criticism at this point. If you're reading or writing a lot of data at once, it can drag using USB 2.0. I haven't clocked it with any precision, but I'd estimate a write speed of about 30-50 gig/hour - with me using other applications while it writes in the background. I looked into other drives with firewire, eSATA, etc., but for my purposes, price was more important than speed. I'm not dumping huge quantities of data at once, and once it's on there, it's for archieving purposes, so I don't need to be accessing it regularly. When it fills up, I'll buy another.
Those who gave this HDD bad marks either had unrealistic expectations (if you want more than USB 2.0 speed, be prepared to pay 50-100% more) or had this drive fail on them. Eventually, if my drive fails (I should say when, as no HDD lasts forever), I'll be unhappy too, but I haven't owned this drive long enough to comment on its long-term reliability relative to other HDD's out there.
It's not "blazing fast" and it won't last forever (nothing will, even magnetic tape, which I consider the best long-term storage media, but who wants to deal with tape?!). But if you're looking for a cheap and extremely easy backup solution, I would highly recommend this drive!
Joe Sirbak
Customer Review: Strange ticking noises, Powering off when in use, Drive letter disappears....STAY AWAY FROM WD EXTERNAL DRIVES!!!
Summary: 2 Stars
This review is long but you can scroll to the bottom of it for the main point:-)
I have one of these drives, my model# is WD5000C032-002 it looks exactly like the one in the picture. It has two ports on the back, one for a USB plug and one for the plug in DC power adapter that came with it. I purchased it from Target at a surprisingly low price (this is how WD catches you). Previously I had 2 western digital internal EIDE drives(The Caviar WD400 - only 40 Gigabytes though ) they had outstanding performance, my wife had dropped one on the floor and it survived. Then I bought a WD 320 Gigabyte internal EIDE drive from Circuit City - no problems to this day. The reliability and reputation of this company prompted me to choose their products every time and without disappointment until....
One day I bought the drive we are talking about here, the "My Book Essential Edition 500GB". It seemed to work okay at first then after a month the following things seemed to happened in this order:
-The drive started taking longer to appear in windows when plugged in.
-The drive kept powering down constantly (light still on), even while in use which caused an MP3 or video playing to get stuck while it powers up again.
-The drive started to make strange ticking noises at random times during the day
-The drive sometimes had to be unplugged from AC power then plugged back in because it refused to power up when connected to the computer.
-The drive (letter) would all of a sudden disappear from windows, then reappear with no drive size or name under "my computer" and when you click on it you get ["The drive in E:\ is not formatted would you like to format it now?"]
I have read that people have removed the drive from its enclosure and put it inside a PC which fixed the problem. Some have even purchased their own enclosures(usb drive cases) and have had success. I haven't had a chance to try this yet. It's obvious that the Western Digital USB and SATA drive 'enclosures' are the problem. I am starting to ponder that with all the failing external drives due to bad drive cases and the constant low prices...is Western Digital about to go out of business just like Mad Dog Multimedia did? It's some thing to consider.
I would still stay away from WD external drives unless you plan on getting a new enclosure for each one you buy. Only this idea would actually offset your savings on the sale price.
Customer Review: WD My Book 500GB USB 2.0 - a GREAT BUY!
Summary: 5 Stars
I own five WD External drives and have not had any issues with any of them (the oldest is over 5 years old, is connected 24x7x365, and it's still working fine). My most recent two purchases have been a:
"Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - 7200rpm"
and a
"Western Digital My Book 500GB Premium ES Edition Hard Drive - 7200rpm USB 2.0 & eSATA Dual Interface External Hard Drive"
The "WD My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 Ext HD" - just has a UDB 2.0 connector (no eSATA or Firewire) but it works great and if you shop the sales, the price for 500 GB can be close to $100-140 (summer 2007).
The "WD My Book 500GB Premium ES Edition HD" has both a USB 2.0 & eSATA connector on the back (use either one). Note, not many PCs today (2007) have an eSATA port on them. ESATA is faster than USB 2.0, but if you don't have a connector for that externally on your PC, then don't pay extra for it. (You can get after market external eSATA ports for a PC but there are different kinds, and depending on your PC, you need to get the 'right kind' for your PC, assuming you even have room in your PC to add one).
Both of these drives came with easy to install instructions - just plug in the power, and then connect them to your PC, and away you go. Both came with USB 2.0 cables. The Premium ES Edition with eSATA did 'NOT' come with an eSATA cable. Both came with their own power cords - nice long ones too.
Neither of these two can be connected directly to a network, but if your PCs are part of a home network, or small business type network, as mine are, then I just plug them into one of the main PCs and I put a "share" on the drive so that any PC on my network can access it.
If you have important information on your PC, back it up! And if you are like me, previously my backups were stored right next to my PC (not good!) So, now, I use one of these 500 GB drives as the primary backup drive for my PCs, and I keep that right next to one of my PCs. But then weekly, I use the other 500 GB drive to backup the backup drive - and then I keep that one in a fireproof / waterproof safe. You can get these for $30-100, depending on their size, at office stores or online. I like the Sentry line of products.
Customer Review: *** IMPORTANT TIP FOR OWNERS ***
Summary: 4 Stars
Enough people have written adequate reviews here, so I won't review.
I will, however, warn everyone that this drive consumes a relatively massive amount of electricity! Look at the power supply, the little "brick" you plug into the wall. It draws 2.0 amps! Many if not most homes are on 15 amp service.
I found out the hard way, and I bet most people having problems here had them due to this issue. (The rest moved or bumped the drive while it was on -- don't do that!!) Just try a different power outlet for the hard drive. I've been a consultant for nearly 20 years and I never thought to try a different outlet for a dinky little external drive.
It wouldn't even recognize the drive (but it did power on and Windows did pop up a window about the device not being recognized). I moved it to another outlet as advised by tech support and it worked immediately.
It would not surprise me if a lot of the data loss people experienced was due to sporadically inadequate electrical amperage. This is a design flaw, but it is easily remedied, so I rate the product 4 stars. By design flaw, I mean that I don't know why this drive insists on drawing this much power. I have a similar Seagate external drive that draws 1.5 amps. Maybe the drive inside has 5 platters or something like that, which requires more power than less platters?
It doesn't really have a flaw other than this.
(The fact that it is preformatted in FAT32 is for compatibility with Win98 and Macintosh computers, both of which cannot handle NTFS natively. Many Win98 users cannot really format, even in FAT32, such a large drive. There even is a Western Digital utility to restore the gigantic 500GB single partition because XP and beyond have 32GB as a Microsoft-set limit for FAT32 partitions. Guess what? You can't use the utility on anything but XP and beyond! There literally is no way that I know of to format the drive as 500GB, single partition, FAT32, in Win98. Yet another reason why the drive ships formatted this way.) But if you use XP/Vista, it is EASY for you to reformat it as NTFS. I bought this drive BECAUSE it was preformatted with FAT32, in fact.)