Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000
by Western Digital
|
List Price: Our Price: $199.99 You Save: $130.00 (39%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $69.99 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000
Customer Review: Stopped working after 16 months - lost 500gb of data
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this drive in January of last year and it stopped responding this month (May). I have had the drive for barely 16 months and it is already useless and all my data is lost unless I can find a way to get the drive to respond. When I sent WD support an email they just said that it is out of warranty and they can do nothing for me. With a failure time of 16 months and a warranty period of 1 year you do not want to spend the money that they ask for this piece of junk. If it was just a few bad sectors then at least I may have been able to recover most of my data but it just stopped working altogether. WD don't give a hoot about their customers and I think that they deliberately choose a short warranty period because their product is rubbish and it would cost them too much to support us. Instead we customers pay the price for trusting them and their slogans that there drives are designed to protect our data. Now there is a lawsuit for misrepresentation just waiting to happen.
Customer Review: Buy another model.
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased this in June of 2007. It worked very nicely for about 4 months. I had a computer problem that forced me to shut down my computer improperly. When I turned everything back on, I could not access the drive. I got a message saying the drive needed to be formatted. I had a technician access the drive and my files are still there. The master boot record is gone, however. I have to buy another drive to move them to and then format the drive and all should be fine. After I do this, I won't trust this drive again. I will only hook it up when I need to and not leave it plugged in all the time as I was doing. I have had the My Book Essential Edition 250GB for well over a year and have never had a single problem. It is on all the time (and was on when I had the computer problem that caused the 500GB drive problem with no errors to the 250GB drive). It is a very good product. I'd go with two of the 250GB My Books and stay away from the 500GB altogether.Customer Review: Dreadful Product...Completely Unreliable!
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought 2 of these in late 2006 to replace a 300GB Western Digital external drive that had crashed. I figured if I got 2 of these I would have some redundancy in case one failed. Within 2 years or so, both of these drives did indeed fail. While I did not lose any super important files because I was paranoid and had all my financial records and pictures backed up in multiple places, I was stung both times when these things crashed, as you almost always have at least a few files that have not been backed up yet when the you-know-what hits the fan. Well, I expected more than 2 years of life from these things, so I am very disappointed. One started making strange noises that provided semi-ample notice that something was about to go wrong, while the other one was ostensibly working fine and was suddenly toast one day. Suffice to say I've had enough fun with Western Digital and will be purchasing my drives from other manufacturers in the future.Customer Review: A terrific value
Summary: 5 Stars
As is typical of Western Digital HDD's, you just plug it in and it's up, running and ready to use - seriously, any idiot can do it. Really, it takes longer to unpack it and find a place to put it, that it does to start using it after plugging it in. I do have a gripe, and it's not just aimed at Western Digital: why do these HDD manufacturers continue to ship these drives formatted with FAT32? I would hazard a wild guess that probably more than 95% of people that buy these things are using an XP (or equivalent) system (and I'm sure that some upset win98se user will rebut me on this). But seriously, if you're using XP, it's almost a necessity that the drive be reformatted to the NTFS file system. Not a terribly difficult task, but you need to know how to do it; either from the Computer Management Console or a Command Prompt. But this is a minor gripe. This is a terrific drive for the price. Is 1,000GB (1TB?) just around the corner?Customer Review: Doesn't live up to WD's reputation
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased two of these in September, one for myself, and one for my mother. I have been a fan of Western Digital, and have several other drives of theirs. This series is simply not up to the quality I expect from Western Digital.
Both drives failed within a month of purchase and had to be replaced by Western Digital. Now one of the replacements is showing symptoms of failing as well. Replacing these drives might not have been so terrible if Western Digital's customer service had responded to inquiries in a timely manner (It took approximately 10 emails and a month of time before I could get them to reply) and had sent the correct power adapter with both of the replacement drives.
Based on my previous experience, I might still consider Western Digital drives, but I definitely will not be purchasing from the MyBook line ever again. They are cheaper because they are a sub-par product.