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: please Read, Warning
Summary: 1 Stars
I just want to write and let the world know what kind of company this is. I have owned 3 Western digital (WD) hard drives. All 3 have not lasted longer then 2 years, the most recent has only lasted 1 yr.. 4 months. But the kicker of this situation is the external hard drive WD make have a warranty of 1 year. but the internal Hard drives that are inside the units have a 3-5 year warranty. So I called WD because the hard drive inside the case went bad. So this is how the call went.
The phone rang, and I got contacted to someone over sea's and could barely speak english. I told him my problem and he said sorry it's out of warranty and there is nothing he could do. So i said the hard drive inside the unit has a 3 year warranty. he said well you bought the external hard drive so you only get a 1 year warranty. I was going no where with him so I asked to speak to a manager.
Mind you it's bad enough I lost all my info, but now I couldn't get a replacement. so the manager comes on and says there is nothing he can do. I said to him because I buy the complete package the WD makes I get punished. and if i went out and bought a internal hard drive and put it in a case i'd get a 3-5 year warranty? he responded back, yea. I said dont you think this is a little unfair? and he said sorry. So then trying to be slick I said ok so what if I take the Hard drive out will i get the 3-5 year warranty? he said no you'll void the warranty because they marry the case and the hard drive as 1 unit so they know the hard drive came out of it. But his way of solving the situation he said is they offer a service to recover the data, I asked how much does that cost. he said about $3k. I asked to talk to his manager and he sad it would take 48 hours for them to call me back. (still waiting)
Long story short, if you are interested in buying a western digital I recommend buying a internal hard drive and putting it in a case which are very cheap. Just search external hard drive case, and tons will pop up. by doing this you'll get a real warranty.
I hope this helps others from getting screwed. Good luck
Customer Review: Simple, Quiet, Well Constructed Drive!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I was looking for a 300GB+ External hard-drive to backup my data, photos, music and home-videos. I wanted a rugged drive as I was planning to keep the drive off-site and transport it back & forth for monthly backups.
I evaluated LaCie, Seagate and other alternatives on the market and found the My Book has comparable or better specs and was aesthetically more pleasing than most. I also liked the simplicity and the concept of the My Book. The footprint is also among the smallest in the industry for a 500GB drive.
The drive looks sleek and is not intrusive or odd on a desk. The casing is made of hard plastic. It looks and feels rugged. The drive has "morse-code" vents which, beside looking funky, help keep the drive extremely cool. Drive operation is extremely quiet. When placed vertically there are 2 rubber strips on the bottom to prevent the drive from sliding or vibrating. Multiple drives can also be stacked on their sides - rubber feet are included.
The setup is pretty simple, just plug-in the power and connect the USB cable. Windows XP recognizes and sets up the drive quickly. Look for the drive under "My Computer" - you're up and running!!
The drive comes pre-formatted as FAT32. You can reformat it to NTFS with relative ease under Win XP. There is some included Google software which you can copy to your local machine or download from Google.com. The drive switches on and shuts down with your computer. You can also turn the drive on/off via a large button which is surrounded by the green indicator.
The only thing I miss is the WD Backup software - which seems to be bundled as an incentive with the Premium My Book drive. Another feature that people might miss is the "One-touch Backup" button offered by competitors.
Overall, I'm very pleased with this drive!!
Customer Review: Awesome External Drive!
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this hard drive at Staples after a co-worker bought one (he loves it).
First Drive I purchased: Plugged it in, reformatted to NTFS and did an Error-Check which came back perfect. Soon as I started copying data over the drive deleted my data right after copying giving me "Mysong.mp3 not found." ???? The drive then started disappearing and reappearing. I went to the Disk Manager (XP Control Panel --> Admin Tools --> Computer Management) and saw that the disk was unreadable and reappearing as a 32MB drive. After a second format and having the same results - I decided to returned the drive. Staples took it without question and gave me a new one.
Second Drive: Formatted to NTFS again and started copying my data over. No data problems and the drive has 20+GB on it. The drive is going strong and acting 100% normal.
My Review: A+ external drive. Extremely quiet - I cannot hear it over my computer's CPU fans - even while transferring data. The drive is extremely light making it a plus because I'll be hauling this to work everyday. The My Book is VERY cool to the touch (unlike my other 300GB external drive I put together with an external kit). The green light in front lets you know when data is being transferred (it isn't a button).
Specs:
Has 465GB of usable space (Fat32 format).
Give Windows XP about 35 seconds to discover the drive when you first plug it in.
Don't install the software - just choose: No Action and format the drive to NTFS.
Took about 17 minutes to copy 20 GB (VERY fast for USB 2.0).
I give it 4 stars out of 5 for the first drive that failed. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones :).
Customer Review: The book that keeps on giving... TILL IT STOPS!!
Summary: 4 Stars
ADDENDUM: We have four of these - the one holding my backup of photography and other important items simply DIED. The head crashed onto the disk, making it impossible to retrieve any data. YES I know I should have had TWO backups of everything, and now I do. But I've lost a lot of precious files. Also, it was the NEWEST one of these which died!!! The older ones are still working. I have switched to Seagate Free Agent PRO drives at the suggestion of the company I had trying to recover my data. These drives are cheaper AND offer automatic backups! So, if I could, I'd change the stars here to ONE. And warn everyone, don't rely on any ONE drive for a backup if you have files you really don't want to lose. I'm still using the My Books we have, but have duplicated the files onto the Seagates. This way if any one drive dies, I'll still have my files elsewhere. A HARD LESSON LEARNED.
Here is my original review unchanged:
Like another reviewer, this is my third "My Book" usb drive. For my machines, I just plug in and go. My husband's machine is a server, and he had to do some messing around with it to get it to work with his machine, but he's one of those people who are obsessed with screwing around with everything on a computer, so my guess is he's atypical. Even so, it works fine for him, too.
My only problem is that I can't seem to map to it from other machines on the network, so retrieving files is at times a bit tedious as I copy them to an accessible internal drive for transfer. Even with this, though, I love the 'Book". They're quiet, not REALLY fast but that's to be expected with USB, and quite stable.
Customer Review: Fully Satisfied
Summary: 5 Stars
I currently have an in-house LAN that is connected to two PC's and wanted an external backup capability that would protect data in the event of a hard drive failure. The basic requirement was that the external drive had to have sufficient space to accommodate backup images of both PC's and copies of the My Documents directories from both PC's concurrently. I also wanted an external drive that was capable of supporting either the Windows environment or the Macintosh environment. I ended up purchasing the Western Digital 500GB My Book Essential Edition USB drive. It has been in use for about three weeks now and I have been very pleased with the results.
Installation is simple. Plug the drive into an available USB port and power the system up. Backup of both PC's occurs very rapidly via backup software I purchased separately. The drive is extremely quiet and the intelligent power up/down mode of operation is great. (The external drive automatically senses when you power down the PC it is connected to and it powers itself down. It also powers up when the PC is turned on.)
Reading other reviews, the only concerns I had before purchase was drives that customers had received that had failed shortly after installation and PC's that had insufficient power to support the external hard drive. Neither of these concerns were problems in my case. I recommend this product to anyone having similar need as mine. Just make sure you have an available USB port and the power to support the drive and you should be happy with the results.