Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000
by Western Digital
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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 |
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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: Power Hungry! Read this if you're having problems or are buying this new
Summary: 5 Stars
If you get a message about "USB Device Recognized" and then your computer launches the Device Driver Wizard, YOUR DRIVE IS UNDERPOWERED. Cancel the wizard, don't even bother trying to install a driver. The MyBook does not have any drivers, and does not need any. I'm a little dissapointed that WD would let this slip by, but this fix is simple - plug it into a less crowded power strip, or into the wall by itself. It's a bummer, but not enough to knock a star off of an otherwise perfectly great product.
I love this drive, and bought one for my mother, too. It works great (so long as it's got enough juice). It's smaller than I thought, has a longer than average power cord and is picked up by my laptop and tower instantly and easily. There are no drivers - just plug it in and you've got access. Linux Defender mounted this drive and BartPE recognizes it, too - makes this a great recepticle for data recovery.
USB2 is basically the same speed as firewire. You'll get the same speed but spend less if you add a $15 USB2 PCI card to your computer (if your computer doesn't have USB2 already) instead of getting the more expensive (non-"Essential") versions of this drive for the firewire connection. Plus, you'll have upgraded your computer to USB2 for thumbdrives and whatever else.
Customer Review: Outstanding
Summary: 5 Stars
I had 3 computers all with hard drives barely having a few hundred MB left since I need to keep a huge amount of data for research purposes. I used to go through the cumbersome task of backing up the data on DVDs, but recently even this solution wouldn't be as helpful.
I got the WD My Book 500GB and I'm totally relieved now. Its black casing is stylish and it works very quietly. The installation of My Book is as easy as plugging in its USB connector (I've a machine running on Windows XP Professional with USB 2.0 jacks). The button on the front is very helpful for turning the device on and off if you want to switch computers.
I've also downloaded a backup/restore program called "Second copy" which is powerful yet simple to use. I got it to work in a matter of minutes and scheduled automatic backup updates every day (which takes a few seconds). It can't get easier than this!
The only issue is that it comes with a FAT32 file system, which most probably you want to change to NTFS (in case you don't need to operate it in a DOS based environment). The formatting takes a substantially long time. I would rather to have had the option of file system while buying this device. Nevertheless, it's a one time procedure and thereafter you can enjoy your huge, fast and reliable storage.
Customer Review: Takes a Lickin' and keeps on Tickin'
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a DJ that also does a good deal of traveling from gig to gig and goodness, I don't know HOW many times my WD external drive has been banged around in my travel bag, dropped on hard floors, and suffered innumerable power surges/outages and the thing just hasn't DIED! (NOT Complaining!) I guess I just might be one of the lucky ones that has a tough little external drive.
Setting up the myBook is pretty intuitive, anyone that is moderately tech saavy won't have a problem figuring out how to get their myBook to work with their computer. I purchased this version because of the price and amount of space that I pretty much needed to save all my music. I have been able to work with this while DJing live very comfortably. It is fast, reliable, and has taken one hell of a beating in the 2 years that I have owned it and it works as good as the first day I bought it.
I will close this to say that I am a VERY happy customer and if my WD ever does keel over, I won't hesitate to buy another.
(And, I'm eyeballing the Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDME5000TN (Midnight Black) and planning on getting it anyway...can't go wrong with backing up your files ^^)
Customer Review: Crashes galore.
Summary: 1 Stars
The first thing that happened when I plugged the USB only version of My Book into my computer was a hard crash. Meaning that I had to shut down the computer and reboot. Every time I tried to boot the computer with the drive plugged in, the computer would crash. When I booted, then turned on the drive, sometimes it would come up and sometimes it wouldn't. Once up, I had to format it to get the larger file sizes (You'd think with a drive this big, it would be understood that the user has large files). Not a problem, but why?
Transfering files was painfully slow. It took about 24 hours to transfer about 70GB. When I realized that I was going from one external drive to another, I made sure to go from an internal drive from that point on. However, it still took overnight to transfer about 30 GB. My USB port, might be 1.1, however, accounting for the slow speed, but the crashes were ridiculous and I was happy just to get the data back onto my internal drive.
I already owned 2 Maxtor One Touch drives, so I returned the My Book and paid the extra money for another Maxtor and as with the other two, I plugged it in and it worked immediately and flawlessly. Voila. I should have just done the (firewire) Maxtor in the first place, but I was trying to save a little money.
Customer Review: Music, movies, data...lost!
Summary: 1 Stars
I have had my drive for about three months. Well, yesterday, I had to update my graphics driver, which I did, but then my computer started to "hang" on shut-down and log-in. Initially, I thought, "Stupid NVIDIA!" and spent the better part of the day trying to get some questions answered. Ultimately, I decided to unplug all of my peripherals, including the WD drive, to decrease the load on start-up. I also uninstalled several programs. Turns out the root problems was this external drive. Once it was out of the picture, everything started to operated like it should have been. I don't know what happened to this drive, but my computer won't recognize it anymore, and I've probably lost about $1,000 in downloaded movies, music, and data that I had backed up on it. I'm going to continue trying to get it to operate for at least a few hours so I can transfer my data back (if I ever can), but this drive has really created some high-level headaches for me. I can't say I would recommend it, although a back-up is certainly a smart investment. I've used hundreds of jump drives on my system in the past with no problem. It seems this drive should operate on the same plug-and-play principle. If you want to reduce the stress in your life, look somewhere else for a more reliable back-up drive.