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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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: Great till it stopped working in 7 months!
Summary: 1 Stars
Western Digital WDH1U5000N 500GB My Book Essential External Hard Drive runs in low temp, quiet, auto on/off with computer, fast, and cheap ($120 from circuit city in late April, 07). All was well till yesterday, Nov 28, 2007. The drive is still showing up, but not the content. All diagnostics reported no error. It still goes on and off with my computer (HP Media Center XP from Dec 06). Even the amount of free space is still showing up correctly. But not my 400G photos! What a waste! Will try "A.K. from Texas"'s trick (in his separate review in Feb 2007). But I haven't switched anything, or dropped the drive or any of that. Same power supply, same everything. Just the drive stopped displaying its content.
Avoid if you can. Tech support is mostly a joke of all products, maybe save of Lexus cars. And I won't get a replacement from WD so I can go through the same pain again later on. Will try to get the data out and just throw it away for good so nobody else got tripped on a refurbished drive in the future.
Will try VanTec case if nothing else works.
Customer Review: DO NOT BUY. PURCHASE OR LOOK AT!!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
Like many 1 star purchasers, I purchased this hard drive in hopes of it lasting at least a few years. It didn't make it past one. And this is really hard to believe because I didn't really use it all that much. I just backed up files. Well...one day to my dismay, it just stopped working. I've had problems with hard drives not working, so I took it out of its case, put it in another case and hoped for the best. It still didn't work. Of course by then, the warranty expired. Some of the files on it was irreplaceable. So, I went to see how much it would cost for data recovery. I would have to take out a second mortgage just to have that done. I didn't realize that these hard drives were meant to frustrate people and have them lose their precious memories/files.
I also have a nephew who had one that did the same thing - which doesn't surprise me. This is a terrible product. I will recommend it to zero people. I wish I could put zero stars on this...
I have a Maxtor that I've had for 10 years and it still works. This one not one year... As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. I got junk. Thanks Western Digital...you suck
Customer Review: Great external hard drive, might want to get two!
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this hard drive after I had filled up my 320GB MyBook. I was very impressed with my 320GB drive, so when I needed a new one, there was no doubt which brand I'd be buying. I did have a small problem however. After I'd added about 50GBs to this drive, and tried to add more, it started telling me there was no space available. I was able to fix the problem by moving everything back off the drive, formatting the drive, and then moving it back. After that I've had no problem thus far. Looks really nice sitting right next to my 320GB drive. I really like the fact they stand up so nice next to each other. I do leave about half an inch, to an inch of space between them to prevent any excessive heat. One of the best features about these drives is the fact they turn themselves off after 10 minutes of inactivity. They probably aren't the only drives to do this, as I'm sure many companies have followed suit, but still a nice feature to have. I definitely suggest this hard drive to anyone on the market for an external hard drive, who need this much storage. Very pleased with the shipping from amazon. Very speedy delivery, and nicely packaged.Customer Review: Failed after a year - but try fixing it yourself with Nucleus Kernel
Summary: 4 Stars
Our drive worked fine for a little more than a year, then suddenly it could be detected by Windows XP, but no data was accessible. Fortunately we didn't throw it out. Apparently partitions and FATs get corrupted frequently on external HDDs. When that happens, there's usually no physical damage, and data can be recoverable with software. A local store would recover the drive for $30-50, but I downloaded Nucleus Kernel FAT + NTFS for $70, after seeing that the demo version found our data. Nucleus seems to work quite well, although it's not highly user-friendly, and it is SLOW to recover files, including many deleted ones. Still, that's better than losing data and/or the HDD. To extract everything (not including deleted files) from a 500GB drive is at least an all-night proposition. Hard to say whether the fault is with the MyBook or with WXP, or possibly with unplugging or powering down the HDD while transfering files (?)
So... don't give up too quickly. Try the free demo Nucleus Kernel to see whether the device is damaged first.
Other than this, the MyBook seems to work fine, even though it's not a very speedy drive.
Customer Review: Failed after 1 month
Summary: 2 Stars
-The drive failed after one month of use. The contents just disappeared while in use. Western digital service department was completely unhelpful. All they said was that sometimes this drive fails when it does not get enough power, and I should plug it in its own outlet.
So if this drive is underpowered, you may lose all your data! Not the safest place to put valuable data... I lost 250 GBs; WD told me there is nothing they could do!
Luckily, I came accross a utility (called Zero Assumption Recovery), which recovered 95% of my data, contrary to what their service had said. Phew!
-The capacity is 465 GB, as reported by Windows XP, not 500 GB.
-If you have to format the drive, Windows cannot do it, you have to use a WD utility. Other than that, the software is pretty much useless.
-Make sure to disable the auto-scandisk feature during Windows booting. It might automatically start scanning your USB drive(s) on start up, find errors, and convert all your files into .CHK remnants. It happened to me, as well as others, and it was not pleasant.
-The warranty is 1 year in the US, and 2 years in Europe. Why?