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 $74.00 (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: If you value reliability and customer support, look elsewhere...
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive worked well for me for a little over a year, granted and for your consideration, I used it very little and used it only as a source of backing up information instead of day-to-day tasks that could have potentially caused the drive to fail at a quicker rate. Approximately a year after originally purchasing this item I had gone to access my backup files after having a theft occur on one of my other sources of backup gear, drives, etc.. Unfortunately, while attempting to copying the files from this drive to my primary computer, it had an error and has since yet to be recognized by any of the multiple computer systems I've attached it to, I've contacted western digital regarding the matter, it's been about 3 weeks; I'm sure they'll get around to my concerns; sooner or later ... or later.... Overall, this drive is USB only, so it'll be slower than other drives available, not necessarily a bad thing but the fact this failed so easily, with such little use, leads me to suggest you avoid this product like the plague and invest your time, more so money, into a product that can give you a better end result.Customer Review: Worst Purchase Ever -- Save Yourself and Your Data and Buy Something Else!
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive crashed on me within 6 weeks.
When I started having problems, I emailed customer service. After a little back and forth, the representative told me that I should plug the drive into a wall outlet, instead of a powerstrip. So I did that, turned it on, and it worked. I didn't have room on my computer's hard drive to back up what was on the external, but thought, Great, I thought, I can go buy another drive or some DVDs and back it up all up later. Well, then, the next time it didn't work. Or, the time after that. After a few days, I emailed the rep again to say it worked but then stopped. He said, Oh yeah, the fact that it had problems before was a sign of impending failure.
I wrote him back, and said, Gee, Thanks for letting me know that before.
I lost SIX YEARS' worth of documents and photos. It will cost AT LEAST $1,200 to get it all back. (Possibly up to $2,000.) They won't pay for any of the data recovery. Needless to say, I hate Western Digital. You should definitely go for another brand if you want to keep your data.
Customer Review: TRY SEAGATE PRODUCTS - FIVE YEARS WARRANTY
Summary: 1 Stars
I have had the Western Digital External Hard Drive sitting on my shelf for almost three years. It's main purpose is to store backup data from my desktop, in the event the desktop hard drive fails.
Of course, The Western Digital hard drive fails and WD does not want to know me now, when their product fails. They say they cannot repair it, won't cover it under any warranty, since the warranty expired six months ago and to stop calling them!
I did not expect their product to fail as soon as the warranty was up.
This is the reason that I will purchase a SEAGATE external hard drive. They have a (5) FIVE year warranty on their products. If I had purchased a SEAGATE hard drive, I would not be writing this sad story.
At least the data stored in my old Dell will not be lost and I can copy it to the new hard drive that I will purchase.
It looks like my old Dell hard drive will be saving me from losing my data, stored on the new Western Digital back up hard drive!
A storage device that is unreliable, is useless.
You have been Warned!
Customer Review: A good buy!
Summary: 5 Stars
A few weeks ago I received my My Book which I had ordered from Amazon. Basically its a 500 GB external hard-disk and that means a decent amount of storage space. It came nicely packaged and the drive itself is smaller than one would think. The casing is black and looks inconspicuous and has these interesting morse-codish holes for ventilation. You can stack them up if you've got more than one.
It comes with some pre-loaded software that you shouldn't worry about too much. Once I powered it, it showed up almost immediately on my PC. The first thing I did was to format it in NTFS so I could store files greater than 4 GB at a time. This took about 40 minutes.
The main purpose for this purchase is to back-up my stuff and other media content (movies, TV-shows, documentaries, etc.). I also plan to back-up most of my DVD collection to it and then perhaps sell off my DVDs (gasp!). I don't think it will be too long before I get another one.
The drive is quite speedy and doesn't make any noticeable amount of noise. I would definitely recommend it!
Customer Review: Do NOT Buy this!
Summary: 1 Stars
The amazon rating on this item is very wrong, so I feel I must put my 2 cents in. I bought this drive from a local store and brought it home to copy about 120GB of data to. I though I had a great buy at $129, so I hooked it up and started to transfer files. After less than an hour it stopped working and errors told me the drive needed to be formatted. Upon restart I could access the drive again so I tried again but after a few minutes it decided it wanted to be formatted again. Tried multiple times like that and then decided to go for the reformat. Guess what, the format failed. After reading similar bad reviews and horror stories about WD's Customer service, I wont even call them. This one will be going back. Thank goodness, I found out what a piece of junk it was before the return period expired and before I put data that I would not retieved on it. WD let me down on this one, I have an internal drive I installed myself a couple of years ago thats been great, but I'll find a different option for external storage.