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
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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: Exactly what I wanted - not really
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased the WDG1U5000 as a backup to my existing iBook and my external 120GB SmartDisk Drive (which I also can't say enough about). I plugged in the 500GB, turned it on, my Mac found the drive and then I dragged and dropped 100GB of music and photos over my USB2.0 (took about 2/5hrs to copy). The process couldn't be easier or for a geek like me, more enjoyable.
A great product, a great price and delivery was a snap - as usual, all from Amazon.
Update - July 2007 - as time went on my digital capacity expanded and I was soon up to 125GB. When I went to add more music or photos to my hard drive, I noticed that my Mac would only display and allow me to use 149GB of my 500GB drive. I understand it has something to do with the formatting of the drive but after trying my best to fix it and trying to contact western digital multiple times - they offered ZERO help - I had to return it. Amazon was nice enough to take it back outside of policy...& I remain a highly satisfied Amazon customer.
Customer Review: Drive quit working after a year!
Summary: 1 Stars
I'm highly disappointed with the performance of this drive. Its not even a year old in use and it seems to have failed on me. I did hear about excellent reviews when i bought this drive, but this practically fails to live up to its reputation. WD should claim better responsibility for such mechanical hazards than just giving their customers $15 off for the next purchase of $150. I would NEVER buy another WD drive after this bitter and sorrowful experience of possibly losing all my data.
I don't think i can recommend this brand or drive to any of my tech savvy friends as well. WD needs to also consider compensating for data recovery which is a roaring business these days, thanks to WD drives that quit on people. I wish we never depended on machines so much.
I didn't hope this would have lasted even 5 years, but it quit working just after 1 year is unacceptable. Please do check out reviews on other online site (which i verified) before making a final decision to go with WD.
Customer Review: Bad Investment
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased one of these drives directly from Western Digital in late May. When it arrived and I opened the shrink wrap the drive didn't work. It lit up but my system didn't see it. I emailed Western Digital support on Wednesday and explained exactly the conditions that I had on my system and explained that I had tried it on two other computers as well and that it didn't appear in the Device Manager. On Friday they replied and asked me to check the device manager and try plugging it into another system. They didn't even bother to read my description of the problem. I sent a new message and told them the exact same thing I had in the original report and waited until Monday for a reply, which was "You will need to return the drive." I decided to return the drive for my money back as it could never have been tested at the factory and I didn't feel like going thru the same problem all over again. Western Digital used to be reliable but not anymore. Did I mention that they don't reimburse for shipping?Customer Review: No Problems
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this drive because my 250 GB version was getting close to being full. So now I use this as my primary data storage drive and leave it in all the time and use my 2-250 GB as backup drives and unplug them when not in use. I have had this drive for about 6 months now and it has never given me any problems and I have had the 2-Western Digital WDG1U2500 My Book Essential Edition 250 GB Hard Drive for over a year with no problems. They are pretty small and fit nicely on a shelf near my computer and I can't even tell they are running over the computer fan so they are pretty quite. External hard drives are much better than internal, if your computer dies you still have everything right there and can plug it into another computer any time you want without opening it up, ripping things apart, setting jumpers etc. So if you are looking for a small, reliable, quite external drive, look no further.Customer Review: Just stoped working.
Summary: 1 Stars
I have 450Gb of irreplaceable pictures and personal stuff on this drive. I was pulling a few last bits from a shared drive when i got these error messages on all of the files, i canceled the files tried to access the drive and i get a message something like "a USB device is connected" but i can't see the HDD. I tried several different pc's, powered on and off a dozen times, and pretty much every combination of plugging/unplugging you can imagine many times over. It was never dropped or mishandled in anyway and i get a repetitious buzzing sound for about 45 seconds then nothing. Hopefully the small tech store down the road can access or repair the drive and rescue my data. It was a great drive until 8 days of ownership and it stopped working. I would send it back to WD but then my personal info is everybody's info. Kind of a catch 22 on HDD repairs/returns, no money back, your data is lost, but no one else can see what you have either. I guess if i can't have it then no one will.