Western Digital WDG1SU5000 My Book Premium ES Edition 500 GB USB/eSATA External Hard Drive
by Western Digital
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital WDG1SU5000 My Book Premium ES Edition 500 GB USB/eSATA External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Functionality vs. quality
Summary: 3 Stars
Description: The WDG1SU5000 MyBook ES Edition drive is an external 500GB hard-drive with two interfaces - eSata and USB2. It has a led display at the front ("capacity gauge") which is supposed to indicate the remaining free space.
Functionality: the drive was instantly recognized when I plugged it into the USB2 port. When the computer is turned off the drive automatically goes into "sleep" mode.
Noise: I had to change the first drive I received. It was vibrating so strongly that when placed on a table it made a rather loud and irritating low-pitched humming noise. I placed the drive on a sponge to prevent the table from resonating. In order to keep the drive from falling (it is supposed to stand on its narrow side), I laid it down on its wide side, which the WD web-site claims is OK to do. After two days, while still functioning, the drive started making annoying buzzing noises. Placing the drive back on its narrow side stopped the noise for about two hours and then the noise came back again.
I replaced the drive. The second one I received and still possess does not vibrate so strongly and can be placed on the table without humming noticeably. However, when the drive head jumps back and forth (while reading, for example), the drive makes rather strong creaking noises. I placed it again on a sponge and it became quieter. I do not try again to lay it down on its wide side.
The LED capacity gauge: I have installed the gauge driver as required. it is very hard to notice anything on the capacity display. The "gauge" consists of two rings - the outer ring indicates that the drive is working and the inner is supposed to show how much free space remains. The problem is that the outer ring is not isolated from the inner one and its light actually illuminates the inner ring from the inside, making the free-space display too hard to read and practically unusable.
Support: I have posted a question on the Western-Digital WDC site concerning the capacity gauge and received a list of automatically generated links which have nothing to do with the question. I tried to get their attention on the web and through emails, filling forms as required and replying to automatic emails as indicated, but to no avail. Finally I gave up.
Pros: USB2 and eSata interfaces (I have not tried the eSata). Auto "sleep" mode. Price.
Cons: somewhat unstable and noisy. Difficult to get support. Capacity gauge is only a gimmick. Does not get its power from the USB port - needs to be plugged into the electricity.
Customer Review: A Good Price, But Be Careful...
Summary: 3 Stars
This drive will probably work fine on most windows systems. It did not on mine. (I'm running XP on an older IBM computer, using an accessory Adaptec USB 2.0 IDE card to connect to high-speed USB devices.)
Plug-and-Play did not work for this drive. After hours of struggling to make the computer "see" the drive, increasingly frustrated, cursing WD and about to return it, I found a small troubleshooting note buried deep in WD's support web site saying that it was incompatible with certain Adaptec USB cards. Naturally mine was one of them. Oh, well hey -- they should have put that on a bright red warning label on the outside of the box.
I ended up installing an additional USB 2.0 card (IOGear brand, thank you) that I needed anyway, and then the WD hard drive worked fine immediately. If you're using an eSATA connection you shouldn't have this problem, but I haven't tried it.
The drive has a low, resonant hum when it's on, always there but not too annoying. The circular blue lights on the front swirl around when the drive is being accessed, cute but unnecessary... a standard little blinking LED would do fine. The button on the front is *not* an on/off button (What is it with drive manufacturers who don't put on/off buttons on their hardware? Would that be so hard?) In fact, when your press the button the blue lights just swirl around some more and then come back on, nothing seems to change. Even though it's supposed to be a "safe power-down" button, apparently you have to have the proprietary driver installed to get it to work. Likewise, the inner concentric ring is supposed to show disk usage percentage, but doesn't without the driver. The drive is not smart enough to do these things on its own. I am against adding anything silly and unnecessary to my system so I haven't installed that driver or the free backup software that came with it.
Note to Western Digital: Very pretty, very clever. But in the future perhaps skip the cleverness, go with simple and functional, and make sure your hardware is compatible. I have two other external hard drives, a Maxtor and a SimpleTech, not to mention a half dozen other USB devices, and they all work fine with the Adaptec USB2.0 IDE card. Do you think I'm going to buy another WD hard drive? NOT.
Customer Review: Check what's in the box before using :(
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this drive from a local Best Buy today. Got it home and plugged it in to my 3 month old Dell laptop. The drive came up as UNFORMATTED. I got out the user manual (not much there) and it stated the drive is formatted as FAT32 and contained a number of drivers and utilities.
I started to format and it said 372GB available when it should have been something around 470GB (for a raw 500G drive). I canceled the format process, cause this was very suspicious for a brand new drive.
I opened the drive tools and found out the drive model/type under Windows XP came up as something like:
WD 4000G
I Googled the drive model and it came up as 400GB !! I then looked at the model number on the case of this drive and it also said something like WDG1U4000 which to me means 400GB drive.
So somewhere along the line, Western Digital put an unformatted 400G drive into this box that was supposed to be a 500GB FORMATTED drive. Either that or someone switched the drive (??) in the box and returned it to Best Buy.
When I tried to return it 2 hours after I bought it, the store manager at Best Buy gave me the complete runaround and told me that I'd have to deal directly with Western Digital and wouldn't refund my $, saying it's my problem. After arguing with him and BB customer service, the best he would do is a gift card for the $ instead of a complete refund. BB would not honor their return policy as was written right there in big letters saying, "This is an exception to the return policy." My days of buying at BB are pretty much over after being treated like it was my fault. They will be hearing from me.
So the bottom line on this particular drive (buyer beware), please check the the drive is indeed a 500G, not a 400G and the model number on the case says something like WD1U5000, not WD1U4000 like mine did. The box did say WDG1SU5000.
Customer Review: WD MyBook Premium HDD 500gb
Summary: 4 Stars
The WD premium 500gb harddisk is compact, has a good amount of storage space and is fast and reliable. It has a nominal 7,200 RPM speed and 16mb buffer. Noise/ heat emanating from the unit is low. There is a handy AUTO sleep/ wakeup feature.
The difference between this and the Essential edition is the FireWire 400 and capacity guage in the Premium edition.
However, as many others have mentioned before, the inner blue ring meant to be the Capacity Gauge gets a lot of background light from the outer ring, and hence its function is still in doubt for me.
But, considering performance, reliability and storage-this is a great drive to archive files-for students, professionals and home users alike.
This unit isn't small enough for travel use though. So, I use a 120gb WD Passport for that. The real difference is the USB powerup in the passport (but slower R/W speed) vs the Power cord in the MyBook (with higher transfer speeds.)
Customer Review: Failed after 9 months.
Summary: 1 Stars
The title says it all. Worked flawlessly for 9 months (had it mated with a Tivo series 3), and then failed. The Tivo drive tests say that it is suffering from read errors.
The drive warranty is only one year. That says a lot about the product, but fair enough. So, I go to the Western Digital support site and enter the serial number. It says the drive was manufactured in 2006 and I need to provide a purchase receipt to get warranty coverage. A hassle, but again, fair enough. So, I find my Amazon receipt online, save as PDF, upload to Western Digital support site and... nothing. No response except an email saying they have received my message. That was 10 days ago. I again send an email. Again, no response. Perhaps they are trying to wait out the warranty. Anyway, given the hassle, I can't recommend this drive.