Western Digital My Book Essential Edition external hard drive (500GB)

• Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 67 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 2 stars

  DOA - This Product Does Not Work

  by Pleonexia on April 6, 2006

  Pros: Small and Fairly Light for 500GB

  Cons: Cheap plastic case; functioned for two days only

  Summary: This drive was too good to be true -- 500GB external drive with a small case and a cheap price. The drive repeatedly malfunctioned when writing -- I tried operating ...

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  Summary: This drive was too good to be true -- 500GB external drive with a small case and a cheap price. The drive repeatedly malfunctioned when writing -- I tried operating it using usb 2.0 on two different Windows XP boxes.
  
  As a side note, the case while wonderfully small is made of very cheap plastic and has the fit and finish of a product you'd expect to cost $20 -- it's odd to put a 500GB drive in a flimsy plastic case that looks like a toy.
  
  Unplugging power to drive and then reattaching helped a little, but this is just too risky for data. It's like gambling. It repeatedly wasn't recognized as a drive by the computer and had data copy and erase errors.
  
  It took two hours to copy over 400GB of data and then another half hour to do an RMA at buy.com because I couldn't speak to a live person at Western Digital or Buy.com. The phone tree at both locations would require the patience of a monk to navigate over half a day.
  
  I was not once able to stream video or audio using USB 2.0 although I could open several files I copied to the drive.
  
  I was seduced by the price for this size drive, but now I have to wait to get my money back, I wasted hours copying data and I'm going to have to do it all over again. Was it worth saving $100 or $200? No. Unless you are retired and eating out of cans, spend an extra $100 or $200 and save a lot of trouble.

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  15 out of 17 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  Perfect for what it is

  by MonocularJack on June 16, 2006

  Pros: Small, Stylish, Quiet

  Cons: Non-Removable HD

  Summary: I've owned a few external drives and this is my favorite by far. It's quiet, powers itself on and off (so no pesky on/off switch), has a ...

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  Summary: I've owned a few external drives and this is my favorite by far. It's quiet, powers itself on and off (so no pesky on/off switch), has a smaller power brick than most, looks good sitting on your desk and is fast. Especially great as a multimedia drive (I use this with my Media Center Edition to record TV).
  
  The only downside is that you can't crack the case and swap drives, which isn't really something most consumers will be doing anyway.
  
  The Essential Edition is perfect for those that don't really need the glowing disk space gauge of the Pro edition and like myself already have more than enough USB and Firewire ports on every other device.

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  7 out of 7 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 10 stars

  Owning 10 of these drives can't be a bad thing!

  by groink_hi on August 15, 2007

  Pros: Price, and very low heat generated,

  Cons: None that I can think of.

  Summary: Over the last year, I've purchased ten of these units. Each and every one of them worked great out-of-the-box. I've so far used these drives on a Dell ...

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  Summary: Over the last year, I've purchased ten of these units. Each and every one of them worked great out-of-the-box. I've so far used these drives on a Dell Optiplex with built-in USB 2.0, as well as a Dell Optiplex with an Adaptec USB 2.0 PCI card.
  
  I don't understand why some people have problems with this drive. Some tips I'll offer: 1) Don't use USB hard drives off a USB hub. Hard drives need as much power and bandwidth off the USB bus as possible. 2) Format the drive to either FAT32 or NTFS before use. Even if the drive comes pre-formatted, format it anyway. 3) Make sure the drive is connected to a USB 2.0 port. Hard drives connected to a USB 1.x port simply doesn't work.

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  6 out of 6 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  AWESOME - I own 4 of them and no problems!

  by boyoboyoboy on June 19, 2007

  Pros: Great Capacity - Low Cost - Good Speed!

  Cons: 500 GB is really 465 GB - I'm running out of USB ports!

  Summary: I download/upload a ton of items directly to/from these drives and they work flawlessly. Those comments stating that they didn't work or failed are most likely due ...

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  Summary: I download/upload a ton of items directly to/from these drives and they work flawlessly. Those comments stating that they didn't work or failed are most likely due to the users inability to plug it in because that is about how simple it is to use. I reformatted my drives from FAT32 to NTFS before using them which is recommended for drives of this size. You can't go wrong with this drive. I won't be able to buy many more since I'm running out of USB ports! Note that the way Western Digital calculates disk space results in these being 465 GB drives. There are lawsuits against them for not disclosing this up front to buyers, however, that has not stopped me from purchasing them since they work great and still provide a ton of disk space for the money. Best Buy just had these on sale last weekend 6/16/2007 for $129.

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  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 1 stars

  My Book, Suck Book

  by marshallbell on December 22, 2006

  Pros: The Light worked

  Cons: Would not turn off or install correctly

  Summary: After 3 failed installation attempts finally returned. Virtually no documentation with drive, no support on website and no easy way to find drivers or software. Installation crashed my system. Poor ...

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  Summary: After 3 failed installation attempts finally returned. Virtually no documentation with drive, no support on website and no easy way to find drivers or software. Installation crashed my system. Poor product, poor support.

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  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 10 stars

  Outstanding Drive

  by Bo33778 on September 4, 2006

  Pros: Price & Speed

  Cons: No problems detected

  Summary: This drive has performed outstandingly since attaching it to both my server and also swapping onto my laptops. All computers have acknowledged the drive immediately and has given no failures. ...

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  Summary: This drive has performed outstandingly since attaching it to both my server and also swapping onto my laptops. All computers have acknowledged the drive immediately and has given no failures. The speed of the drive is consistent and exceedingly fast, through a USB 2.0 interface. The drive is backwards compatible to USB 1 but always double check that your USB is "enhanced" (2.0) ..otherwise the best suggestion is to install a nominal 2.0 add-on card. Most problems arise from this oversight. Best Buy ran this drive for over $100 off it's regular price which brought down to $190 .. it's an outstanding drive and an outstanding deal. It's extermely quiet both horizontal and vertical, venting heat efficiently.

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  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  Quiet yet quick

  by chbearsrock on June 10, 2006

  Pros: quiet, huge capacity, elegant design

  Cons: slightly expensive

  Summary: This HD is honestly the best external HD I have encountered. Plug and play, it is lightning fast and almost completely silent. Easy to use and to stow. I'd ...

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  Summary: This HD is honestly the best external HD I have encountered. Plug and play, it is lightning fast and almost completely silent. Easy to use and to stow. I'd recommend it over any of the competition, especially Seagate, which has given me way too many problems.

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  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 1 stars

  be far avay from wd essential externel drive, really

  by nonexist on January 16, 2008

  Pros: big, so you can't take it with you all the time. mean; no responsibility

  Cons: not safe, hard to open case, enough slow

  Summary: 1. main directory is not clean, full of some programs and klasors. some of this programs are just trials.
  2. slow. i couldn't finish my backup for hours
  3.
  
  ...

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  Summary: 1. main directory is not clean, full of some programs and klasors. some of this programs are just trials.
  2. slow. i couldn't finish my backup for hours
  3. and in 2-3 weeks fat damaged and i lost all these backup hours and days of data.
  4. fat formatted. so my datas gone. while recording power got down and no any my book around. why ntfs is not default. this is backup tool. i saw it after transferred much data unfortunately and i didn't change.
  5. now i'm trying recover my datas. sure from usb it is not possible and i have to open the case. i must connect the hard disk to the machine directly. but;
  - guaranty will go down
  - still i couldn't open. wd designers worked so hard about to make opening this case really difficult. they had to work hard to make the product safe for data.
  i will open it by anyway.

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  2 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 2 stars

  Banned Book No Data Integrity

  by bellacanucci on April 15, 2010

  Pros: Price, Size of HDD, Nice Color & Design

  Cons: Forgets it is supposed to hold data for indefinite period of time (or until I delete it myself)
  Out of box, one of the drives didn't work in less than two days
  In 3 weeks, it lost its mind and deleted my server backup

  Summary: Don't rely on this product. There are many other decent WD products, this one sucks. "The Safest Place For Your Data" (as the box implies), is on another device. ...

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  Summary: Don't rely on this product. There are many other decent WD products, this one sucks. "The Safest Place For Your Data" (as the box implies), is on another device. Don't buy this one. WD needs to rework this product. The mini usb port also doesn't seat very well. It would have been nice to also see regular USB with type A and B connector and in the future E-Sata. If you insist on the purchase, then please have a disaster plan in place to recover those beloved pics and mp3's.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 1 stars

  Unreliable, loses connection

  by baar4 on March 31, 2009

  Pros: The drive was inexpensive.

  Cons: Using Windows Vista Home Premium and Vista Business on 2 different machine, the drive disappears for no apparent reason.

  Summary: Western Digital has burned the bridge for me. I'll stick with other brands of hard drives in the future. I bought 3 of these drives, all randomly loose connection ...

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  Summary: Western Digital has burned the bridge for me. I'll stick with other brands of hard drives in the future. I bought 3 of these drives, all randomly loose connection and I have to unplug and plug back in to gain access. I can't get one of the drives to reconnect at all, trying it on 3 different computers, both Vista and XP. I can't find update drivers on the WD website. WD was my brand of choice, never again.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

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