Customer Reviews

Western Digital 500 GB My Book Premium ES (WDG1SU5000N)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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I own five WD External drives and have not had any issues with any of them (the oldest is over 5 years old, is connected 24x7x365, and it's still working fine). My most recent two purchases have been a:

"Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - 7200rpm"

and a

"Western Digital My Book 500GB Premium ES Edition Hard Drive - 7200rpm USB 2.0 & eSATA Dual Interface External Hard Drive"

The "WD My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 Ext HD" - just has a UDB 2.0 connector (no eSATA or Firewire) but it works great and if you shop the sales, the price for 500 GB can be close to $100-140 (summer 2007).

The "WD My Book 500GB Premium ES Edition HD" has both a USB 2.0 & eSATA connector on the back (use either one). Note, not many PCs today (2007) have an eSATA port on them. ESATA is faster than USB 2.0, but if you don't have a connector for that externally on your PC, then don't pay extra for it. (You can get after market external eSATA ports for a PC but there are different kinds, and depending on your PC, you need to get the 'right kind' for your PC, assuming you even have room in your PC to add one).

Both of these drives came with easy to install instructions - just plug in the power, and then connect them to your PC, and away you go. Both came with USB 2.0 cables. The Premium ES Edition with eSATA did 'NOT' come with an eSATA cable. Both came with their own power cords - nice long ones too.

Neither of these two can be connected directly to a network, but if your PCs are part of a home network, or small business type network, as mine are, then I just plug them into one of the main PCs and I put a "share" on the drive so that any PC on my network can access it.

If you have important information on your PC, back it up! And if you are like me, previously my backups were stored right next to my PC (not good!) So, now, I use one of these 500 GB drives as the primary backup drive for my PCs, and I keep that right next to one of my PCs. But then weekly, I use the other 500 GB drive to backup the backup drive - and then I keep that one in a fireproof / waterproof safe. You can get these for $30-100, depending on their size, at office stores or online. I like the Sentry line of products.

Using Norton Save & RestoreNorton Save & Restore [Old Version], I was able to image my 320GB C: drive to this eSATA II (and verify the image) in under 2 hours. The resulting image, at normal compression, was 59.5GB. This eSATA is just like having an internal SATA II. NOTE: the package does NOT include an eSATA cable or connection bracket!!!

The WD MyBook works great! I definitely recommend it. If you do get
it do not delete the autorun directory where the icon is located.

I use this to back up my SATA Western Digital internal hard drive and it works great. I formatted it for NTFS and tweaked it in the device manager in Vista and it runs great. I plan to use eSATA once I get a motherboard that supports it, but with USB I'm still impressed with the speed. This thing is easy to use and worth it.

Might be better out there but this works well and it's faster enough for the average person.

This external hard drive was very easy to install and start working with. However, I have only had it about a month, so that is not an adequate amount of time for me to truly know the product. The hard drive arrived promptly and well-packaged.

July 2008 - this little drive is still working great.