Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000

5 star:		(122)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(113)

 

 

I was looking for a 300GB+ External hard-drive to backup my data, photos, music and home-videos. I wanted a rugged drive as I was planning to keep the drive off-site and transport it back & forth for monthly backups.

I evaluated LaCie, Seagate and other alternatives on the market and found the My Book has comparable or better specs and was aesthetically more pleasing than most. I also liked the simplicity and the concept of the My Book. The footprint is also among the smallest in the industry for a 500GB drive.

The drive looks sleek and is not intrusive or odd on a desk. The casing is made of hard plastic. It looks and feels rugged. The drive has "morse-code" vents which, beside looking funky, help keep the drive extremely cool. Drive operation is extremely quiet. When placed vertically there are 2 rubber strips on the bottom to prevent the drive from sliding or vibrating. Multiple drives can also be stacked on their sides - rubber feet are included.

The setup is pretty simple, just plug-in the power and connect the USB cable. Windows XP recognizes and sets up the drive quickly. Look for the drive under "My Computer" - you're up and running!!

The drive comes pre-formatted as FAT32. You can reformat it to NTFS with relative ease under Win XP. There is some included Google software which you can copy to your local machine or download from Google.com. The drive switches on and shuts down with your computer. You can also turn the drive on/off via a large button which is surrounded by the green indicator.

The only thing I miss is the WD Backup software - which seems to be bundled as an incentive with the Premium My Book drive. Another feature that people might miss is the "One-touch Backup" button offered by competitors.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this drive!!

I had 2 MyBook Essentials die on me in less than 2 months. WD said they will replace the drive (for the 3rd time) if I mail it in. Too bad I have over 300gb of data stored on my drive. The computer (or any computer for that matter), fails to recognize the drive. Comes up as Unknow Device. My data is more important to me then getting a new drive from WD. So I went and purchased an external case (Vantec NexStar3) and took out the hard drive from MyBook and placed it into the Vantec case. My computer had no problems recognizing the new external case. From what I've been reading online, lots of people are having problems with MyBooks. WD is refusing to reimburse me for the price of the new case. I will post on every forum/review site that has anything to do with MyBooks and let everyone know the truth about how bad the quality of these overpriced drives really is. If you are thinking of getting a MyBook, DONT!

I spent the past year digitizing my CD collection and when I outgrew my 200 gig internal hard drive I decided to go the external route. The My Book was a good choice. The drive is extremely quiet, takes up very little space, and does not get hot in normal use. I really like that the drive is smart enough to automatically go into stand-by when you turn off your P.C.

The first thing you will want to do if you buy one is to delete the junk software that comes preinstalled on the disc. The second thing is to reformat the drive to use the NTFS file system, which is more reilable than FAT 32.

The drive is not a speed demon but is more than adequate for streaming music. I recently bought a second one to backup the first. Unless you need the Firewire port, the Essential Edition should be adequate.

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.

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.

Western Digital has a good reputation, and their products are generally good. But my situaiton was as follows: a couple of DAYS after installing it, I could no longer access it. I went to their support line, and, after a number of tests, it was clear that the product was defective.

Amazon only refunds 50% of the value of opened and used products, according to their policy. Western told me to return it to the seller. I explained Amazon's policy, so they had me return to them and replaced it with a refurbished model. So even though I had the product only a few days, I have a used one in its place.

The good news is the the refurbished one is working well. If return/replacement issues are significant to you, you might take this into account.

New info: I and another respondent have had trouble with the hard drive info being completely lost. Apparently this is not the fault of the unit but the nature of hard drives. Leave it off when you do not need it. Even though it can take the heat, sometimes, when you turn your computer off (or on), a stray static charge can erase the info from your external drive. So use this as a storage drive (backing it up first) and leave it off except when you need it, and then turn it off.

The "My Book" is an attractive looking external drive solution, however mine lived for less than a year before the dreaded "click of death" took its life. Also unacceptable was the continuous drive power-down, even with power-saving disabled for USB and the drive. I won't be buying another WDC unit...

Our family purchased 3 of these (1 x 250) and 2 of the 500's here. We use them to supplement storage realtime and also for backup. Wish I would have read the reviews here first!

One of our 500 has just died. Most of the data is backed up (on another Western Digital unfortunately) but what a waste of time and money! We will not buy another Western Digital or Maxtor (similar experience) for a long time.

Update: Our second 500 GB Western Digital died after just 2 weeks of "primary" use (it had been our backup). Ordered a Calvary unit and it wouldn't even turn on out of the box - customer service recommended returning it. We bought a Seagate FreeAgent. Quite and fast - so far so good....

I got it, plugged it in, and without any wait, I started saving my data from my overloaded pc into this external hard drive without any problems. It runs cooler than most other external hard drives, and I can hardly hear it working. It must be reformatted to NTFS in order to take advantage of its large capacity, and that is no problem, either.

I bought the Western Digital 500GB My Book Essential Edition because my 250 GB Acomdata external hard drive was 65% full, I wanted to get still more files off my computer, and I want to have duplicate copies of all files in at least two different locations in case one of the drives should fail (all hard drives can fail).

I do not leave my external drive running all the time; in fact I do not even leave the USB cable plugged in unless I am going to use it; I turn the drive on only when I want to copy files to it. I therefore wanted a drive that is hot-pluggable (i.e. can be turned on and off while the computer is running) and I wanted an on/off switch on the drive. Although my new WD drive does not have an on/off switch (the large button in the middle is NOT an on/off switch on my unit), I find that it really does not need one. I power up my computer and all its accessories with a power strip; if the USB cable is unplugged when I power up, the WD briefly turns on, sees that it is not connected, and turns off. When I want to use it, I plug the USB cable into the computer and it turns on automatically. When I am finished using it, I right click the external hard drive icon in my system tray, select "safely remove hardware", tell it to stop, and it then turns off automatically. This behavior is equivalent to having an on/off switch.

Since other users have said that the WD drive runs hot, I left mine turned on for a few hours to see how hot it would get. Mine gets slightly warm but certainly not hot.

Some reviewers have said that WD drives are slow. When I first began transferring files to mine I was getting transfer rates of 18 to 20 MBps for most of them; this is about the same as I got for my 250 GB AcomData before I began to fill it up. However, there were a few files that transferred at 1 or 2 MBps; I assume that these files are scattered across the internal drive on my computer, and the transfer rate was slowed by the seek time. As a test, I picked one of the slow files, 716 MB, and transferred it to the WD and then to my 250 GB AcomData (which is currently 65% full). Transfer to the AcomData took 294 sec (about 2.44 MBps) and transfer to the WD took 374 sec (1.91 MBps). This suggests that the WD is about 25% slower than the AcomData. I do not know what the WD performance will be like when it starts to get full, but this does indicate that its reputation for being slow is not undeserved.

I followed the suggestion of another user and removed the junk software that came preinstalled on the drive before using it; I copied the junk files to a CD in case I might want them in the future (not likely). The junk software included autorun files (which I hate), Adobe Acrobat, Google toolbar, Picasa etc.

Overall I am happy with the drive, it is hot pluggable, transfer between my two external drives is quick and easy (I use edit/copy & edit/paste rather than drag & drop), I can leave it running for several hours without overheating, it is inexpensive (especially on sale) because it is USB only and does not come with backup software which I do not need, and it is fairly small (only a tiny bit larger than my 250 GB AcomData). Although it is a bit slower than my AcomData, the difference in speed is not important for my applications.