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 $74.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000
Customer Review: Great external hard drive, might want to get two!
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this hard drive after I had filled up my 320GB MyBook. I was very impressed with my 320GB drive, so when I needed a new one, there was no doubt which brand I'd be buying. I did have a small problem however. After I'd added about 50GBs to this drive, and tried to add more, it started telling me there was no space available. I was able to fix the problem by moving everything back off the drive, formatting the drive, and then moving it back. After that I've had no problem thus far. Looks really nice sitting right next to my 320GB drive. I really like the fact they stand up so nice next to each other. I do leave about half an inch, to an inch of space between them to prevent any excessive heat. One of the best features about these drives is the fact they turn themselves off after 10 minutes of inactivity. They probably aren't the only drives to do this, as I'm sure many companies have followed suit, but still a nice feature to have. I definitely suggest this hard drive to anyone on the market for an external hard drive, who need this much storage. Very pleased with the shipping from amazon. Very speedy delivery, and nicely packaged.Customer Review: A good buy!
Summary: 5 Stars
A few weeks ago I received my My Book which I had ordered from Amazon. Basically its a 500 GB external hard-disk and that means a decent amount of storage space. It came nicely packaged and the drive itself is smaller than one would think. The casing is black and looks inconspicuous and has these interesting morse-codish holes for ventilation. You can stack them up if you've got more than one.
It comes with some pre-loaded software that you shouldn't worry about too much. Once I powered it, it showed up almost immediately on my PC. The first thing I did was to format it in NTFS so I could store files greater than 4 GB at a time. This took about 40 minutes.
The main purpose for this purchase is to back-up my stuff and other media content (movies, TV-shows, documentaries, etc.). I also plan to back-up most of my DVD collection to it and then perhaps sell off my DVDs (gasp!). I don't think it will be too long before I get another one.
The drive is quite speedy and doesn't make any noticeable amount of noise. I would definitely recommend it!
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: 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: A terrific value
Summary: 5 Stars
As is typical of Western Digital HDD's, you just plug it in and it's up, running and ready to use - seriously, any idiot can do it. Really, it takes longer to unpack it and find a place to put it, that it does to start using it after plugging it in. I do have a gripe, and it's not just aimed at Western Digital: why do these HDD manufacturers continue to ship these drives formatted with FAT32? I would hazard a wild guess that probably more than 95% of people that buy these things are using an XP (or equivalent) system (and I'm sure that some upset win98se user will rebut me on this). But seriously, if you're using XP, it's almost a necessity that the drive be reformatted to the NTFS file system. Not a terribly difficult task, but you need to know how to do it; either from the Computer Management Console or a Command Prompt. But this is a minor gripe. This is a terrific drive for the price. Is 1,000GB (1TB?) just around the corner?