Western Digital My Book Essential Edition Hard Drive - WDG1U5000N
Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

I have been using it for the past one year to back up my digital pictures and videos. No problems! Works great!
 
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I've used this for a number of months, it's reliable and works quietly in the background. I would recommend this as a good buy. I don't think mechanical hard drives are terribly reliable long term, looking forward to the development of better solid state drives. I'm planning on backing up everything on this drive to another drive and keeping two duplicate drives. For the convenience of having everything in one place when you're looking for a particular item, and with the low price of hard drives these days, I think duplication is a small price to pay.
 
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I had this device for 4 weeks before it crashed. Now I am looking at a lot money for data recovery. My computer does not even recognise this device even though the drive is showing up in my device manager. Waste of money and waste of data!! I will spend hundreds to retrieve irreplaceable documents. BUY ANOTHER EXTERNAL DRIVE!!!
 
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Who would have thought that I would (or should have to) need a back up for my backup? 15 months after I bought this pile of junk, I can no longer transfer information on to the HD. I am now taking everything off of it as it is just a matter of time before it stops letting me do this either. The fact of the matter is that this is a cheap HD, which is why we all bought it. When most of us write reviews, it is within the first couple of months (and usually days). Everything works at first, but what good is it if after the warranty runs out (which really is the least of my problems) it stops working? Just buy something else.
 
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Drive started to make "click" noises and then failed. Lost many ctitical files. Have many other WD drives. I will replace all of them. Do not trust WD any more. I wonder why WD warranty the drives only one year. Because they fail just after that.
 
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I bought a Western Digital MyBook (Essential Edition) about 5 months ago. Set up was easy and I moved all my music to it, and also backed up my photos. Today I tried to connect it again, and while it will show that a "external drive detected" and my device manager shows WD as a disk drive which is functioning properly and enabled - I am unable to access it. It does not show up on My computer or when I try the Explore function. I have it connected now and the light is glowing - but I cannot access it! So it is better to go for other brand.
 
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I bought a WD 1TB studio edition external hard drive at the end of May this year and not more than 1 month later the hard drive CRASHED and won't start up! What a bunch of CRAP! When I get my replacement one I will sell it. I WILL NEVER BUY WD AGAIN!
 
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i have had this for less than a year and one day last week, i heard a "clicking" sound when i started my computer. and when i tried to access my files from "my computer" the HDD was not even showing, so i unplugged it for 5 mins and plugged it back in, same thing... still didnt show. GO WITH ANOTHER BRAND. i have a Fantom Drive that i have had for 3 years now and its still running to this day! hope this helps because it SUCKS to loose all your files!
 
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Its dead now ...... 2 years, and its dead. Won't by WD again. I believe this is my 2nd WD to die ...
 
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Had one of these for about 8 months using it for mass storage of movies, and music and then it would overheat and not be recoginized by XP anymore. Luckily I could back up the info to an internal drive. It would be best used for storage and not everyday use. Typically dying one month after warranty.
 
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Product worked great for a year then went bad. I lost all of my data that was on it (was using it for time machine - kind of ironic). Thankfully I backed up my data through other means as well...be careful!
 
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Failed exactly 1 week out of warranty. Buy a HD and a cheap external case. You will save yourself money and will have a product that will most likely last longer.
 
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Ths worked straight from the box, no problems. Have copied all MyDocs quickly and updated as required. No problems. Would recommend this.
 
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great buy for this size external hard drive
 
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Plugged it in and it worked without a hitch. It's quiet, fast, and (so far) reliable. While I've only had the drive a few months, I feel pretty confident that it'll be a good long-term storage solution.
 
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It is a great product for the price.
 
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No matter what adjustments are made in the bios and CMoss, the computer attempts to boot from this drive. Western Digital says they cannot help me because my bios does not give the options needed to change this. I'm forced to unplug this drive whenever I re-boot the machine. My question is: How come this is not the case with any other external drive I have owned? I never had a situation where the computer confused the external drive with the boot drive before. What did Western Digital do inside the drive to allow this situation? That, they would not answer.
 
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I have purchased three of these drives from different sites. I chose Buy.com this time because they offered free shipping and a lower price. The drive rocks and that is no surprise given that it is Western Digital. I will buy from Buy.com again in the future. As for this drive, it behaves as it should and has given me no trouble at all. I definitely recommend it!
 
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I've used western digital for 6 years now and this was the second one I bought, neither one has gone wrong. I haven't had one crash yet and actually my sister dropped my current one and it was still fine. If you're looking for a external at a good price, I'd go for this one.
 
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I bought this to use with my 80 GB Moxie (TIVO wannabe). With serious doubts, I plugged it in, turned it on and Moxie immediately saw it and asked if it was OK to format it. After a few seconds it was done and the status menu verified I now had tons of recording space. It is truly rare to experience such a simple installation of an electronic gizmo.
 
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This thing is fast and stays cool. I am replacing a backup drive that gets sooooo hot. I believe that heat destroys drives.
 
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My hard drive arrived in just three days and in excellent condition. The drive was easy to set up (format) and is performing better than expected. It is not noisy and does not get hot. Looks good on my desk. Great value for the money.
 
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The price is unbeatable. My Book is so quiet you never know it is on. And it is so simple to hookup. My only quirk is the light stays on all the time, so I have to unplug it when it's not in use.
 
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Plugged it in, turned it on, WIN XP immediately recognized it, and I was ready to go. This 500 MB drive replaced a 350 MB unit that I've moved to backup duty for my wife's laptop. I was already running Norton Ghost 10.0 and the transition was effortless. (Note: WD does not provide any backup software with this unit.) I don't think anyone will actually mistake this for a book on my desktop, but it is unobtrusive and stable.
 
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Not forgetting to mention the excellent service from buy.com, the product thus far (I've had it about 1 month) seems to be trouble free and was very easy to install. My only objection (and it is not with the drive, but with ALL manufacturers) is that these external drives (and most internal) are misrepresented on their size capacity. A 500 GB drive is, in this case, really only 465 GB. I think being 35 GB (7%) smaller than advertised is significant. They should be advertised for the true capacity a customer will receive.
 
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I was waiting for these things to drop in price. Very satisfied with the purchase. Easy to use. I backed up files on three PCs in an hour.
 
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I used this drive to transfer my dish dvr files for more space, it worked great, and simple...although dish charges a one time activation fee.
 
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The drive works like a charm. It's also faster than I had expected. I recommended it to other family members who ended up buying ones for themselves.
 
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I have 6 of these drives with about half are over a year old. So far none have failed which I think is pretty good. Can't beat the price. I just wish it has an eSata option included at this price.
 
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Good product. Use it for backing up a SBS 2003 server. Takes about 1/2 the time as the old QIC tapes it replaced (about 20X the capacity, too). Had to reformat it to make it NTFS and get rid of the software I had no use for.
 
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I just plugged it in and it works like a charm. It is a good thing it has an indicator on the front since it is so quiet you can't tell it is running. I'm using it to store thousands of songs and pictures. Great product and a great price.
 
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The Hard drive arrived in good condition with no delays. I have had this drive in operation for 2 weeks. The hard drive interfaced with my computer on the first try. I am using the drive as backup for my computer's internal drive. There have been no problems. I have only positive comments.
 
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I had thought I was going to get some backup software with it, but that was my bad for not checking that out first. I had to reformat for NTFS to get the large size file from Microsoft backup, but it was very easily done. Even a dummy like me did it effortlessly. A great "value". I would recommend it.
 
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Nothing to say, other than this Western Digital disk drive product is as good as all of the previous WD drives. I have two WD drives that are >10 years old and still going strong. I expect the new ones won't go quite that long; but .... Installation was trivial, the auto-start auto-shutdown feature is a welcome change from the previous generation, and under normal operation you won't notice this extra storage other than that it works.
 
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This is my second WD My Book Essential 500Gbyte USB drive. The first I formated in ntfs for my PC world, but the second I left in fat32 for a Mac. Both work well with no problems. However, based on other reviews, it is evident that this disk will likely fail someday. For that reason, it is important to use multiple different backups and store them in different places. Although one disk will likely fail someday, it is very unlikely that two disks will fail at the same time. These disks are getting cheap enough that multiple disk backups are economical. Good luck.
 
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I am very happy with this drive, unboxed, plugged in and it was working immediately, backed up my entire C:\ drive immediately!
 
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Great buy, love it
 
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The hard drive works well and quickly, and I like the way it looks. Plus, it was inexpensive, and Buy.com delivered it much faster than I expected. Definitely a good buy.
 
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i bought this harddrive for three weeks ago and it's working perfectly. I was able to track the item when i bought. The price for this harddrive is cheap compare to others.
 
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Not recognized by windows. Spent 45 minutes with WD tech support (not counting hold time) . He had me update my USB driver... no change. Tried on 3 different windows computers..same result. Unfortunately buy.com won't give me credit to buy a different drive. They'll only replace it with another of the same. Do yourself a favor and buy a better product to begin with.
 
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Works flawlessly. No complaints.
 
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This is my first Western Digital external hard drive. The hard drive worked fairly well at the beginning. However, this is not a robust drive that is designed to be moved around or transported. It is best left in one place. I do a lot of backups and then take the hard drive off-site for security. Over the past few months the drive has begun acting unreliably. When I plug it in I never know if it will be recognized by the system or not. I'm going to try and send it back to Western Digital. Last week I ordered a metal-encased Iomega 500GB drive that was highly rated and I'll see how that does.
 
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I'm very disappointed with this drive. The first one I had lasted 6 months then started getting I/O errors at which point it became unusable. Fortunately I had signed up for the warranty and Western Digital made replacing the drive easy though I had to pay my own postage. The replacement drive lasted me another 6 months at which point I started getting the infamous I/O error problem again. Lots of data lost and one unhappy customer. Of course the warranty was over at the last time of failure so I'm out of luck. I'd always considered Western Digital a premiere drive maker but my latest experiences have changed my mind. I replaced the broken drive with a Seagate FreeAgent w/ 5 yr warranty. So far it's working perfectly and I have lots of time on the warranty if it fails.
 
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Think of it this way... all hard drives go bad eventually. Period. No question about it. If you actually want some kind of piece of mind, make sure you're not only backing up to an external HDD. CDs and DVDs have an expected lifespan of about 100 years... yes, it takes a lot more to do a back up, but you know it's not going anywhere. Best of luck.
 
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Always the same ritual: the disk never gets noticed by Windows if you power it up after Windows has been booted. Always have to reboot the system and then unplug and plug in the USB cable several times before it'll finally be recognized by the system. I have 3 other USB disks by other manufacturers and they don't have this problem. It is clearly lousy firmware by WD. Get something else.
 
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I purchased this drive and it was very easy to set up and use. However, it did not last very long (only about 4 months). The power connector came loose inside the drive and I cannot get power into the drive in order to turn it on. I have not abused the drive, nor do I remove the power cord very frequently. Western Digital said they cannot repair their merchandise. However, they will replace it if you filled out your warranty/registration. But, I cannot recover the data on the drive and I am screwed. So, be very careful about choosing to purchase products from this manufacturer.
 
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Hello, i've been using the mybook 500 GB for more than a year, and when i got dependent on it and when its almost full, it crashed :( this thing is just like sea, its big, its beautiful, its quit and its really nice to live by. but wait there is a hurricane.. u see, i'm a dentist, and i entrusted this device to valuable records, and when its all there, it gone. so, i wrote an extensive email to the the guys at WD support, asking for help or guidance, and for the record they where kind kind to reply, but with what, an apology and a link to third party data recovery company. the thing is, the Master File Table (MFT) was corrupt, and without it u cant access the files on the drive, and neither Windows chkdsk utility nor several other utilities where able to recover it. now i'll have to pay some big bucks to the data recovery guys, sure more than what i saved by using this drive and not using a RAID. well, my advice is: DON'T get into it. alway keep ur valuable stuff on a RAID array. and u can use this drive only if u have 500 GB of expendable data, which i believe nobody has. Alway be careful.
 
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Works great, although needs formatting as NTFS. Very satisfied
 
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I have a small business and did not backup my computer. STUPID STUPID STUPID! I experienced a problem where a computer geek friend of mine restored the data on my hard drive to the Western Digital My Book Essential. All my data was saved! Could he have retrieved this an placed it on discs, absolutely. However, now my information is safely secured on this backup drive I don't have to worry about storing discs and I have since implemented a routine backup system. This is a wonderful compact product which I call my business lifesaver!
 
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The driver performs as expected and price was great.High speed transfers.I can't even tell it's running over the computer fan so it'spretty quiet.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!! I Love My Western Digital won't trade it for nothing else. Thanks Buy.com for all the Wonderful Deals
 
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The external hard drive is cool... It holds ALL of my music... No problems with installation, and it's very easy to use even if your not computer savy. would recommend this product for anyone who wants to free up space on their computer
 
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