Western Digital My Book Premium Edition Hard Drive - WDG1C5000N
Western Digital My Book Premium Edition 500GB Combo (USB 2.0/FireWire) External Hard Drive

I had no trouble, you plug it in and it does the rest, I did have to reformat to NTFS but had no trouble, just followed the instructions - good speed, I'm using it on a USB 2.0 port - serves my needs well for a hard drive back up - not a year old yet, so we'll see....:)
 
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It worked fine for a year and a two days. Then it died -- days after the warranty expired -- almost as if on cue. This is the last WD drive my company buys. Ever.
 
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Good product, good price, and shipped quick! So far I have no complaints about this hard drive. You just plug it in and the configuration process begins and ends in very little time. All in all, I am well pleased with the Western Digital hard drive and buy.com.
 
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I ordered the drive as I have had no problems with WD internal hard drives in the past. I then read many bad reviews of this drive lasting a short time. I tried to cancel my order, but it had already shipped. I decided to keep it. Many people suggested reformatting to NTFS to improve the speed. The format failed and I had a beautiful paper weight. I returned the drive for a refund and bought a Seagate internal drive with an ADS NAS enclosure instead.
 
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My first review panned the WD backup software as slow. Shortly after I submitted the review I happened to read that this drive comes formatted as FAT32. I didn't check for that when I installed it the first time. DUH! Of course the backup was slow! **IMPORTANT: If you don't have an Apple or older WinX equipment, format this drive as NTFS before you do anything else with it!** (Well, first I saved the included software onto my laptop's HD first, then copied it back after formatting this drive.) Voila - after formatting the drive as NTFS the included WD backup software works perfectly...and is very fast.
 
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Nothing is perfect!!! If the intensity of the blinding blue light on the front can be reduced it would make this the number one external hard drive.
 
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I was able to format this drive as Mac OS Extended using Disk Utility on a MacBook Pro. Since the WD MyBook is 7200rpm and is connected via firewire 2, it speeds up large file work compared to the same using the internal drive on the MacBook. My Book has good power management. My only complaint is the drive is a bit noisy.
 
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The drive itself is attractive, quiet and supremely easy to set up and use - plug it in, watch the software install, then start filling it up. 5 minutes tops. I especially like the firewire connection, which freed a valuable USB port on my laptop. The backup software is the weak link in the package that dropped my score to an overall 4. This has to be slowest backup software I have tried to use in 25+ years. My old tape drives were faster. And it's a real shame because the user interface and concept are really attractive. I just don't want to take 26 hours to back up 56GB of data when even the crappy Nero 7 backup only took 10 hours and I can drag and drop it in even less time. Buy the drive! Erase the backup program!
 
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I've replaced the drive once already with bad block failures. Less than a year later, the replacement starts getting bad blocks. Can't even keep it going long enough to get the data off of it. WD considers the warranty date from the purchase of the original drive so now this one is 'out of warranty'. Burned and will never purchase another WD.
 
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Although I was able to clone my original hard drive, this back-up drive does not act as a bootable drive. There is no way knowing in advance if this is true. So my money was wasted, as I would not have bought it had I known.
 
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Excellent Product. Installs easily.
 
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To start off, this product includes one USB cable and one firewire 400 cable for those who are confused like me whether the cables are included or not. Now, on to the product. PROS: I got this hard drive a week ago when the price was cheaper and it's worth every penny of it. You can barely hear the drive running once it is powered on, the fans are great for cooling, the drive is built for durability (has bumper cushions on the contours of the drive), and runs very fast on USB 2.0 on NTFS format(I have yet to try out the firewire features). CONS: If you plan to use the drive for both PC and Mac, you have to format the drive to FAT32 and there is a max limit transfer of 4GB for a single transfer. I also had some troubles with the power off switch. Even though the manual says press it once and it'll safely turn off, the drive powers back on immediately afterwards. Overall, the drive comes pre-formatted to FAT32, so for NTFS use (highly recommended for PC users since you can transfer files more than 4GB in size each time), you will have to reformat to NTFS. However, once you do reformat, the included software such as WD Backup and GOOGLE are erased and the only way to get them back is to register your hard drive with Western Digital.
 
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To start off, this product includes one USB cable and one firewire 400 cable for those who are confused like me whether the cables are included or not. Now, on to the product. PROS: I got this hard drive a week ago when the price was cheaper and it's worth every penny of it. You can barely hear the drive running once it is powered on, the fans are great for cooling, the drive is built for durability (has bumper cushions on the contours of the drive), and runs very fast on USB 2.0 on NTSC format(I have yet to try out the firewire features). CONS: If you plan to use the drive for both PC and Mac, you have to format the drive to FAT32 and there is a max limit transfer of 4GB for a single transfer. I also had some troubles with the power off switch. Even though the manual says press it once and it'll safely turn off, the drive powers back on immediately afterwards. Overall, the drive comes pre-formatted to FAT32, so for NTSC use (highly recommended for PC users since you can transfer files more than 4GB in size each time), you will have to reformat to NTSC. However, once you do reformat, the included software such as WD Backup and GOOGLE are erased and the only way to get them back is to register your hard drive with Western Digital.
 
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I liked this one very much. Make sure you format it to NTFS, this helps a lot.
 
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I'm using it for Time Machine backup for my MacBook Pro and it seems to be doing fine. It's response time via FireWire 400 is speedy, and it has plenty of capacity.
 
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This drive worked well for about 8 months, then it stopped working. My computer could see the drive, and even after a time read the contents of the drive, but I couldn't open anything or write to the drive. That in itself is disappointing, but the drive is still under warranty, so I've gotten an "advance RMA" from Western Digital, which means I give them a credit card number, they send me a new drive, and I return the broken drive to them. It's been two weeks and they still haven't sent the new drive. Are there really no other 500 GB drives in their warehouse that they can send me? So I'm disappointed in WD's support & customer service, though I liked the drive while it was working.
 
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The WDG1C5000N is a dual interface drive (USB & FW400). The WDG1T5000N, which is white, is triple interface. Buy.com shipped the product immediately and it arrived the day after I ordered it, via FedEx.
 
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Unit is very fast to write at USB 2.0 and it will work at USB 1.1 (but takes forever to initialize at that data rate) Had no problems at all :)
 
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I have used these for about a year now, as I said; so far so good. Buy.com price is a bargain.
 
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Western Digital MyBook Pro 500GB Triple Interface (USB 2.0 and Firewire 400/800) External Hard Drive - WDG1T5000N external hard drive works great and was very easy to install after I figured out that I did not need to connect the fire wire, for which there was no connection on my computer (wasted some time here). Then, when I tried to register the product, the model number was not listed as one of the choices but I was able to continue using the seriel number. Not a big deal, just little unnecessary annoyances for computer illeterates like me. As soon as I hooked up the USB cable it totally installed itself. I backed up my entire computer today and had no problem at all. Great product and, as always, super fast delivery from Buy.com.
 
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We have over 5,000 GB in portable "swap" trays that we use for primary video storage in our small video studio business. I have three of these WD 500 GB USB/1394 drives for backup and other purposes. I especially like the multiple interfaces that allow me to connect to any machine in the studio without having to give it a second thought....move one to where I need it; plug it in; and I'm in business if a few moments. All perform as expected. Buy.com has been an excellent source for this kind of thing. BTW, I highly recommend Genie Backup software (download from http://www.genie-soft.com--simple, reliable, fast and very affordable (especially for an incremental backup). I back up my business data every night.
 
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This is a great unit, as advertised, fairly easy to set up once reformatted to NFTS ( should come that way ). The cool blue activity / capacity indicator ring is interesting but doesn't give much of an actual indication of how much capacity is really left; but it is pretty. It is relatively quiet and cooler than most external drives. Backup software is a little confusing but once set up, does work, I especially like the incremental backup feature. Running high capacity multimedia files directly from the drive using the firewire connection have given me no problems. I have however encountered a few bugs with the occasional failure to be able to unmount or remove the drive. Other than that- no problems. I plan to get another when the time comes. I used free shipping from Buy.com and received the unit in just 3 days. Excellent! WD site allows access to ALL original and updated software for the drive once you register. A BIG Plus! Great Deal.. Hard to beat..
 
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I bought this as back up for my Mac Book Pro and its sweet!works awesome in firewire mode and great value for the money! Robert
 
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Firewire was 6 to 6 prong ~ this was not said. Laptops come with 4 prong to save space. You need to get a 6 prong to 4 prong. The speed difference is noticable.
 
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Had previously had a Linksys EFG250 that was a piece of junk. This product is small, quiet & so far works beautifully.
 
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I read a couple of reviews where the software for backing-up a hard drive does not work after I bought this external drive and I experienced this myself. I have a Dell Precision M70 that is a couple of years old. When I tried to back-up my C: drive I let it run all night and only 6% was completed in the morning. Now I have to do the research to find the solution to solve this glitch. What a pain! Also, when transfering files between two brands of drives it would not let me select large folders to transfer. Therefore, I had to transfer small amounts at a time which took hours to do. This drive is very quite which I like.
 
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I'm using this drive for Leopard Time Machine backups. I had no trouble mounting the drive using FireWire. The fan is very quiet and the data transfer rate is very fast. I've only had it 2 weeks, so it's too early to say how reliable it is, but so far I'm happy with my choice.
 
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I purchased this to be able to install multiple Operating Systems in order to boot up computers with bad hard drives. Also to be able to back up data from those hard drives. It is easy to use and serves my purpose well.
 
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works well, the backup software included works a bit funny on the mac. doesn't seem to want to open except from the alias on my desktop (which was automatically generated there). runs a little louder than i expected, and i dont know if i'd want to place this in between books on a bookshelf for fear of not enough ventilation. overall, seems to work well, partitioning went easy with disk utility, and the software after i figured out the trick to open it worked, and backed up all my files instantly. not that i'll be using the included software after I get leopard...
 
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I haven't had any trouble with the HD. Great Price for the amount of storage size. I've had some trouble with scheduling backups with the software provided, but it could just be me.
 
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Using Firewire is 'blazing hot', and so much faster than USB! Spend the extra few bucks, and get your data transfered fast!
 
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The My Book drive arrived in good shape, ahead of the estimated delivery date. It was very easy to setup the USB connection, but I had some problem setting up the firewire. This is the first firewire device I tried connecting to my PC, so I'm not sure when the problem is. I did a full backup of My Documents, and scheduled weekly incremental backups using the backup software supplied with the drive. I have had no problems, and would recommend this drive to others.
 
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it wasn't clear from reading the description whether cables were included. indeed, they ARE (both USB and Firewire). however, they are only 2 ft. so, i also purchased some firewire cables. not only did i get 6 ft cables (which really makes arranging the drives easier) but they were of much higher quality (Tripp-lite F005006).
 
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I connected the drive via the included fire wire cable and plugged it into the wall. Viola! That's it... Done... I connected the unit to my Imac running leopard. I have not tried to connect multiple hard drives yet as listed in other reviews, but I will eventually, hopefully the bugs that have been acknowledged by WD will be worked out by then. So if you're connecting this unit to a Mac running Leopard, without multiple external drives, Just do it! Oh yeah, Unlike other drives I've owned, it's super quiet too. JPM
 
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Works great as a bootable backup for my new iMac.
 
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Does what is should, is fast and HUGE....HUGE I say!! Might be too big for my needs, could have gone with less GB and had a smaller hase. Not very portable but a super value for your home storage needs.
 
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Simple to use. Great backup software included with the Premium edition. Would recommend.
 
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Buy.com service was excellant and the drive works flawlessly. I'm extremely pleased with all aspects of this transaction.
 
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This is a pretty good hard drive. It gets a little bogged down when watching a movie from it and either downloading to it at 200+ Kb/sec, but that's to be expected. It also gets a little shaky when I browse the internet, but I expect that may be my PC. No telling really. Overall, very satisfied. Let's see if I can fill this bad boy up!
 
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I'm very happy with this purchase. Good price and good service. Very easy to use, just plug it in to your USB and that's it! It look nice sitting on my desk, take up very little space and it runs more quitely than I expected. I very happy with this purchase.
 
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Very pleased with the ease of use. Photography is my hobby, so I needed more storage for my digital photos.
 
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This is a very good product from WD. The price seems a bit higher compared to other 500GB products, but it is very reliable. It has not given problems for about 3 months now. It has firewall software, which adds another layer of protection in case you need. I am satisfied with this product.
 
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I have used Western Digital products exclusively for several years because of their longstanding reliability. I rely on these drives for my everyday work as a post production editor for film. But, I just bought these latest mybook drives and there are major problems. When I try and plug 2 mybook pro's in together they will ALL UNMOUNT and become UNUSABLE!! I've called WD Level 2 Tech Support several times -- They are aware of the problem and their engineers are working on a fix -- It could be two weeks or it could be two months...they've told me. I've totally LOST FAITH in WD -- They sent me a replacement drive and that had the same problem -- Supposedly, there is an addressing issue on some macs where the OS gives both drives the same GUID -- because of this the OS sees both drives as identical and gets confused and unmounts them. This is what Level 2 tech support leaked to me while on the phone. They also said they were unsure what the problem was which SCARES me even further. One tech told me that they were not able to reproduce the problem -- but noted that I was not the only one who had this problem. I tried using both drives with my MacBook Pro lapptop as well as an Apple G4 Dual 1.42 Ghz machine and got the same problem -- WD HAS NO SOLUTION!! BUYER BEWARE!! THEY HAVE NO FIX FOR HTIS PROBLEM!!!
 
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This is a great hard drive... low noise and extremely fast when connected using the Firewire port. The optimized buffer really helps the drive and its stability is amazing. It has one of the fastest response time from sleeping mode to awake mode among all the hard drives I have tested. Additionally the drives do not get very hot even during long periods of usage. This is my third hard drive from Western Digital...Would recommend to all.
 
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Very quick set-up, and easy to use....just plug in and go. I bought this drive solely to store videos and photos. Plugs in easily enough, runs quiet, and has a well designed exterior so it can be placed horizontal, vertical, etc.... Doesn't seem to run hot, and has multiple ports.
 
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Delivery was great. Received the WD500GB harddrive in 3 days. Opened the box, connected the drive to my computer, formatted the drive and was off running. I wish every product was this easy to get going. This is my second WD Harddrive. I also have a 250GB MyBook drive. This is a great product.
 
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I paid $187.99, which was a great deal. This was my second MyBook, and I love them both. Just plug and go - I formatted to NTFS, which took awhile, but it's a one-time thing. I use the USB 2.0, which is fairly quick at reading and writing; I do not have Firewire on my PC, otherwise I would give that a go. The blue glow looks really cool on my desk, but the "Capacity Guage" is super overrated - apprently it is in increments of quarters, so it isn't overly accurate, and the backlight tends to bleed into the entire circle, rendering it ineffective...but whatever. Overall, I love it. Though I haven't tried many externals, the MyBook series is still my favorite for the money.
 
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Can't say enough good things about this drive. Much better than my previous Western Digital, smaller, a lot quieter and lots of space. I'm sure I'll fill this one up and be getting another or a 1Tb drive sooner than I planned, but for now, this is one of the best externals I've owned. Plus, it works great with the new Apple Exterme Base Station (802.11n).
 
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The WD My Book Premium Edition 500GB Combo is awesome. I bought it because I was running out of space from my PC hard drive (250 GB, I work as a urban planner with a lot documents). The fire wire is a great feature, I'm able to transfer files in seconds. Also my computer is now running faster then before. I'm also thinking about buying another for my wife's computer.
 
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Buy.com was extremely fast on delivery. I'v only had the drive a short while, but am very satisfied with it. The only complaint is that I believe WD should offer drives preformatted to NFTS file format, rather than make 95% of customers reformat.
 
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I purchased several My-Book external firewire/USB2 combo drives, this one was a 500 Gig model. And have LOVEd every one of them. Easy to set up. I use a Mac so it is automatically discovered, formatted, and ready to go in the twinkling of an eye. Superior product and superior service from Buy.Com
 
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