Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDH1U5000N Hard Drive - WDH1U5000N
Western Digital 500GB My Book Essential USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

I got this HD around November 2008, and I have had no problems with it at all. For the price point, it performs incredibly well, and I have no complaints!
 
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Purchased this product on the recommendation of my more technical savvy bro-in-law. Glad I did. Easy to use and the directions even come with pictures.
 
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I am, at best, a novice on the computer. Someone advised me to purchase an external harddrive because I have so many photos and videos saved on my computer. From the product description, I could not tell that I would need to format the external HD myself or buy a separate program. Once I used the trial program, I had to have someone remove and reformat the HD and create a program to use on the computer. I would NEVER have been able to do that myself. The information needs to include advice that a novice will understand. I was pleased with its appearance, however, and with Buy.com quick service.
 
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I have bought two of this item. One as a gift. Both are working just fine and fit the bill for our needs. Good price and Buy.com's usual quick and easy service. A good deal.
 
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I like the convenience of this HDD. It is attractive, compact and simple to use. Great value also.
 
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Ready to go out of the box. It came formatted FAT so I couldn't copy large files. I just reformatted it to NTFS and it works fine.
 
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I made my purchased a year ago! Great product, I will be ordering my 2nd wd 500g external hard drive from buy.com within the next few weeks. I'm satisfied with the product and recommend the purchase to anyone with storage needs.
 
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Price was right and shipping was almost immediate. So far, so good. I've only had it for a few weeks but it is working fine. I have had previous experiences with Western Digital hard drives and all are still running.
 
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Worked perfectly right out of the box. Very fast data transfer. I would recommend this product to anyone looking to backup their hard drive or to store files.
 
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This hard drive is VERY easy to use -- just plug it in.
 
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Got it approx. 2 months and so far so good. Very easy to use. I just turned on the system and was able to save items from my computer to this drive. The only thing is that I wished it had an on/off button so I didn't have to plug and unplug from the electric outlet every time.
 
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Bought this on special and couldn't be happier. It is plug and play right out of the box. It is super quiet and has good looks. Would recommend to anyone for a backup storage device.
 
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The 'WD' My Book runs good, not a single problem. If you are using Windows XP, I suggest you re-format the drive to NTFS, which gives more available drive space. First transfer the files from My Book to a folder on your computer. The WD My Book is very quiet, transportable, and the price is unbeatable. I showed mine to several friends, an they liked the look too.
 
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Performs OK
 
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True plug and play.
 
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Suits what I need. Decent price for a good product. I hope it lasts a long time (that is what I'm most worried about). The transfer speed with USB 2.0 is decent and acceptable. I just needed something to supplement my dwindling free space of my laptop's internal HDD.
 
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good product, good price, good service
 
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received drive, plugged it in, and it worked
 
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easy to use basic format is well
 
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My boss wanted a storage space and I found this deal. Note that this is not the regular compact jump where you just plug it into the USB. It comes with a power adaptor. The drive is slightly smaller than a bible you will find in the motels. For a person who is looking to store data on the go you will have to get the ones that HD makes for less than 250GB. This one is high speed data transfer. I would recommend this to the following people. 1. Computer technician with work related to hardware repair. 2. For personal use as a backup to your desktop. 3. The frequently formatting people. 4. People who have large music, video files, anniversary videos, holiday video's etc and want to keep it safe in a single vault. 5. Hi speed data transfer. Not recommended for 1. On the go people. 2. Multiple Business presentations in a single day. 3. Skinny laptop bags. Any way my boss was not really happy so I had to return and get a 160GB. Thanks to buy.com they really helped in easy returns and refunds.
 
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Works right out of the box; no issues
 
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I received my product 1 day after I ordered it from buy.com. I've not had any problems yet (although I've only had it a few weeks). I would recommend this product to anyone.
 
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This product is easy to use and you do not even know it is running. Overall it has met my expectation.
 
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Perfect for me as a backup storage drive. Performance is adequate enough, reliability seems fine, plug and play makes it easy. I've had very good experiences purchasing from buy.com. Recommended.
 
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Perfect for me as a backup storage drive. Performance is adequate enough, reliability seems fine, plug and play makes it easy. I've had very good experiences purchasing from buy.com. Recommended.
 
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I needed a backup memory for all my pictures, music, school work and more. I did some shopping around and found this site to have the best price for this product. I love this product and recomend it to other people. It is really easy to use and I love that it has so much memory in it. I was a little bit confused about the downloading part, but got it figured out. Works great.
 
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I needed more space for music, pictures, etc., saw this and gave it a try. I am very happy with the results and recommend it highly. I have put everything I have from work and home and have everthing in a place I can take with me were ever I need to.
 
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This is exactly what I expect from Buy.com, a quality product at a reasonable price. I highly recommend Buy.com and this external hard drive to anyone who is looking for a secondary drive for thier computer.
 
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This hard drive is super amazing!!! Its lightning fast and it turns off when you dont use it. its really sleek looking and small too. just an awesome product - i love it!!!!!
 
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I love these good-looking little external drives. They're small, efficient and simple to set up. Would definitely recommend to anyone.
 
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This is my second WD MyBook. I'm sorry to say that the first one died after a year when my dog bumped it and knocked it two feet to the stone floor. It was working great til, then. The new one is working great, and is in a place where none of the critters can disturb it. For the money, this thing is great. I plugged it in, formatted it for my Mac, and turned on Time Machine and it is doing very quick backups with no issues.
 
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Arrived in perfect condition. Very easy to set up and use. Quiet, and looks good. Seems to be working well, using with time machine.
 
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They look nice, great performance, quiet, and reliable. I don't need to say anymore.
 
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I am using this instead of the hard drive to store all my important documents and files. I like the convenience and the reliability of My Book. And the price was almost too good to be true.
 
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Using this drive with TimeMachine. I also created another partition which is being used to backup my Aperture masters.
 
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WD's MyBook works as promised. Unpacked drive, plugged in power and USB cables, and voila!, it was up and running. Couldn't be simpler. The real test comes in several years: will the drive still function then as well as it does now? However, my experience with WD in general, has been very positive over the past twenty years and I expect this drive to functioning well.
 
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Finally broke down and purchased an External HD. Decided to pick up this WD HD due to their excellent reliability in Internal Drives. I am pleased at how fast the transfer rate is and quietness of the drive (except for a 4 second screech when using XP's backup utility). Very easy to use and can back up all those massive photo and text folders I've been accumulating on my hard drive. Only downside I've seen so far is a mild decrease of computer performance when plugged in.
 
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We have used the drive and it works great. You plug it in and with windows xp it picks it right up and you can start transferring files. No problem!
 
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Shipping was fast and for the price...excellent!!! I use it to back up all my photos and documents. Windows Vista tells me it doesn't like using it for computer backup, but I do and everything has worked fine. I'm satisfied. I have one on each computer...one with windows XP and one with windows vista.
 
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Good buy for the money. I was looking for basic storage: load it up & then store it safely. This drive met my requirements just fine. Because it is USB 2.0 only, (no Firewire connection available), it felt slow. (Also because I was storing many 30gig files). If you're in a hurry, or going to use this drive for day-to-day storage, consider spending a few more bucks and get the model with Firewire connections.
 
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I like it because it works smoothly and looks great! It is also very quite when it is working.
 
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This USB Hard drive looks and works seamlessly. I bought it for my mother who is a PC newbie, and she was able to use it without instruction from me. (A minor miracle!) If this product was bundled with commercial or freeware backup software, it would have scored a perfect score from my perspective.
 
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The first external hard drive I ever purchased was a 120 gig WD hard drive for the same price if not more. That was maybe three or four years ago. Significant improvements have been made as obvious with this hard drive. No power button is great, as it powers on only when connected to your computer, and then shuts off as you computer does as well. Only thing was reformatting it, but that was no biggie. Great to have the extra storage space at such great value. Thanks Western Digital, and thanks Buy.com!
 
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I bought this to help my computer back up files and it turn out to be better than I expected. I really love this stuff and it is very easy to use.
 
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Price was right, delivery was fast and the drive works perfectly.
 
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Easy to buy, install and use. Very satisfied and I recommend it.
 
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I bought this drive to back up both my computer and my wife’s laptop. It arrived very quickly and was easy to use: just plug it in. As a 75 year-old non-computer person, ease of setup and use means a lot to me and this drive sure meets that criteria.
 
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The HD does perform as advertised. My intent was to use it for imaging my laptop, so I formated the drive for NTFS (it comes FAT32). The embedded software has an option to save to another location before you format, so as not to lose the limited instructions. As stated by others, the drive does not have an on/off button, but cycles on and off with your computer. I did want to connect the drive to my wireless router and use it wirelessly. However, I was not able to figure out how to see it on the network. My belief is that was my limitation with network settings. But the drive will certainly work more quickly with data transfer connected via USB. I would recommend a full feature backup or imaging software program rather than the quite limited version that comes on the drive. Read reviews on the various backup software products to find one that meets your usage needs. Overall, quite pleased with the simplicity, price and function of this drive.
 
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I have an older myBook and it has been very reliable so I got a larger one. Seems to be a fine product
 
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I have an older myBook and it has been very reliable so I got a larger one. Seems to be a fine product
 
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I bought this product a few weeks ago and so far it's working well. I backed up my data on it. I try to have everything in at least two copies, and this is for one of them. It's quiet and easy to use - I use it with Linux.
 
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