Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive | 
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| Brand: Western Digital
Category: CE
Buy New: £64.59
New (23) Used (1) from £64.59
Rating:  48 reviews
Media: Electronics
Fragile: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 2.1 x 6.5
MPN: WDH1U5000E
Model: WDH1U5000E
UPC: 718037120928
EAN: 0718037120928
ASIN: B000WP0NM8
Release Date: November 25, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Hard drive - external | | • | 5.4 cm x 13.7 cm x 16.6 cm | | • | 1.15 kg | | • | Middle East, Africa, Europe | | • | 500 GB |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Save space on your PC's hard drive and store your photos, music, videos and other important files on the My Book II Essential Edition external hard drive. You won't believe how easy it is to configure and use!
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| Customer Reviews:
 A great external Hard Disk January 28, 2008
John Nunn (Coventry, U.K.)
72 out of 74 found this review helpful
A superb external HDD, the USB2 connection ensures a good transfer rate with high reliability. The Supplied MIO software is unfortunately absolutely appalling and only a trial version at that, do not install despite the recommendations in the instructions. The device is very much plug and play with no drivers needed. I have got a pair of these attached to my development PC and they are great for storing old project data, iso images, unused virtual hard disk files and pictures. I would not recommend using this to run applications or virtual machines from as the performance is not good enough, but it should help free some static storage from your internal HDD's.
Stop whining March 6, 2008
skat dog (UK)
63 out of 66 found this review helpful
There's a running theme when you read reviews about hard drives; there will be at least one person giving it 1 star. And why? Because hard drives fail, that's life, and to be honest that is probably why you want one in the first place; to back up your files in case your computer hard drive fails. I work with hard drives on a daily basis and I see failers all the time. With a phyiscal medium there is always going to be a certain failure rate, especially consider how many million (or billion) hard drives have been manufactured.
Add to that the fact that a high percentage of people who have bad experiences with a product will write a review, but the majority of people who bought it without a problem will be happily backing up their data oblivious of all the whining reviews.
I bought the My Book as it's robust, cheap, and as quiet as any other I've heard. Oh and it works. And if it stops working, well I'll get it replaced under warranty.
Taking precautions! February 2, 2008
Titheman (Cheltenham, UK)
54 out of 58 found this review helpful
Had mine 2 weeks now, so far no problems (although of course the real test is whether it lasts years, not weeks!)
As mentioned by others, I find it quick and silent in use and simple to install.
But given the number of problems reported on these types of drives, I thought I would take a few precautions:
1) re-format to NTFS (tedious, but MS claim it's more robust than FAT....)
2) don't move it around much (The doc. does say that these devices are not intended to be portable)
3) as I only use it for backup, as soon as I start up my PC I run my backup (a simple batch file using xcopy commands is good enough for me,) then I disconnect the drive with the "Safely Remove Hardware Facility" - this seems to be a firm recommendation in the WD doc.
I do wonder if some of the problems people are experiencing are because they have physically removed the drive whilst applications are still connected to it.
I am willing to forgo constant data synchronisation in order to have the drive disconnected most of the time, but I guess that won't suit some people. This technique should also reduce exposure to virus contamination (I hope!)
Time will tell if these precautions do the trick or not.....
Other points to note:
If you're going to reformat to NTFS you might want to ensure that you copy off the user manual pdf first - I couldn't find it on WD's website. There is also a diagnostics module which I copied too, although I have no idea how useful this might be as yet. As others have noted, the trial software can be ignored.
The doc. recommends that you keep the air vents on the top, back and bottom clear of obstruction, but every picture in their publicity material shows it stood upright (i.e. with the bottom blocked!)
Amazon are currently selling via Pixmania - I have seen lots of problems reported with this outfit (not least being that they are based in France, which makes product returns a right pain.) So I'm afraid I bought mine elsewhere.
Right now it's worth 5 stars - but that could change dramatically if it fails!
P.S.
I would like to make image copies of my C: drive in the event of a total failure of my internal disk, but the reviews of Norton Ghost seem almost as problematical as those for external drives, so I'm still thinking about that.
Great product! Just ignore the technical stuff! January 14, 2008
S. Hollingsworth (Cheshire, England)
41 out of 46 found this review helpful
I'll make this as short as possible because this does just what it says on the tin! Stores whatever you like! The price is right and the size of it can't be described as minimal. Basically if you need extra hard drive space I would recommend it as it looks good, is relatively compact and is simple to use. It tranfers quickly too, I managed to put 80gb of stuff on it in less than an hour. The reason I only give it 4 stars is due to the software you get on it which it prompts you to install. DON'T! They're only trial versions from some random company and they don't talk in plain english, so unless you wanna buy the full version ignore the software on it. But, I love it and I'm glad I got it!
EASY EXTERNAL HDD FOR PC OR PS3 January 1, 2008
Mr. D. Britton
27 out of 85 found this review helpful
First of all, I am not an employee of either Sony or WD,just a gadget fan who is excited to expand on his gear to try and achieve the constantly changing and unobtainable gadget utopia.I bought this HDD after considering many others including the original My Book (more XBox like with its green circle). Noticed this had just come out, so read a lot about the original, as there were hardy any reviews on this, anywhere on the web when I was looking.So far so good, crossing my fingers and hoping that this Western Digital is a "goody" and not one of the let downs that some people seem to have got and reviewed in the aftermath of their dissapointment, not holding back either, with some bad put downs.I got a PS3 at the latter of 2007 after the price drop and luckily managed to get the 60Gb one, now sadly departed (silly sony,who wants the inferior 40GbPS3 instead, really?). Well you might consider the 60Gb a lot, but it soon fills up with music, video and all the free content from Sony's Online Store such as Demos and Trailers in HD.To compensate for this, Sony allow you to swap over the internal HDD quite easily for a larger capacity one, eg. 200Gb, but to fit inside the PS3 casing it has to be a laptop sized 2 1/2" or sit outside with some fiddly and quite complicated work fitting a 3 1/2" externally with pliers as I saw on youtube recently.I could not be bothered with all that business so, decided to look into the other route of The External Drive seeing as prices were-a-tumbling nicely. Not as nice looking job as a internal swap;with a small internal laptop drive, in that; end result is twoboxes (PS3&HDD) and two mains plugs, but nevertheless, should have its advantages in easy2PCswapability.Did you get that? Aren't Gadgets getting more Bonkersly complicated to keep up with,or is that just me?Anyway, I tried looking for an easy solution or a recommended HDD on Forums and suchlike, but somepeople seemed to have problems with this solution,eg. Formatting to Fat32 (no worries- MyBook2 is already Fat32) has to be done for the PS3 to read the drive, apparently.Leave it Fat32 and only downside to PS3 compatability upside= 2Gb file size Max (so I've read but not tried yet- 2gb on one file is awfully big!, unless something in HD, that's unlikely for me at the moment.NoProblem=Fat32=no need to change anything=swappable between PC or PS3=EASY. So on recieving,after a week of reading online, and deciding on risking any bad reviewing, and because its a nice blue PS3-matching new bluelight on the front and PS3-matching black casing (hehe), with fingers crossed, first step was not to plug into PS3, but to plug into PC, which..... is dead easy.I think it will power up and down when it is needed,very nice.No noisy fan, looks good, like a Book, funnily, a blue lit one:) great...only..... It needs (supplied) a mains supply box tranformer-typethingy, which is a bit crappy-ugly and seems to spoil the aesthetic slightly, but you soon stop worrying about it.Then there's the USB cable to plug in, and it hums and clicks (fairly quiet) into action.... up it pops on my Computer! as a removable drive:) Some software is bundled on it, but I ignored this nonsense and started dragging and dropping some Music,Photos,Video etc. remembering to put said content in the right names on the folders, so my PS3 would read them ok.ie put all mp3's in "Music" Folder etc.By the way, the PS3 now has the ability to play "Divx Video stuff you can play on your PC but not your PS3", but can now because of free firmware updates provided by Sony, thanks Sony:) heheSO,once you haven't even got anywhere near to filling it (and quite quickly too) with Divx,mp4,mp3,jpg and loads of other stuff the PS3 can read ok, unplug it, and once again fingers crossed, I plug it into the PS3 Media Machine under TV waiting for a new capacity brain,via one of the USB ports........ Tv remote Ready, SixAxis Ready, cue the orchestra, up pops the XMB, go to your Media............. and there you have it, loads of new content available taken from your PC,one big library beyond your wildest dreams available to watch on your sofa making the PS3 unbelievably brilliant at just about everything, thanks Sony, thanks WD. Just hope it lasts me ages before I get another one.(and please don't die at when its 99% full & so many long hours of filling you up)A few more things to work out yet, but I am most pleased. Easy to swap and change stuff with both PS3 and PC, best option by far, forget anything more complicated and just easily add this to your already happy internal HDD 60Gb PS3.(I got about 455Gb free on my 500Gb MyBook2),so loads of space, Go For It!!!Of Course There's lots of other Brands that could probably do this just as well, but the WD MyBook2 looks very compatable sat next to PS3 with its Black Case and lovely blu-light.It Looks made to fit,lovely partners and with the forthcoming Sony PlayTV (Dttv add on), this might just be a neccessary purchase and storage capacity needed for the complete Media Hub, at a very reasonable price.
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