bit-tech Shopping: WD My Book Essential Edition 2.0 External 500GB Hard Drive

Rating: 10

Time with product: 3

Strengths: - Great look- Small design- Completely quiet

Weaknesses: - None so far

Summary: I had a few older My Book drives and I recently bought some new drives. This 500GB My Book Essential is really a great drive for the price.The outside:It looks smaller than on the picture. The drive is actually pretty shiny. It has a lot of air vents on the top, back and bottom. It has a "clean" shape. No funky or obnoxious look. It's really nice on my desk.The inside:I liked that drive because it is totally quiet. No fan. I think it uses some new green power drives so it might help with the electricity bill :) The drive gets barely warm even in useFor backup:I have one drive to backup a PC laptop. I also connected it my mac and Time Machine automatically recognized it. The drive is connected through the USB port. The backup speed is pretty good for USB. It see about 25MB/s.I definitely recommend this drive to anyone looking for great value. It's small, quiet, reliable and quite good looking.

Rating: 6

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: easy set up, light, compact, sleek and stylish

Weaknesses: N/A

Summary: This hard drive is perfect for any regular person that is not computer savvy. I just plugged in the harddrive and transfer anything i want to it. Has enough space to store all my pictures and songs to free up my computer.

Rating: 2

Time with product: 2 Year

Strengths: Works fine for a few months, inexpensive. easy to install

Weaknesses: I bought three units, none of them currently operational, they tend to wear out for one reason or another. They start having problems reading or writing, until they stop function completely.

Summary: I bought three units, none of them currently operational, they tend to wear out for one reason or another. They start having problems reading or writing, until they stop function completely. Ththree units I bought were bought at Amazon UK, and they refered me to the manufacturer for warranty. I did not replace them or repair them since I don't want data to be lost. I switched to other manufacturers.

Rating: 2

Time with product: 1 Years

Strengths: Cheap

Weaknesses: Broken

Summary: Worked fine for a year and a half and then began to have problems (two weeks ago). Currently I'm scrambling to get back lost data; WD fix-it software repaired some lost sectors but it is not reliable. I suspect a mechanical problem that is gradually wiping out sectors (?) I'm not very happy, especially since I read that WD makes very reliable drives. I've had other drives last for five years and more without any problems. WD, of course, cannot help once the HD breaks and the data is lost. I tried Data Recovery software from one of WD's partners but it didn't work. Meanwhile, what kind of HD can I buy that's reliable?

Rating: 4

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: It is sleek and small

Weaknesses: No reliablity and not good for long run

Summary: Hi,I bought this 500 GB Western Digital external Hard drive from costco. It works for a months or 2 after that it started to give the problem. It won't be reconized and we need to unplug and plug again. some time we need to shutdown the computer. One fine day it stop working and it is asking me to format the hard drive, when I click any folder in the hard drive.