Western Digital My Book Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive by Western Digital
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Digital camera reviews of Western Digital My Book Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
Digital camera Review: An obviously defective product
Summary: 1 Stars
I've owned five of the WD 500GB external drives and have just had the third one fail in a little over 2-years. I know of only two other people who own 1-each of these drives and both of theirs failed in under a year. My one attempt to rectify the matter with Western Digital lead to instructions to obtain a return authorization with the recommendation that I could pay a third-party to try to retrieve my lost 200GBs of data. I have not had this problem with the 80GB drives (of which I own 2), the 120GB (of which I own 1), the 250GB (of which I own 1), or the 1TB drives (of which I own 2). I also own 2 WD portable drives (250GB & 500GB) and have had reliable service so far. After hearing that Western Digital has added a VCD system to their 1TB external drives, I decided it was time to wave good-bye to Western Digital forever.
I can no longer recommend their products with a clear conscience and will likely never purchase anything from them again. I let them burn me once. I forgave and let them burn me twice. Now they have burned me 3-times on the same model and at three-strikes, they're now out of the running.
I gave them 2-stars (edited to 1-star), only because 2 of my five drives are still operating. For how long, no one knows.
As an update, as of today (1-19-2010), my final 500GB drive stopped being recognized by the system. Western Digital insists they don't know anything about a problem with this model but the reviews here tell an entirely different story. If you buy a WD 500GB Essential MyBook, you're throwing your money and your data away. After 7-years as a dedicated Western Digital customer I'm switching to Seagate.
Digital camera Review: At least it worked for a year?
Summary: 1 Stars
Pros - Worked for a year.
Decent Price
Cons - Full of bloatware.
Died 1 year after purchase.
Terrible support.
Digital camera Review: Auto shut off is annoying
Summary: 3 Stars
Seems reliable, quiet, and fast enough... but i really don't like the auto shut off feature. If you don't use it for 10 minutues it shuts down. When you try to access a file from it again, it goes back on. I could be working on a file, step away for a minute, then come back to it and save... and then it has to spin up again just to save. This takes a few seconds every time this happens, which slows me down.
Also... I am unsure of the longevity of an electronic item which is constantly going on and off. In any electronic device, a surge is sent through the device when powering up. We all know that this process of starting up is what wears electronics out, and decreases their life.
So.... if there is someone out there that knows how to turn this feature off... please let me know. I would love it if without auto shut off.
Digital camera Review: Avoid At All Costs
Summary: 1 Stars
Although the data is reliably kept and I have not encountered any data corruption, the hard drive frequently fails to mount. Only on rare occasions does the drive show up, and if it does I make sure to update what I can. I'm sorry to say this external hard drive is just not reliable in regards to access.
Digital camera Review: Avoid this product, their warranty is useless
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased one of these units last December for use as expansion space to hold music and photographs. It failed 5 days ago, unable to "be seen" by either my Mac or Windows computer; it worked one day, failed the next without being touched or moved; in other words, no physical damage to it by me. I had about 40 Gigs of data on this 500 Gig drive.
Suspecting either the power supply or USB-to-PATA interface card, I contacted Western Digital(WD) to see what I had to do to recover my data and have the defective unit repaired or replaced. I suspected that the drive itself was probably OK because of the nature of the failure to be seen at the interface. They told me that IF I tried to open the unit and recover the data from the drive, that that action would "void my warranty". Only if I paid one of their "preferred partners" [a minor fortune] to open the unit and recover my data to DVDs would they honor the warranty on their obviously defective product. If I had them send me a replacement unit, and subsequently returned the original unit in a "tampered condition" [i.e. I opened it to get at the hard drive to recover my data] they would then charge the retail price [$169, more than the current Amazon price for a NEW one] to my credit card. No person in their right mind would ever use this "warranty", so, in effect YOU HAVE NO WARRANTY for Western Digital products, unless you are willing to throw away your data or pay more than the price of a new drive to recover the data which THEY should have recovered for you in a repair department and sent back to you installed on a new drive. They obviously would rather just toss you another empty made-in-Thailand drive, or intimidate you out of using the warranty you paid for, than operate a proper repair service at US labor costs, to help you recover your data.
So, AVOID THIS PRODUCT LIKE THE PLAGUE. Buy one of the many Amazon "external hard drive enclosures" and a separate hard drive from Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, or other manufacturers who support their products; then, if the enclosure fails, you can open it up without "voiding the warranty" and recover your data if the drive itself is OK.
I went ahead and opened this defective unit, removed the hard drive and installed it on a desktop computer as a SLAVE drive, and am now copying the data to the main drive on that computer; nothing was wrong with the drive, only with their controller, as I suspected. I will buy an empty external enclosure from Amazon, and reuse this drive until it fails. I will also never buy another Western Digital product, because their warranty policy and customer service attitude STINKS. You can decide if you want to buy from this company at your own risk.