Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000 by Western Digital
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Digital camera reviews of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1U5000
Digital camera Review: 5 Stars
I received this hard drive promptly and was very easy to set up. You can decline the Google software in the beginning. I use it to store my pictures and music to make room on my desktop. Of course, my pics are put on cd's as well for backup.Digital camera Review: 1 year and 4 months later = Fail
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive worked great for me for a full year and 4 months. I had it networked to my airport extreme for wireless downloads/backups/movie viewing. Died on me last night.
Fortunately, I had most of the critical data and mp3 purchases backed up on my computers, but this event has really challenged my view on external drives. If this type of failure is common, then I really have no desire for a 1TB drive or higher... at least not until solid state becomes an affordable reality.
Digital camera Review: 3 Years and the Case Finally Gave Up
Summary: 4 Stars
A testament to the longevity of the hard drive Western Digital put inside this drive. 3 Years of pretty solid hard use, and the drive still works. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the case or electronics. Last night the drive quit working after booting up my computer. No coaxing would bring the drive back, front light worked, no drive spin up.
If you google disassemble WD 500Gb My Book, you'll find an instructions on how to remove this case. It's not hard to do, just tricky. Remove the paint or sticker over the screw on the side of the case, press in two tabs at the top and bottom, and the cover slides off (with a lot of coaxing).
Once I had the case open, it was pretty simple to free the WD Caviar drive from the housing. These are SATA drives. Open the computer case, connect power and the SATA cable, a brief driver self install, a reboot, and this drive has a second life as an internal drive.
I fully expect that this drive will last a good long time internally. Simple surgery and the drive has a whole new life.
By the way, this is actually a pretty noisy external drive. Although there is no fan, the drive makes a pretty decent noise while spun up. The reason you recognize it, after around 10 minutes if you don't use the drive, you hear a click, and a whining wind down noise.
These were decent drives at the time. The newer models are way less expensive.
Digital camera Review: 3rd and last WD drive ever
Summary: 1 Stars
This was my 3rd WD drive. First failed after 1 year becuse I plugged in my printer power cord into it. O.K. My falt, but the drive should have an internal fuze for power surges. The second only lasted 7 months and just stopped working for no reasion, I lost half my OIF pictures from my last deployment. They are gone, and gone for ever as the CD they were backed up on got lost in a box in my last move. The 3rd never worked out of the box at all. I will never buy WD ever again.Digital camera Review: 4 and a half stars.
Summary: 4 Stars
I also have the Western Digital My Book Premium Drive 500gb and when it was time to add more space I decided that I didn't need Firewire/400 and backup software. Even though they look like the same drive physically, the "Essential" drive looks cheaper. Probably because of the lack of Firewire port, the essential is slightly smaller in volume. The Premium edition had nice a nice hard feel and rubber footing around the edges of the top, back and bottom of the unit. However, with the essential, there's only 2 rubber footing on the bottom, thus it just feels cheaper than the premium.
With that in mind, I think it's still a better value than the premium, since you're getting the same storage, you save 40-50 bucks by not having Firewire and backup software.
Performance-wise, my 2 mybooks have been performing just dandy. I've only had the essential for a couple of weeks, the premium one I've had for I think about 8 months. I use it to backup all my video, music and photos and it's a solid performer. I transport them back and forth and only turn on the unit when I save data off my main powerhouse windows computer, then I use the drives to access my files off my Apple laptop at my loft.
They do come with small power bricks, but overall I like the black design, it goes nice with my PC but doesn't look that great next to my powerbook.