Reviews for WD My Book Essential Edition External 320GB 3.5" Hard Drive

Does what it should so far

Strengths: Lots of nice extra storage space, compact

Weakness: Always powers on with the computer unless unplugged or turned off manually via front button after startup. Sometimes spooks me when I periodically hear it rev up and down even when not being used

Finally got around to buying one of these for extra photo storage space, and far prefer it to the periodic burned DVD partial failure I was encountering unexpectedly.

Does what it should so far, though it does make me nervous when it sometimes revs up or down even though idle (which is normal, according to everything I've read elsewhere).

Price is good compared to the Premium version if one's primary need is just the storage space and that alone (versus additional backup software and the like).

Will say that I've actually found the size insufficient for my purposes as a photographer, so have had to complement it with 250GB versions as well. In hindsight, I might have just gone with multiples of the smaller size drives from the start. This one works just fine so far for what it is though, and has sure made my life easier.

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Can't go wrong with WD

Strengths: Good appearance, plug and play, runs very quiet, and though it doesn't have a fan, it never gets warm.

Weakness: It says it's 320GB but it's really only about 297GB, if i remember correctly.

This external is very durable, I dropped it marble floor once by accident and nothing happened. No cracks, no scratches, NOTHING. I've been using it for six months now and I've found nothing wrong with it. It also shuts down when your computer shuts down, which I find to be a very good feature, and it goes on standby when your computer is idle. Five stars.

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Unique design & Great performance

Strengths: Sleek, space-efficient design; Great price for a large amount of storage; Quiet and simple

Weakness: No backup software

The WD My Book is an easy-to-use external hard drive. It has a great compact design that does not take up much room on your desk.

When the drive is plugged in, it will automatically turn on/off with your computer which is or is not a hassle depending on your preference. Since I use my drive everyday, I don't mind this feature that much. However, it does seem to make my computer start up slower than usual.

The drive comes formatted in FAT32, but others have recommended changing it to the NTFS file system before use for better security and performance. Please note that this process cannot be reversed, that is, going from NTFS to FAT32. To convert, right click on the drive icon and then Format. In my experience, it is better to check quick format. I tried the conversion without it, and the process was slowly occurring at a rate of one percent per minute. Moreover, the process didn’t get to finish because of some error. So I highly recommend doing a quick format. After the conversion, there will be about 298gb of space. This isn't a loss of space from the 320gb because the drive manufacturer and the computer have different ideas of what 1gb equals. To the manufacturer, 1gb is 1000mb, and to the computer, 1gb is 1024mb.

Surprisingly, the drive and its adapter don’t feel hot after staying on for hours. They only get slightly warm compared to my hot laptop adapter.

The drive also remains nice and quiet while it works. One can hear periodic clicks when it’s processing something, but the sounds are not bothersome.

I use this drive mainly for storing video files, and it has worked very well for this purpose. As for transfer speeds, here are some examples just to give you an idea: Downloading a 249mb AVI file onto the drive took about 1 hour and 25 minutes. A 142mb RMVB file took 48 minutes to download.

I also transferred all 306mb of my photos from my laptop in about 9 minutes and 961mb of my music files in 28 minutes. After doing this, my laptop performs much more efficiently!
Overall, the My Book offers plenty of room to easily store your files at a great price.

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Great All-Purpose External Hard Drive at a...

Strengths: Lots of storage for MP3s, videos, photos. High-speed USB 2.0 connectivity.

Weakness: No Firewire connectivity. Can be kind of loud at times. Only a 1-year warranty.

This remarkably affordable external hard drive provides tons of space for all your pictures, videos, and music files. High-speed USB 2.0 connectivity makes data transfers quick and painless.

Part of the My Book series, this external hard drive is shaped like a small book and thus blends well in any home office environment. This drive only connects via USB 2.0--Firewire connectivity would have been nice, but Western Digital reserves this feature for its more expensive Premium Edition My Book hard drives.

Other gripes with this item are the noise that it produces (the fan can be kind of loud at times) and the fact that it turns on automatically when your computer is powered on. Personally, I like to keep my external hard drives off 95% of the time (only powering on when needed), so this "feature" is kind of annoying.

Overall, given the price of this drive, it's hard to complain too much. It's a sleek, effective hard drive, and is certainly recommended for those looking for an external hard drive.

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A Great Buy

Strengths: Attractive; Convenient shape; Easy to set up; Great prices available

Weakness: Possible question about actual capacity

All I wanted in an external hard drive was no hassle. Easy to set-up, easy to use, no problems. This drive delivers that in an attractive and space-saving package. I have mine standing like a book to save space, but it could be placed flat on the desk if that works better in your situation. Its quiet. I have 2 minor issues, however.

First, my computer sees it as being 298 GB. I am used to drives being a little smaller than advertised but 22 GB would be a lot to lose. The Western Digital diagnostic program reported the drive as having almost 319 GB of free space, so I didn't know which was right and for my purposes either would have been fine. Then I noticed that the 320 GB internal hard drive that came with my computer also is reported by Windows as having 298 GB capacity. At the Western Digital site I discovered the answer. A gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes. According to Western Digital, however, hard drive manufacturers "for simplicity" define a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. So a 320 GB hard drive according to a manufacturer only has enough bytes to measure 298.02 GB according to Windows.

Second, the drive came formatted in FAT32 system (apparently to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of Windows). I have Windows XP and it worked fine, but I decided to format it for NTFS anyway (which was easy to do and took about 2 hours in the background), since I wanted to partition the drive and XP won't create an FAT32 partition bigger than 32 GB. Since the drive would worked fine in FAT32, however, users who don't want to partition the drive would not have to reformat, so this should not be a problem.

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A good looking large storage

Strengths: Price and functionality

Weakness: A little bulky. I do not think you can mount several of them together to have only one USB from the hard drive. You need a hub to bundle them together.

This is a very good storage for your everyday needs. There is a ON/OFF button at the front of the hard drive--very convenient. The hard drive is a solid built. I think it has a fan inside to vent the heat out. You can plug the USB 2.0 into your computer and have it work in no time. Green and black are good combination of color choice. If you buy more than one of them, you can stack them together on your shelf to make it look like a stack of book. I think that is why they call it “My Book”. Highly recommended.

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External Edition External 320 GB HD

Strengths: Had No Issues. Transfered all files within 10 minutes. Just click and drag. Very Happy.

Weakness: None Yet

I couldn't believe how much room our Photos and music files were taking up. It was amazing how much better our machine ran when I moved them off the hard drive!

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Great looks, great performance

Strengths: Fast read/writes Sleek look Quiet

Weakness: Kinda big Not the cheapest

When I got this drive, I was very excited to have a nice looking, portable USB hard drive. Most of the ones I have seen are quite ugly (beige plastic and the like), but this one has a nice case. I've done some tests of reading/writing large files and large groups of files, and this easily out performs my old external drive. The only drawback to this drive is it is a full 3.5" drive, so it is quite a bit larger than a 2.5" laptop external.

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Amazing buy!

Strengths: Lots of space, quiet, great look

Weakness: None

This has to be the best external harddrive I've ever had. When I got it for a steal, I was skeptical about the quality, but now that I've had it, I must say, its great. I have it in one of my desk shelves and it looks classy compared to my other externals. Hooks up to my computer in a breeze and I haven't had a single problem. File transfer speeds are fast and I will grab more of these from now on.

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Elegant Looking and a Silent Drive

Strengths: Looks great, silent, easy to install, good performer

Weakness: None

This drive looks gorgeous with my black laptop, speaker set & my webcam. All of them are blend well together. It appear to be smaller than the pictures in the internet. Performs silently and smoothly when I transfer huge data of 4 GB from my laptop USB2.0 port. Easy to install, just pluck it in and you are ready to use. Is cooling too unlike my own existing external drive.

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Good performer

Strengths: Not noisy, works flawlessly, not too big

Weakness: none

Easy setup out of the box, unit's not taking too much space on my real estate deficient computer desk. Overall this HD does its job without any issues, and quietly enough without having to get used to the additional background noise.
I did not notice, and I suspect you won't either, the good access time on this HD compared to my ancient 40GB internal HD currently in my PC - I suggest you don't give this too much attention.

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Awsome External Hard Drive

Strengths: Compact design, easy setup and very easy to use.

Weakness: None so far

I love how easy this hard drive was to install and use. I just plugged it in and ran with it. I have it attached to my older machine with a smaller hard drive for backups and media sharing around the house.

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My Book External 320GB hard drive- great product

Strengths: 1. plug and play 2. compact size

Weakness: no back up software

It is a great product overall. Major strengths: 1. Price; 2. Plug and Play; 3 Compact size. Weaknesses: I do not like the Picasso picture software that came with it....I believe that it had a conflict with my HP Director software.

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Western Digital My Book Essential Edition | 320GB

The Western Digital My Book Essential Edition model is a high-end external USB 2.0 hard drive. It is designed for both in-home, and portable use. The Essential Edition hard drive is about the size of an average paperback book and will take up about the same amount of space. It features an available 1TB (1,000GB), 750GB, 640GB, 500GB or 320GB storage capacity, with a 16mb drive cache and a speed...

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Western Digital My Book Essential Edition USB2

Testseek.com has collected 14 expert reviews for Western Digital My Book Essential Edition USB2 and the average expert rating is 82 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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