Reviews for WD My Book Essential Edition External 500GB 3.5" Hard Drive

Almost Guaranteed to Fail

Strengths: Easy to Connect, small footprint, inexpensive.

Weakness: You will lose all of your data when the drive fails.

I've had two of these, both an older model and the newer Firewire 800 model. They both failed in less than 6 months. Bottom line, don't consider buying one if you need to store important information. You'll find out the hard way that they're great devices for holding the office door open on a windy day, and not much more. Seriously, in fairness the competing products all have the same issues, mostly related to heat dissipation. Fan-less external enclosures just run way too hot for anything but light use. Also, when the drive fails (and it WILL fail) I understand that WD is pretty good about replacing the drive, but of course that means shipping the old one back to them, filled with your (potentially recoverable) personal data.

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Just Stopped Working

Strengths: Worked for 1 month

Weakness: Terrible engineering, very easy to brick it and lose all of your data.

I had this hard drive for more than a month now, and it worked just fine. I made a copy of my brother's music database and it worked just fine for a long time. I came home today and plugged it in, and it didn't work. The hard drive didn't even spin. The green circle in front flashes weakly for a little bit, and that's all. Western Digital could care less, too.

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No problems

Strengths: Large capacity, portability.

Weakness: Price can be an issue, but storage is coming down in cost big time. I think that I paid about $149 after rebate, so very good at that price. A longer warranty would be nice.

I wanted to use this for a while before I posted a review. I am using this drive to store movies. The 500GB size and USB 2.0 interface have made it an excellent choice for this purpose. For my needs and at the price for which I made the purchase, I am very pleased with this drive. The lack of firewire hasn't been a problem, since all of my computers don't have a firewire connection anyway. Only has a 1 year warranty, but obviously that's only an issue if it fails. I believe that most credit cards will exptend the warranty for an additional period (YMMV, depending on your card). Have had no issues. I would definitely recommend it.

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Excellent Value

Strengths: Quite small, aesthetically pleasing, quiet, high capacity, inexpensive

Weakness: Only one year warranty, not pre-formatted to NTFS, not 500GB but 465GB (not really a weakness, but you should keep this in mind)

I recently purchased this from a popular online computer retailer. When I first plugged it into my USB2.0 PCI card, all of my USB peripherals got disconnected. After a reboot, everything seemed fine. I do not know if this product was the culprit though. Setup was extremely easy--plug and play. The only things I needed to do were change it to NTFS instead of FAT32 and set it up in WinXP for "performance" instead of "quick disconnect."

Transfer rates were quite fast. It took about 7-8 minutes to transfer 23 files totaling 7.63GB.

After it goes into silent standby mode, it takes about 3 seconds for it to wake up. During operation, it is still very quiet.

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Two Died - !!!

Strengths: Well, when they (2) worked, were okay. Large inexpensive...

Weakness: STOPPED working in less than three months. This in a very controlled environment with careful care. ALL data gone! Will not buy again.

A 1/3 or 1/4 failure rate is Unacceptable! And to lose data on top of Just NOT working? Wow... WD, where did you subcontract this junk to? Cannot recommend, period.

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MY Book

Strengths: 500gb space, Great looking design, good perfromance, air ventilated through holes, Nice turning on and off feature

Weakness: Plastic design, no way to open enlousure, one year warranty pretty much standard among external hard drives

My book is a great addition to any desk. This external hard drive looks increarible good on the desk.

The 500gb hard drive is nothing more than western digital sata 2 16mb buffer cabier hard drive. Western digital took their newest hard drive model and just added enclosure. Funny because a hard drive with enclosure and without cost about the same.

This external hard drive has great feature stand by mode. If not used for 10min it will go to stand by mode. During stand by mode hard drive doesn't operate, is silent. It take about 1s for it to get out of stand by mode.

Performance of the drive is good, transfer rates are pretty fast.

Few drawback:

Plastic design, I didn't test but I believe the plastic can brake one day if dropped from somewhere high. It would probably brake to milion pieces if it cracked.

There is no way to open that enclosure. So if the hard drive fails after warranty user is stack with enclosure and hard drive.

1 year warranty is pretty standard among external hard drives it would be plus it would be longer, especially if dealling with 500gb hd.

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This drive died on me in 10 days.

Strengths: Its cheap, attractive, and has plenty of space.

Weakness: It gave up the ghost for no apparent reason and I lost over 400 gigs of data in an instant. Do bumps, shakes, or drops. Not a very happy camper.

I've owned 4 previous external drives and I decided to go with western digital because of the rave reviews. Now I have the worst data loss of my life. I'm going back to LaCie.

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WD My Book Essential Edition External 500GB Hard...

Strengths: $/GB, power management, front mounted power switch

Weakness: Still looking for one

Bought this on a great sale at BestBuy for $200 and have been kicking myself for not buying two. May buy a second at this week's sale price of $230. I'm transferring old Sony 8mm and Digital 8mm video to hard disk for editing and back-up and chewing up GB like never before. Didn't need any backup software, just massive quantities of reliable basic storage.

The drive is remarkably quiet in operation, and with my relatively quiet iMac, I notice other noises. The case is compact and stable in an upright position without one of those flared stands that some other drives require.

Reformatting for my iMac was easy. The drive power management works great. Unlike my Maxtor external drive, the WD shuts down when I "eject" the drive or put the Mac to sleep. I feel better about shutting down an idle drive, and I like not having to think about doing that.

1 year warranty? Pretty standard, and until WD proves otherwise, I'll trust the brand.
Plastic case? If I slam it hard enough to significantly damage the case, I'll be lucky if the drive still works. This is obviously a drive meant for a more-or-less fixed home on the desk, not something to throw in the backpack and haul around town. If you need Firewire 400 or 800, you can send more and get one of the other WD models. A firewire model would have actually saved me some time, but it wasn't worth the difference in price. (Video capture and USB don't play well together on my iMac, so I capture to the internal drive and copy to the My Book.)

Basic reliable, large external storage? This fits the bill

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My Book Essential 500GB

Strengths: Small, simple, reasonably priced

Weakness: No firewire interface

It's hard to ding the unit because it has no firewire interface since they make a premium model that does have it. However, the premium model was enough extra $ at the time as to not be worth it.

The unit is basically just a plug-n-play external drive with very little software on it. The premium model comes with backup software, but again, the backup software that's bundled with these external drives (usually Retrospect) isn't worth the extra money. It's just enough to make you want the commercial version.

Not much to say about it since it does what it's supposed to. They don't oversell what it's good for: mass, cheap, portable storage.

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Awful drive -- died (along with my data) after 1...

Strengths: Looks nice.

Weakness: Horrible product with high failure rate.

If you don't believe the failure rate, read the comments on the following site:

www.tomrafteryit.net/w...

I transferred all my photos and music from an 80 gig drive (that was working just fine) to this one .. everything was working great for about a month and then all of a sudden .. drive is no longer readable. WD tells me to use a data restoration company (I was quoted $500 to $1750 to get my data back) and they are not responsible.

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Bad Company

Strengths: While it works, It is a great Hard drive

Weakness: Burning and slow copy speed.

It works great...untill it starts to smoke! Never leave your home with this hard drive on! When I spoke to the company about it, They said " Yeah it happens sometimes." They will not save my information on the hard drive or send me a new box, even though it is under warrenty. I had purchased it in March 07 and now it is only Jun 2007!! They had told me to hire a data restore company to get it. Great!! More money to throw away with Western Digital! Not to mention my 400GB Internal Hard drive from them crashed too! My Advise Stay Away from this company!! All other (non-western digital)Hard drives purchased work great!! And they are all over 1 yr!!!

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died in less than 2 weeks

Strengths: Lots of space

Weakness: Died in less than two weeks

I was using the drive and it "unmounted" from my Mac Desktop. There was still power to the drive but it would not recognize it on my Mac. I tried a PC and still nothing. Finally after 5 hours of frantically searching for a solution I found a "recovery" software from Western Digital. I was able to recover most everything but I lost about 4000 pictures that can not be replaced. Guess it's back to DVD for me.

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Partioning error. Horrible Tech Support 070615-003262

Strengths: None sofar.

Weakness: Does not work.

I ordered this drive from Beach Camera. I received it on June 15, 2007.
The drive could not be partionned. (see below)
Between June 15, 2007 and July 2, 2007 I sent 6 messages to Western Digital Service and Support. So far I have received nothing but useless computer generated answers. Since they advertise "one business day service" I am very disappointed.
------------------
I got this drive today. I tried to partion it according to the instructions of question 287.
I chose the format "Mac OS Extended (journaled)". In the options I chose "GUID partition table". I chose "4 partitions".
After clicking "Partition" I get the message 'Are you sure you wish to erase the disk "WD5000AAKS external media"? '. I click on "Partition" and I get the error message "Partition failed with the error ' No such file or directory ' ".
Any suggestions, should I return the drive?

--------------------

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500 GB AND 250 GB FAILED

Strengths: None. Looks nice but I didn't buy it for looks.

Weakness: Everything!

I bought the 250 GB drive in May 2007. I was in the process of moving and didn't take it out of the box for a couple of months. It never worked correctly. I thought maybe I had done something wrong and set it aside, so I could have someone look at it to see if it had failed. Meantime I still needed storage, and bought a 500 GB drive July 27, 2007. That failed December 6, 2007. Customer service is atrocious; you can NOT understand the people answering the phones. When I had my 250 GB drive replaced, I received a dirty refurbished drive with the wrong power cord, no USB cable, and no documentation.
In 3 to 5 days I will be receiving a replacement for the 500 GB drive. I was told Western Digital would send me a "good drive" this time. When I complained about the 420 GB of lost data the gentleman tried to give me the phone number of a place that will recover the data, for a price. (Western Digital perhaps?) I also get to pay postage to send this failed drive back. AND they put $360.00 charge on my credit card until I send the drive back, even though I sent them a copy of the receipt when I registered it and it cost $180.00. DO NOT put anything you value on these drives, and find another way to back up your data!

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WD My Book Essential Edition External 500GB Hard...

Strengths: Capacity

Weakness: Lack of firewire port

This hard drive is truely USB 2.0 plug and play; my computer recognized it almost instantaneously upon hooking it up with the USB cable. With a 500 GB capacity, it can store a great deal of files, photos, videos, etc, and I don't even know if I will end up filling it completely. If you don't mind the fact that it doesn't have a firewire port (which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5), then I highly recommend this drive to anyone looking for a simple and easy to use external hard drive.

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Great hard drive for the price

Strengths: Price, fast USB transfer, fun to look at

Weakness: No firewire

This holds all of my movies and mp3's. I also use it to backup my computer. I have had my computer fail once already, and this has saved me. fast USB transfers make this worth the price I paid. My only gripe would be no firewire, but Western Digital does make a my book w/ firewire - for a fee. I didn't know this when I purchaased this, but I have learned to love it. I have it sitting in line with my books, and it looks attractive as well.

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WD MyBook External 500GB HDD

Strengths: Price, Capacity, Styling

Weakness: No firewire or network connectivity

Inside is actually a SATA drive which is excellent. The design is very styled and the enclosure itself is well cooled. This comes with only a 1 year warranty, but at the price it is definitely a bargain. The drive also comes with feet so you can stack a couple of these for your own little datacenter.

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Great Backup Tool

Strengths: Nice design, simple one touch operation, upgradable.

Weakness: USB 2.0 Only, a bit larger than expected, 1 year warranty

This is overall a great external hard drive. The one-touch backup with included software is a snap. Had I wanted Firewire, I would have gotten the higher end model, so I am not terribly dissapointed by that. Only complaint is the 1 year warranty which is strange as WD offers a 1 year warranty on retail products and 5 on OEM products. Seagate for example is 5 and 5 I believe.

It has a standard SATA HD inside which you can upgrade/downgrade as you wish which is nice as well.

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WD My Book Essential Edition External 500GB

Strengths: Super fast, big capacity

Weakness: Lack of firewire

It's USB 2.0 Plug and Play. Very easy to install. Works on windows 2003. It's a true USB 2.0 external hard driver. Speed of transfer is very fast. Inside the enclosure it's a 16MB SATA drive, which is pretty cool. I like it very much and would recommend it to anyone who want to store photos or videos.

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The Book

Strengths: Large capacity, fast, cheap, mobility

Weakness: None.

Every computer I've ever came in contact with has had USB before it would have Firewire, so the whole "lack of Firewire support" the other people complained about is rather mute. In addition to that, Western Digital does make other 500GB models that do support Firewire including the lastest version having 800Mbs transfer rates. So, if you want Firewire, then buy a model with Firewire. Another point to take into consideration is that unless you have a "very new" computer with Firewire 800 (1394b) support, USB 2.0 is faster than 1394a. The ability for this thing to power itself up and/or down with the computer is also a plus over other brands.

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Excellent Drive!

Strengths: Capacity, price, great Western Digital quality, dependabilty.

Weakness: USB only....but if you want firewire get the next model up. Only 1 year warranty.

At this point I own 5 of these drives as I use them for digital video storage and backups. If you want a solid drive that's very well priced, and dependable for backing up your data, I would highly recommend the My Book!

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My Book Essential Edition External 500 GB Bombs

Strengths: Easy to set up

Weakness: Compatibility issues with Macs. Little or no troubleshooting information on my problem. Every help desk telephone number was in Southeast Asia or India. No 800 numbers to call for help. Seemed flimsy

I received this for Christmas as a purchase from Amazon. It was easy to set up, but never worked properly. Even though my Mac G5 desktop then had only 140 GB on its 250 GB hard drive, whenever I tried to back up the HD contents on the My Book, I got an error message saying there wasn't enough space to do a backup. I had it plugged into my computer for three days trying to make it work, even rebooting several times, but I could never get it to back up a thing. Then one evening I heard a loud roaring sound coming from my computer, which turned out to be a combination of the hard drive spinning like crazy and the fan trying to cool it down. I immediately shut down everything, unplugged the My Book, rebooted, and things went back to normal. I returned My Book and got my money back. All the other reviews seem to be from Windows users. I wonder if there's some compatibility issue with Macs or G5s or OS X 10.3.9, which is what I have. Or perhaps I was sent a lemon. But given the state it put my G5 in, I really didn't want to take a chance on trying another one. At any rate, I've yet to find another backup device with as much storage space as this one. Too bad it didn't work for me.

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Died after 5 days

Strengths: none

Weakness: died after 5 days

Well, I guess it doesn't matter which brand you go with. There appears to be some kind of a lemon rate with these external hard drives (maybe some have higher or some lower). Until someone does a serious, statistically sound reliability test on these drives, I think DVD is the way to back up your data. Still, my drive died after just 5 days. Fortunately, I had not lost any significantly important data.

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Excellent external storage

Strengths: 500gb at a very good price. I was able to purchase this as an external drive cheaper than what the internal version would have been (Best Buy).

Weakness: Spin up time

I bought this to replace my old and failing external ata enclosure that I had. I would highly recommend purchasing a pre built enclosure like this instead of buying the enclosure and hd seperate. I have experienced very few problems with the drive. My only complaint is that it spins down, and then when Windows decides it needs to access something on it there will be about a 5 second delay for it to spin up. Lots of storage at a great price!

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Great 500GB external drive from WD.

Strengths: External 500GB storage size

Weakness: only USB port

WD 500GB MyBook external drive is a good choice for portable hard drive storage. It's easy to connect and set up under Windows XP and looks stylish and just like a real book on the shelf. Ideal for storing digital photos or other media. Considering FireWire/1394 and newer eSATA interface offering better performance, it might become out-dated soon in the future.

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Plug and Play - maybe NOT

Strengths: Size

Weakness: Doesn

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my wife. We plugged in the power supply, then connected it to the computer. It saw the drive, but couldn

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Nice interoperable disk

Strengths: -works well with Mac as well as PC

Weakness: Limited to USB connectivity and one year warranty - who would want to risk losing family pictures and videos after a year!?

Easily recognized in both MacOSx and Windows XP - Nice plug-and-play drive. Got it a good price making it worthwhile. Hopefully the drive lasts longer than the one year warranty.

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My Book Essential Edition 500GB USB2.0 External Hard...

Strengths: Large Capacity, Stand-by mode, easy setup

Weakness: 1-yr warranty, plastic casing

Bought this for its large capacity needed for backup. It's was easy to setup; Windows XP Home recognizes the hard drive with plug-and-play. Haven't get a chance to use the backup software that comes with it and hence I cannot comment on it. I use a commercial backup software. I like the standby-mode. The hard drive goes into that mode after about 10 minutes of idling. And it takes about 1 second to restart from standby mode.
I am satisfied with it for what I paid but I wish it has longer warranty (compared to Seagate's), particularly when the capacity is so large at 500gb. The case can be sturdier case. The plastic case looks fragile and would possibly break if dropped.

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WD My Book Essential Edition External 500GB Hard...

Strengths: Great as a multimedia drive. Plug and play.

Weakness: Wise to format the file from FAT32 to NTFS for optimal performance.

Performance on a par with that of the Premium Edition.

This is a great drive I bought this drive and filled it with 400GB of MP3 audio. I was however concerned that USB might be too slow but it's worked satisfactorily.

Western Digital drive is compact, quiet, and runs cool, it is very easy to set up and use with a nice design.

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about my book

Strengths: huge capability.

Weakness: too many hole upside, so dust can get in to the hard disks.

Western digital my book is smaller than other hard

drive, and it has huge capacity, its simply and easy

to use. Also its much cheaper compare with other

blend of external hard drive. I like it.

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Huge capacity for decent price

Strengths: Size of enclosure & capacity of drive.

Weakness: USB port only. 1 year warranty.

If your looking for a premade external drive this is an excellent choice. When it is on sale its at a decent price. The USB connection should be enough for most people, but if your looking for firewire connections the My Book Premium is your best bet. Overall, instantaneous recognition on my PC and was filling its capacity in no time. Recommended for anyone looking to add space to their computer without opening it up.

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My Book 500GB - great value - good looking drive

Strengths: - very compact - quiet - great price per GB

Weakness: None so far

I have other my book drives. I bought this one for my girlfriend. She is using it to backup her laptop. The drive is really compact (smaller than it looks online) and quiet.

WD makes their own internal drives so you know what you get inside the box.

Definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a large capacity, easy to use and affordable HD.

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WD My Book Essential Edition External 500GB 3.5"...

Strengths: Massive Storage

Weakness: none - so far

Easy to set up, easy to use -- This drive is all about simplicity. Plug it into your computer’s USB 2.0 port and start saving. Intelligent drive management features — The My Book drive turns itself on and off with your computer. Smart design — The elegant case, iconic of a book, takes up less space on your desk, stacks horizontally, and allows two or more drives to stand neatly together like volumes on a shelf.
High quality hard drive — Inside the case is an exceptionally fast, ultra quiet, cool-running hard drive from Western Digital.

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Ideal solution for an external drive

Strengths: Massive capacity, 16MB cache, stackable.

Weakness: A bit more expensive than buying an internal drive and enclosure.

This is the ideal solution if you want to use an external drive. All the space you could want in one drive, stackable, Mac and PC-compatible, 16MB cache, and looks great on the desktop. It would be nice if there were a Firewire version, but USB 2.0 is still pretty fast. If you can get a good deal on this, go for it!

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My Book 500GB

Strengths: Simplistic Design; Very Quiet(no fan); On/Off Switch

Weakness: No way to open or swap HDD's; Only 1 yr Warranty

High capacity and very quiet... a great combination.

I've only noticed one quirk: when the drive is shared over a network from Windows, if it is turned off and on, the data does not show until the share is disconnect and reconnected (possibly a windows bug).

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I love it!

Strengths: Simple, Quiet

Weakness: No firewire port :)

The drive looks sleek and is not intrusive or odd on a desk. The drive has vents to help keep the drive cool. Drive operation is very quiet.

The setup is pretty simple, just plug-in the power and connect the USB cable. Windows XP recognizes and sets up the drive quickly.

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Great Product, Easy Storage

Strengths: Product is very easy to use: plug and go. Very quiet machine unlike the others that I have dealt with which were pretty loud.

Weakness: Nothing

The HDD has a small, sleak exterior that is not obtrusive. It runs quiet and cool. The USB 2.0 connection makes tranfering files very quick. Setup was easy, just plug and play.

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My Book Western Digital Hard Drive is WORTHLESS

Strengths: None...........it is inevitable......it will crash

Weakness: Everything............data you have stored is not retrievable once it decides not to work.

I have had this for less than a year. I used it to store movies, clips, phot files artwork back up files.......everything is gone. I clicked on a file to open it in My Book. When I did that it locked up the computer........causing me to have to reboot. Once I had done that the external hard drive had disappeared. The computer will not recognize it and there is nothing to show that it was ever on the computer. It still lights up and makes its "noises" but refuses to open. I have tried everything. WARNING.....you will lose all data stored on this...........do not risk using it to back up anything important. Basically it is worthless as a viable storage device with any longevity.

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WD = Worthless Drives

Strengths: Incessant humming puts me to sleep.

Weakness: Endurance. Bought 1, lasted about a year. Bought another, lasted less than a year. Company does not seem to care that their products are worthless.

Buy something else. Buffalo or seagate has worked well. WD seems to have power on/off difficulties, causing the device to fail prematurely. They still have not resolved it.

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WD Really isn't reliable

Strengths: None

Weakness: Reliability

Allow me to add another story of woe to those who use WD products. Mine. $1042 for data recovery. ::kicks self for buying WD:: (I will highly recommend the data recovery company -- who says the failure rate for WD is very high compared to other drives.)

tinyurl.com/699nr8...

Anyone want to start a class action lawsuit

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Way Underrated

Strengths: It just works

Weakness: None so far

This is my second Western Digital external drive. Like the first, which I still have, it works easily, with no problems or issues. All I ask of a hard drive is that it work with no hassles. I have one that I use for backups of my Dell and this one to backup my MacBook using Time Machine. Both have been flawless and for the money they are hard to beat.

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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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