WD My Book Premium WDG1C5000N 500 GB External Hard Drive - Retail

Indispensable!

Strengths: Easy setup, rugged, quiet, fast, reliable - what more could you want?

Weakness: Ocassional trouble being recognized by some PC's when using firewire interface.

My company owns about a dozen of these units. My personal unit goes everywhere with me. I use it for professional video editing, digital imaging, the whole nine yards. It has never failed me. I love the blue button - a nifty way to manually disconnect the unit without fearing data loss. The combo USB/Firewire gives it the versatility I need. HIGHLY recommended!

Easy Installation, Poor Customer Service...

Strengths: Easy to install, Quiet..

Weakness: Poor Customer Support, Some data could be lost without any apparent cause.

In installing this product, it installed the drivers needed, and was ready to back up data. The back up was relatively quick, but some important pictures that was taken could be seen on the hard drive, but when placed on the desktop, they could not be read by any type of computer. I called for customer support and most of the technicians do not have good phone etiquette, and are not able to...

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Excellent

Strengths: Boots up and shuts down with computer, storage indicator lights, large space, stops HD when not in use

Weakness: none

This hard drive is excellent. I bought it because of the storage space and because it automatically turns on/off with the computer. I was worried about the hard drive spinning continuously while the computer was on but after 10 minutes of idleness the drive stops spinning. Initially, the drive comes formatted as FAT with 465 usuable GB. The inner ring indicates how much space you have left, and...

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Cool, huge external hard drive

Strengths: 500GB - WOW. 16mb cache is nice, and the design is cool.

Weakness: It's rather expensive. $$$/gig is relatively high.

It's a nice drive if you need 500gb and want something that will look nice. It is very fast and the noise is reasonable. If you're really concerned about price, then keep looking.

Great Drive Easy setup

Strengths: Easy setup, quiet operation

Weakness: If you are using Firewire it's a two step setup process

Great drive. Small size. Installing it went real easy. I cannot really complain. I'm using it to add some extra space for the family videos. There are two Firewire port in the back so I'm planning to link an other of this same drive to it when I run out space. Highly recommend it.

Good price, good performance.

Strengths: Price per GB, firewire and usb hookup. Quiet, turns off when computer shut down.

Weakness: Backup software for windows OS only. Not currently available for mac OS.

I've sent and email inquiry to Western Digital, three days ago, asking whether there is a plan to include Mac OS backup software. Haven't heard anything yet. A telephone inquiry on same got no answer.

A great external HDD

Strengths: Easy to setup

Weakness: None

This is my second external HDD and I must admit it is the best. It is so small and beautiful and looks just like a book on the desk. It has a fast HDD inside with a good amount of cache. The firewire connection is an added advantage. It comes with backup and restore software which also shows when the backup was made and allows you to restore from it. The size of the enclosure is small enough to...

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Unsatisfactory Performane

Strengths: Looks good. Easy to setup.

Weakness: Poor customer support; slow, locks up

Although it was easy to setup to my USB port, this is the worst hard drive I have had over the years. Using Windows XP Home Edition, it was slow, and it had a tendency to lock up, requiring a reboot to access the hard drive. After only 3 weeks use, on the first use of the day I noticed a write problem to the drive. I still saw my folders. Upon a reboot and trying to access the data, it indicated...

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Very slick looking

Strengths: Attach via the USB and you're ready to go. Power on/off with the PC on/off.

Weakness: Must connect via USB first to load the firewire driver

It took me longer to take the drive outa the box than for me to setup the drive via USB. I just love USB PnP. The drive comes formatted as FAT32 but you can easily use the command line convert to convert the drive to NTFS. I was disappointed that I have to connect via USB first to install the firewire driver before I can connect via firewire. As for the backup software, it's useless for true...

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Paper weight

Strengths: Just the look of it

Weakness: -Hardware -Wd site -Support

May be i got a dud mine just never worked. My system keep say it found new hardware but cannot find the driver for the installation. Tried getting the drivers on WD site but had to put in my serial number, keep getting that the serial is invalid. Call for support and was told the my serial is valid so i should try plugging in the wall out directly because this drive need more power. that still...

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