Reviews for Western Digital 500 GB My Book Essential 2.0 - USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDH1U5000N

Total reviews: 5 of 114
Average Rating:

• hard drive | Rating: | Date: 2008-10-12

  my son is very happy with his western digital 500gb by book external hard drive. it came alot faster then we had thought it might and seems to work great.

• Great product, easy setup | Rating: | Date: 2008-10-12

  I bought this hard drive after reading a number of reviews that said it took a while to set up. For me, setup couldn't have been easier-- just plug it into your computer and it's ready to go. The one thing I wish it included was instructions on the best way to reformat the HD from FAT32 to NTFS. I used a Windows Vista program to do this, and it took several hours. Quick Format would have taken minutes and given me the results I wanted. But other than that, there's nothing I'd change or improve about this hard drive. Also, the price on Amazon is lower than many other web sites.

• Good drive for what I use it for... | Rating: | Date: 2008-10-11

  I needed to get photos off of my laptop since I take many photographs of birds so I purchased this drive for the price and size.
  
  Compared to one of my colleagues this drive is much faster not only for my computer to acknowledge it but also transferring full size 8 MP files to it at about 2 images per second. I am sure there are drives that can do it faster but I was plenty happy.
  
  The main negative thing I can say was that out of the box there was only 465 GB available. I realize there is software on it but 35 Gigs worth? I deleted some pdf files that weren't necessary but that did little for me. In all reality I probably will not fill up the drive anytime soon so what am I really worried about. The 3,000 photos I transferred only took about 10 GB.

• mine doesn't work at all | Rating: | Date: 2008-10-08

  Hello. I bought this drive(not from Amazon) because I found one close to home and I could look at it and touch it. It seemed well put together and I had been looking for a backup, so I bought it.
  Got it home and did everything the install guide said to do. Opp't out of the google toolbar and the 30 day trial and hooked it up. Seemed to start up fine but I was locked on the 30 day trial thing, so I said to myself, I change that in a minute, I'll let it download first.
  Well, then it said my files were to big, I got that worked out, I thought, and started download. 24 hours later nothing had happened! I also couldn't access the internet. Well, I says, I'll just safely shut it down, disconnect and reload and see what I've got. As soon as I disconnected I could get onto the internet but as I went to reload, nothing happened! couldn't access manual or any part of the drive.
  I wrote WD an email but have gotten no response eccept for the email verification. This is one of those things that to me it is much more hassle and expense to deal with WD so it is just sitting there on the shelf doing nothing.
  After this experence, I told WD that I would be hard pressed to even think of one of their products again. Also after this I wouldn't dare use it as an internal drive.
  My way in the past to deal with this kind of garbage is to take a sledge hammer to it put it in it's box and mail it back to the company.
  Yes it cost me to mail but it also lets me blow off a little steam.
  mightymike

• not reliable | Rating: | Date: 2008-10-08

  I have bought four different WD external drives in this product family. Only one has been reliable. One died twice, having been "repaired" by WD while still in warranty. A second makes worrisome noise. The 1TB drives go asleep in 30 minutes after inactivity and cannot be awoken without restart.
  
  Western digital internal drives, particularly the Raptor series, do not seem to have these reliability problems.