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Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive | 
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| Brand: Western Digital
Category: CE
Buy New: £55.00
New (25) from £55.00
Rating:  168 reviews
Sales Rank: 34
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Fragile: No
Batteries Included: No
Hard Drive Size: 500
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 2.1 x 6.5
MPN: WDH1U5000E
Model: WDH1U5000E
UPC: 718037120928
EAN: 0718037120928
ASIN: B000WP0NM8
Release Date: November 25, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 An external hard drive that actually looks nice. September 20, 2008
James Drake (UK)
202 out of 208 found this review helpful
Okay, there are a lot of reviews for this product already and a lot of misinformation so I thought I'd try to clear the air a bit and lay down the key points for external hard drives:
* You will not get 1TB of storage on this product. The industry measures 1TB as 1000 GB, but your computer measures it as 1024GB. The same goes for GB into MB. The true capacity of this drive when formatted will be in the region of 930GB.
* It comes with a multi-plug. Follow the instructions to clip off the USA plug and clip on the UK plug. No tools are required (except fingers) and most children of 5 could complete the task.
* The drive turns on and off with your computer and 'sleeps' when inactive to reduce power consumption and heat. In sleep mode it uses less power than your mouse, but if for whatever reason you want to turn it of simply right-click the drive icon and select 'safely remove'.
* Don't let the 'I lost all my files' reviews put you off. Some hard drives do fail. This is the same for all manufactures and cannot be avoided. Valuable data should always be backed up on two separate devices.
* If you are planning to store video on the drive it would be a good idea to format the drive to NTFS straight out of the box, don't worry about overwriting the files that come on the drive, you don't need them.
Compared to other drives on the market this one is nicer to look at, and thanks to it's sleep mode, quieter and cooler than most. Getting (nearly) a Gigabyte per pound isn't too bad either!
Excellent. Quiet, compact and reliable. Plus - a tip for Mac users. July 10, 2008
JackJack (Glasgow, UK)
71 out of 73 found this review helpful
This is the third My Book drive I have bought. I have been very pleased with all of them, and am still using the (smaller capacity) one that I bought 3 years ago!
Reasons to recommend this drive:
- Quiet
The external power supply and well-ventilated design means that this drive can stay cool without a fan.
- Reliable
I have never had a problem with any of the 3 My Books that I have bought over the past 3 years.
- Small
The drives take up very little space on a bookshelf, and the external power supply is tiny.
- Stylish
I'd much rather have this thing on my desk than a bulky horizontal case. If you're going to use a drive every day, might as well have it look good!
Essential tip for Mac users:
- THIS DRIVE IS PARTITIONED FOR WINDOWS. Please excuse the capitals, but this is important and it isn't in the manual. If you want to use this disk with a Mac, the first thing you should do is repartition it.
Go to Disk Utility, click on the My Book disk, and select the "partition" tab. Create at least one partition (don't just leave it at "current"). Then click "options" and select "GUID partition table" if you have an Intel Mac, or "Apple Partition table" if you have a PPC mac. Finally, click "Apply". Then reformat the drive in HSF Extended + Journaling format.
Why bother doing this? The default MS-DOS parititioning will work, but it will be slower and you are more likely to run into errors. I honestly believe that failure to repartition the drive is the main reason that people have reported problems with using this drive on a Mac.
A great external Hard Disk January 28, 2008
John Nunn (Coventry, U.K.)
196 out of 204 found this review helpful
A superb external HDD, the USB2 connection ensures a good transfer rate with high reliability. The Supplied MIO software is unfortunately absolutely appalling and only a trial version at that, do not install despite the recommendations in the instructions. The device is very much plug and play with no drivers needed. I have got a pair of these attached to my development PC and they are great for storing old project data, iso images, unused virtual hard disk files and pictures. I would not recommend using this to run applications or virtual machines from as the performance is not good enough, but it should help free some static storage from your internal HDD's.
Quietest External Drive I've Ever Had March 14, 2008
Stuart McHattie (Coventry, England)
39 out of 40 found this review helpful
I have been through a number of external drives, but never tried out the Western Digital drives. I was pleasantly surprised to find that as well as having no setup requirements at all the drive is very compact, well ventilated but makes literally no vibrations at all. More often than not, external drives make a contant humming noise, but this one makes the occasional click as it accesses data and that's it!! It feels rugged like it will last a long time; the build quality is top notch. If I needed another, I would buy this one again!!
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