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Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1 TB External Hard Drive | 
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| Brand: Western Digital
Category: CE
List Price: $379.99
Buy New: $165.99
You Save: $214.00 (56%)
New (19) Used (2) from $165.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 62
Format: Cd
Platforms: Macintosh, Windows
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Macintosh
Hard Drive Size: 1000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 5
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 7 x 5.8
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: WDH1U10000N
Model: WDH1U10000N
UPC: 718037122700
EAN: 0718037122700
ASIN: B000VZCEUI
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new, Uunopened, Factory sealed. 100% Guaranteed. Ships Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation.
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| Features:
| • | Easy to set up, easy to use: Installation is a snap because you don't really install this drive, you just plug it in and it's ready to use. There is no CD to install. | | • | Automatic backup: every time you save something it's automatically backed up. | | • | Interface: USB 2.0 | | • | Fits right in: Takes no more space than a paperback book. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf. | | • | Environmentally friendly: Our environmentally-friendly drive is designed to save power by going into standby mode after 10 minutes of inactivity. When you're ready to use it, it wakes up automatically. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Small, simple, elegant, and very easy to use. Just plug it in, and you've got plenty of room to back up and save your valuable data, music, photos, and movies.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 Large capacity, poor performance August 15, 2008
This external drive was purchased for the large capacity it provides. The hard drive is enclosed in an attractive two piece plastic case. One piece mimics the cover of a book and is attractive glossy black. The other piece looks like the pages of a book and provides ventilation for the drive. A bright blue LED is located on the front of the drive. It is divided into two sections that blink in unison or alternately depending on function being performed. Overall, it is a very attractive unit.
Unfortunately, the case of the unit I received was not fitted together correctly causing one corner on the bottom of the unit to stick out slightly. This caused the unit to wobble. In additon to this problem, the performance of the drive was lackluster. After formatting the WD unit as one large NTFS drive (which took over 4 hours), I compared the WD unit with another external hard drive unit I own. The other drive consists of a Nexxtech USB external case housing a WD 200gb ATA/100 drive. The comparison consisted of performing a 7gb file copy from the local PC hard drive to each external hard drive. The copy consistently took approximately 6.5 minutes for the WD but only 4.5 minutes to the Nexxtech.
At this point, I have returned the unit due to the case defect. I have not decided yet if I will order a replacement due to the poor performance or look for another model on Amazon.
As always, Amazon customer service was excellent!
 Plug and Play External Drive August 13, 2008
I currently have 2 terabytes of storage, 6 do-it-yourself "DIY" external drives housing various sized hard drives, and a MyBook. This review compares their performance. All drives are currently on-line connected to a 7 port USB hub.
In the Box
A black box housing the drive, a brick power supply, and a USB cable are key items. 2 instruction sheets, and a warranty card complete the kit. The My Book is about the size of a bible one finds in hotel and motel rooms.
The drive case, power and cables leave a very clean design. All my DIY drives comes with stands, awkward sized power supplies and cable placements that are not well thought through.
Installation
Simple: Plug the USB cable into the MyBook, and into your PC USB port. Plug in the power supply to AC and the MyBook.
The MyBook has no power switch, and turns itself on/off if the USB port is powered, when the PC is on.
The drive was recognized by WinXPSP2 without a hitch, and re-formatting the drive to NTFS was easy using WinXP built in disk utilities. The drive ships with FAT32 format, which is less desirable if NTFS can be supported. I backuped the shipped "trial" utilities inside the MyBook in case they were useful; they were not, and it was not clear were it was stored: C:\Program Files\Western Digital. I used Western Digital's disk utilities that shipped with my other drives to check partitions and drive status. These programs can also be downloaded free from Western Digital's web site.
Break-in
The drive ran over 1 week for 24/7 for a burn in, and has done a 24 hour long disk encryption format routine. it is currently a month old running 16 hours/day. Its surprisingly silent, and runs cooler than my DIY drives.
USB 2.0 Speed
It has a transfer rate of 10MB/sec. This is not the raw transfer rate, but includes delay from encryption I use. This is about 6x slower than the maximum USB transfer speed of 60 MB/sec but is the same rate as my other DIY drives.
Conclusion:
Excellent bang for buck. The cost to build a DIY external drive today may often be more than buying a pre-made external drive. USB 2.0 transfer speeds suggests the MyBook drive is a decent speed drive. The auto on/off feature is very helpful, given most DIY kits require manual power-down.
Note, there are a number of complaints about the higher end MyBook drives. The simple electronics of the low end 'Essential Edition' maybe the saving grace to this drive's performance, keep this in mind as the display boxes look the same. Further, all drives can malfunction, so a burn-in is a must to insure your drive is not among the few bad eggs.
Working good so far! August 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this drive last June '08 at a great price! Total plug and play. Formatted it for Mac and started to download files off my computer; it works as said. It is a very silent drive and doesn't seem to heat up. The only thing I don't like is that it is on when the computer is up and only sleeps when the computer is asleep or off. There is no ON/OFF switch and I don't need it on all the time.
 Pure junk August 4, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
Looks nice, doesn't run warm.
Lasted 45 days before it started spewing bad sectors. Just outside of Amazon's 30 day return policy.
Now I have to fight through Western Digital support to get a replacement. I would rather have my money back so that I can buy another brand. I hate to support garbage. I normally never buy from Western Digital, but I had hoped that they had changed. Not. I knew better.
I really do have other things to do with my life.
I had a Seagate ST305004FDA1E1-RK FreeAgent Desktop 500 GB 3.5" USB 2.0 External Hard Drive fail on me within 2 weeks of purchase. Some whiz-bang of an engineer decided that a hard drive didn't need any ventilation. It's bad when a brand new drive runs too hot to touch, then grinds to a halt, literally.
David
Cheap Space August 3, 2008
For the price, this is a stylish hard drive and has plenty of space for the average person. I have owned 1 previously in the past and another 500 GB and 400 GB home edition from 2006 which are both still running. I am a little scared based on the reviews as to whether this hard drive will go bad quick, however, since I only use this for archiving and rarely remove or replace files, I should hope they will be fine. I recommend it if you are not going to actively use it (that is my purpose for the HD).
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