Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDH1U5000N

Manufacturer: Western Digital
Model: WDH1U5000N
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
List Price: $119.99
Our Price: $86.00

Editorial Review for Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDH1U5000N

This elegant external hard drive, reminiscent of a book, is the perfect storage solution. It takes no more space than a paperback book. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf. Installation is a snap because you don't really install this drive, you just plug it in and it's ready to use. A USB 2.0 simple connection offers convenience and compatibility among multiple computers. Dimensions - Height 6.5 x Length 5.4 x Width 2.1 Weight - 2.5 Pounds

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

Nice USB Hard Drive
Rating: 5/ 5
Great price for a nice size hard drive. No complaints. Plug it in and it's there :)

My Book Essentials
Rating: 5/ 5
Excellent product. Easy to set up and super easy to use. If I can do it, anyone can!

Define your objectives
Rating: 4/ 5
The Mybook essential 500GB HD is an economical choice for PC users who have a need for extra storage space or external back-up capability but do not require a range of connectivity options as it only accommodates USB.

V2.0 has some changes in features from 1.0 and I am not convinced all of the variations are beneficial. First and foremost, V1.0 had a forwarded located on/off button that I found particularly useful with consideration to some quirky performance of the drive from time to time, where it tended to impede boot functions or seems to initiate untimely back-ups of revised files. This newer version lacks a physical power switch but has a blue-hued activity indicator lamp and is designed to power down after 10 minutes of inactivity, or upon recognition of a system shutdown. I have seen little evidence the inactivity power down facility is accurate.

While I have never personally encountered heat or overload issues with my V1.0 drive - I've used it for back-up only for 18 months - the new unit has a slightly smaller footprint ( approximately 4" x 6" x 2") but similarly configured for ventilation and heat dissipation with top, back and bottom air outflow slots. This version also features a mini USB cable that limits the distance the drive can be situated from the CPU and if you have a vertically oriented workspace as I do that may represent some challenges. Due to the USB configuration and potential heat related read/write issues, I do not believe this drive to be an efficient or viable alternative for productivity applications or as an external streaming server.

This drive is essentially plug and play. Upon installation a prompt is initiated to install a trial version of some back-up software, a diagnostic toolkit, a google bundle and another option I no longer remember and cannot get back to since I opted not to install and immediately reformatted from the pre-loaded FAT32 to NTFS with a single partition of 465GB, a step that is preferable for windows users but one you may want to defer until you have registered the device via that same install module as registration thereafter becomes a headache since the device serial number is printed on the label in a font only decipherable with a 10x magnifying glass.

My intent for the drive as well as the predecessor I own is as a dedicated resource for back-ups of individual desktops. For facilitation of services across a home network, a NAS unit such the Netgear RND2150 ReadyNAS Duo 500 GB Desktop Network Attached Storage with RAID capability seems to be a safer option.

Easy to use, but might not last too long
Rating: 3/ 5
I have had 4 of these Western Digital 500 GB USB 2.0 drives(and one also had the eSATA option). I also have 3 of their 1 TB USB drives, and I've used 3 of their older 80 GB USB drives too. As you can see, I've been pretty much a fan of this brand, but see below for some cautions. I've found these to be very easy to use. My experience has been that set up is 100% plug and play with Windows (XP).

One issue, be SURE if you are using this with a Windows based PC to reformat the drive to NTFS. A FAT32 drive of this size in these days is just asking for problems (and I've seen problems on systems that were not re-formated to NTFS, such as issues with long file names, and files that are very large, ex: video files!). You need to reformat the drive BEFORE putting any of your data on it. You can use the quick-format option under Windows Explorer - and it will do this pretty quickly (minutes, not hours).

The second issue is that these have not lasted very long for me. I don't know if the actual drive fails or if the enclosure fails, but I've had 3 of them go bad over a 3 or 4 year period of time. Twice this happened while it was still under warranty and Western Digital's RMA process worked fine for me; they sent a new or refurb'ed one to me, and I send them theirs back (no charge to me). This failure rate is odd to me, as I don't move these around - they are sitting on a desk top and never move (it's not like I bang them around in a back pack).

Bottom line, as one of the other reviews also said - use this as a backup drive, not as your ONLY primary drive!!

In my case, I have my primary data (and pictures and video's etc) on some internal and on some external drives. I then have a separate 1 TB external USB drive that I use each night to back my primaries up to. And then once a month, or more frequently if I'm adding lots of files, I back that 1 TB external drive up to a second 1 TB external drive that I keep in a fire-box. This way, if the primary or backup gets fried, I still have the fire-box copy of all my stuff. I use a product called, SyncBackSE, to handle the actual backup processes (it finds the changes and just copies those to the target). It works pretty well for me.

Don't Buy WD
Rating: 1/ 5
I bought this item just to have it die almost exactly one year later. This is the third Western Digital Drive I've purchased and had gone bad after a year. These thing DON'T LAST!! DON'T BUY IT!!!

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