Western Digital WDG1U3200 My Book Essential Edition 320 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Just got it, seems to work fine, very quiet, small and attractive. However, it only has 298 Gigs, not the 320 it advertised...bad form....

Very happy with purchase - excited about product - got just what I ordered. Thanks.

This drive is everything taht I thought it would be. It is extremely quiet (which doesn't really matter anyway), a huge amount of space for such a low price, and great for storing anything. Drive comes preformatted in Fat32, but a quick switch to NTFS allows full utilization of all the space this drive has to offer. One of the best features is that this drive stops spinning after about 10 minutes of complete inactivity. This should help to improve drive life by a substantial amount. Once you return to your computer and click into the drive, it spins back up and is ready to use in a matter of seconds. As for heat, there is decent ventilation on the top of the case and the drive does not (from what I can tell) feel "hot to the touch". The drive comes preloaded with Google software, and WD's self-diagnostic tools both of which can be deleted without any problems. All in all.....amazing.

Just as advertised... Plug and Play... The computer automatically recognized it and it was ready to use. I've had it for a couple of weeks now, NO PROBLEMS AT ALL. And it look great too! ;) Super-quite, fast enough. Western Digital makes great products, and this is definitely one of them

Drive became corrupt the second day I had it. Lost all of my data. Disappointing product.

I purchased the Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 320GB External Hard Drive this week, and within 15 minutes, it was up and running providing more storage for my system.

It really was as simple as unpacking, plugging in the included USB cable, plugging in the power, and that's it. The drive automatically powers on and off with your computer, or you can alternatively shut it down manually using the button on the front.

When you first attach the drive, XP will see that there is an autostart on it, and prompt you to run some programs. The Essential version comes with several Google tools (desktop, toolbar, picasa), and the Western Digital Backup utility. You can choose to install these, or ignore them for the time being (I ignored them since I already have the Google tools that I want to use).

The first thing I did was copy the WD Backup Utility off of the drive, then format the entire thing as an NTFS file system. FAT32 has space limitations, so if you want to take full advantage of the drive without partitioning, NTFS is the way to go.

My recommendation is to do a non-quick format, only if you have the time. If you want to start using the drive immediately, quick format will do, and usually with a fresh drive, full format is not especially necessary.

Just like many hard drives, there are a couple performance settings that you may want to tweak. Go into the drive properties in the XP device manager, and turn on the Performance setting. This allows write caching to the drive, and will improve the performance, but it does mean that if you want to disconnect the drive, you have to use the Safe Remove in XP. Personally, I always opt for performance option, because I don't plan to ever remove the drive.

The Essential Edition has one green ring on the front of the "book", which will flash on heavy disk activity, letting you know that something is going on. Otherwise, it just stays green letting you know the drive is powered on.

Like many disk drives, the unit will stop spinning after lack of activity, to save power. It's pretty fast though, so when you need to use it again, it spins right up (audibly).

Differing from the more expensive edition, this one does not have FireWire, only USB 2.0. It also lacks the second green ring on the front which is a capacity meter. Personally, I don't need the extra ring showing capacity, and USB 2.0 works fine for me, so the price difference was not worth going for the more expensive edition.

Form Factor is pretty slick, it looks like a book on your shelf, albeit, a black plastic book with a green light ring on the front. The top looks like a punch card, and vents the head from the drive. Watch for dust accumulation inside the device (use an air blower to clean it now and then).

All in all, it's a very quiet and unobtrusive drive, that was very easy to install, and runs like you would expect a Western Digital to run. An excellent purchase.

The western digital is PLUG AND PLAY. because of this, we can transfer information from his mac to my microsoft.
when the computer turns off or goes on sleep mode, the hard drive does the same - automatically. i have to do that manually on mine.

inshort, it is a great item. it was a lot smaller and square than i thought it would be and it works great.

The drive was easy to use right from the box. Based on that I would buy again. Too early to review regular use.

The hard disk is pretty nice build and great designed. The absence of lighting colors is great. It could be a little less noisy but it's allmost ok.


I bought my son a WD 120GB external drive that has worked flawlessly. I thought I would get the much larger version since I want to produce DVD movies but need much more storage. Out of the box I got the hard drive unit, a power supply and USB cable. That was it; no useful documentation, manual etc. I went to the WD web site and same story: no documentation, instructions etc. Only the "start up " info sheet which basically says plug it in. It took several days of experimenting just to get my MacBook to recognize it. Once connected, it has a very rapid transfer rate and a lot of capacity. From the moment you plug in the cable until the icon appears on the desktop takes about 45 seconds. You have to be patient.
Despite that, I'm still having issues with connecting and ejecting the drive. Every so often it will just disconnect and I'll get a dialog telling me I should have ejected the drive before pulling out the cable. This message even though I had done nothing and the light on the drive was still blinking.
Finally, I've determined that the drive will cooperate most of the time if I only power it up and connect it when I'm actually going to use it.
I paid $125 at Target for this unit so it is a very good value. Unfortunately, it has been a source of headaches in day to day usage.

Bought this after my LaCie took a crap. Apparently there was a defective heat problem with it...regardless it conked out and I made sure to replace it with one that could handle heat effectively and that would most likely last longer than a year. Western Digital has a good rep for drives, and this particular model has more holes in it than a cheese grater, which really helps disperse heat. So far it has worked great, runs quiet, smooth and independently. I love the auto/off feature...it really is nice not having to worry about turning it on and off. It is an external hard drive, but acts like its an original part of my laptop (turning on and off with it, and being recognized with no problems).