Western Digital WDG1U2500 My Book Essential Edition 250 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
purchased through Amazon-arrived rapidly and was as advertised-no installation problems-just plug in to usb port and start using-really easy and fast
I was very excited when I received this HDD today, but only to be quickly disappointed. On the box, it clearly says "Window Vista Compatible," but the installation instructions are still for XP,ME, and 2000 operating systems. When I managed to get the My Book set up, looking all pretty next to my books, I plugged it into my laptop only to find out there are no drivers for this item. In fact, there isn't even support about how to get this to work on their site. Window's update couldn't even find a driver for this thing. Upond reading the box, it says "Works on some version of vista depending on PC configurations."
I wish I hadn't wasted my money on this. I was very excited about getting this the day I got my paycheck only to be quickly disappointed.
I bought this drive on may 2nd, 07. The next day I registered online. While doing so, I noticed the warranty ran out in dec. 07. I emailed WD, "What happened to my 12 month warranty?". The reply, "All warranty's start on date of manufacture." "Excuse me!" Then if it sit a year before being sold, NO WARRANTY!? I was told, to consider an update on the warranty, I must send in the Model#, Serial#, date of purchase, place of purchase, tele.# of place of purchase, everything they should have from the registeration process. I sent them a copy of my sales receipt from Amazon, with everything they asked for, informing them , Amazon displays no phone #'s. In a few days, I got an email with a list of "faq's", stating, if that didn't answer my question, to "reply to this letter, writing between the [ ] brackets. I replied. Got the same letter. During this time the drive developed a thumping noise, (which later disappeared) after 3 or 4 of these letters, I notified Amazon about my problem. They sent UPS to my door, picked up the drive & gave me a full refund. Two days later, I got an email saying my warranty had been updated. The next day, I got one asking for all the info all over again. I trashed it and listed their address in my spam filter. With a little research, I found Seagate gives a (5) year warranty and is a reliable co. from wayback. My fault I didn't get a Seagate to begin with.
.... Leave it formatted as a FAT32 disk. Though Macs can read an NTFS file, they can not write to it.
I find this to be an extremely effective way of transferring files between computers, able to handle extremely large files. Really you are only limited by the speed of the USB 2.0 connection (which is not all that slow).
I agree with the other positive reviews here, it is a fine piece of hardware for the money. Quiet, good looking, and ergonomically simple. Really can't go wrong with this.
I just bought his today and am copying a 250Gig to the My Book. In the middle I forgot about the FAT32 and got mad that I couldn't copy my larger video files. After some Google research I found this command CONVERT G: /FS:NTFS (check it out for yourself). This automatically switched the drive to NTFS after a reboot without loosing my data I had spent hours backing up. So far a great lil' drive.
This hard drive works well for what I need it for- backups and media storage. Transfer speed is fine, considering it is a USB 2.0. Looks great and fits nicely on my desk at school. I highly recommend this product for its amount of storage and its physical size.
This external hard drive has been great. The product was plug and play, and has caused me no trouble whatsoever. It is easy to use and requires little to no setup. As expected, it comes with software for the updating of backed up files, which is simple and clear.
Western Digital followed up numerous times about the purchase, ensuring my satisfaction. They provide substantial information about contacting them for any reason.
Overall, the entire purchase went very smoothly and I am very happy with the product. I highly recommend it.
I bought the WD 250 gb hard drive to back up the my Master's research. I haven't had any problems with it. I have it formated it with two separate drives. One is fat32 format which has video for my xbox 360 . The other is NTFS format and is were I back up my research and class files. It would have been nice to have the auto backup utility that comes with the more expensive version but it's not that bad to just drag and drop files onto the drive. Overall I would recommend this drive if you want more storage or you want to back up your files. If you want the auto backup spend the extra money for the premium edition.
This Western Digital 250 GB external hard drive is probably the best purchase I've made in several years. My 32 GB hard drive had filled up long ago, and it seemed I was waging a daily battle to free up enough room to add any kind of file or program. Now, those days are in the past. I've been saving things left and right on this drive for almost four months now, and it has yet to give me a single problem. Unless you need to use this as a portable hard drive, you can almost forget it's even there after you hook it up and install it. It comes on as soon as you boot up your computer, and it shuts itself down whenever you shut your computer down. (You can also shut the drive down manually whenever you want to.) Once it's in place, you never even have to touch it again.
Getting the drive up and going for the first time couldn't be easier. You'll want to use a USB 2.0 port to get the best speed and performance, but basically all you have to do is plug it in and let your computer recognize it. It comes with its own AC adapter, so you don't even have to worry about adding any more to the load your PC's power supply is already supporting. The only thing you have to do yourself is to reformat the drive as NTFS (it comes formatted as Fat32 by default) if you want to take full advantage of its huge capacity. If you don't know how to do this yourself, just ask a PC buddy or do a quick Internet search - there's really nothing to it.
I worried that this drive might run a little slower than my internal hard drive, in terms of accessing files and folders, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. I really couldn't be happier with this drive, as it's worked perfectly from Day One. I should note that I'm using a Windows XP machine, so I can't say how well this drive might work with the new Vista OS.
This hard drive works well, is relatively quiet and has a quick enough response to meet my needs. What else can I ask for. As far as reliability, I haven't had it long enough to properly comment.
I paired this drive up with the Linksys NSLU2 as a network drive and it has worked out very well. It powers on/off automatically with the Linksys and it also spins down when there has been no activity for a while. No problem with read/write so far.
Four stars only because I think one year warranty is bit short.
I purchased a new 250GB computer after using up all the disk space on my 100 GB computer. I had used a Maxtor 120 GB external hard drive with the old computer. Now I needed a 250 GB external hard drive which I use as a dedicated backup for my new computer. That along with Norton's SAVE & RESTORE software I have the perfect combo for backing up my hard drive to the WD 250. Everything is easy to use and practically automatic. I use Norton SYSTEMWORKS with SAVE & RESTORE and the WDG1U2500 and I get perfect backup and recovery.
I have been a fan of Western Digital hard drives for many years, but that ended with this product. I purchased an Essential Edition 250GB drive for my daughter as a Christmas gift, by New Years it was DOA. Giving WD the benefit of the doubt, I exchanged it for an identical replacement. This one made it until early March. Three clicks and it turns off. WD says there is nothing I can do, but I return it under a RMA. They can do nothing about the lost data. So much for using this drive for backing up important files. I've have had at least a dozen WD drives over the years and never had a failure, they just became obsolete because of their size. This product however....STAY AWAY!
Was easy to setup and connect. If you want the file format to be NTFS rather than DOS you need to reformat the drive. No backup software comes with the unit so you either need a version of XP or Vista with MS backup or will need to purchase software separetly. You can also purchase a different version of this unit with backup software included but it cost more. Unit has worked fine for a couple of weeks so far. Purchased this unit because reviews of some other products revealed disk crashes after some period of time.
We run a number of these drives to back up off of our Mac-based network. I see a number of problems in the other reviews, but in the last year or so we haven't seen any problems with the Mybook drives. They run extremely quiet for an external drive and work as advertised. We are of course running 3rd party backup software - have not tried anything included with the drive - but they work like a charm.
It's pretty and works well so far. I can always can feel a strong amount of heat rising from the grate when I put my hand over it while the drive is being written to. There is also a light buzzing sound coming from this thing nearly all the time and sometimes it makes a high pitched sound. The latter sound is very annoying but if you use headphones a lot it's not so bad.
I bought this external drive about a week ago (so my review is not that relevent in terms of long term reliability, but I'll come back and edit it if any issues arise). I bought it for extra storage and also for a quick easy way to transfer data from one computer to another.
So far, I'm very happy with it - Amazon's shipping was super fast and setting it up was a breeze (literally just plug it in and connect to your computer via USB and you're good to go, my 2 XP based PCs recognized it instantly). It looks good, it's reasonably compact, I haven't had any issues accessing data in terms of speed, and it doesn't seem to run hot or anything like that. It also came at what I'd consider a very fair price considering WD's brand name in data storage.
I'd highly recommend this external drive.
Once formated this product is doing exactly what I needed - a back up for my computer. Installation could not have been easier. Instructions for doing a computer back up were confusing to me, but I'm not a rocket scientist when it comes to computers. Re-formating the "My Book" solved the problem and I am now very pleased with it and would definitely recommend it.
Setup was easy, plugged it and I was done. Transferring files are done quick enough and the hard drive goes into a sleep mode when not used within a given amount of time. If sending a file to the hard drive when in sleep mode, it starts up and is ready in about 5 seconds. I'm happy with my purchase and will update if anything goes wrong.
One thing that bothers me somewhat is the amount of different sounds the drive makes. The sounds aren't exactly consistent, which worries me a bit. The sounds are quiet though, just the humming and ticking of a normal hard drive, but why the range? Is it trying to be a musical instrument?
I bought this unit to back up my entire hard drive every night. It came with no instructions other than "Installation Instructions". How to get it plugged in and set up. My assistant did this for me and showed me that she had set it up to back up every day around midnight. That was 4 months ago. This week I accidentally deleted my entire documents folder...which for some reason didn't even show up in the recycle bin. Alas, I could retrieve everything from the WD back up drive. NOT SO. There was nothing on the drive. When I called tech support at WD they said "What software are you using to back up?" OK. I'm not a computer geek. I didn't know I had to have software. I assumed the WD had built in software. It certainly appears to have everything it needs. A menu prompted us to say which files we wanted backed up...when we wanted to back them up and how often. Why should I have thought anything else was required. Even the computer geek I hired to come rescue me was baffled. So my investment to save my files failed me and I paid a geek more than I paid for the My Book back up drive to salvage 75% of my files. I am pretty sore that no documentation comes with the unit that says "YOU HAVE TO HAVE BACK UP SOFTWARE to use this thing...but if you don't...it will look like it is working just fine. You will just have a real sad surprise if you suddenly need to retrieve your files."
The WD 250 boasts on being an external drive, but neglects to mention that it must be unplugged from the computer before power down. Well, clumbsy me, I made the same mistake twice with this product. The desktop and the laptop both recognized the MyBook drive "ok" and had no problem writing data files to it. So, I thought all is well. But, in both cases, once the PC was turned off - it became a nightmare. Since both my PCs run in XP Prof mode, with all service pack software updated, latest and greatest versions of everything, I would assume nothing should go wrong. Not correct. In both cases, the Xp operating system was damaged to "the point of no return." Furthermore, all data on my PCs were lost. Now - why did I buy this external hard drive? Ok, this is not the first time some hardware has gone wrong on my PCs, but usually it does not take out the entire operating system - such that I cannot run a "restore," and get back to working. After calling WD on the phone, they suggested that I must unplug the MyBook each and everytime, before turning off the PCs. Well, that was pretty smart of them. They sounded like a comedy act - "Doctor, doctor, I have this pain in my leg, when I go ... like that (moving my leg to show the doctor)," and the doctor replies, "Well, then don't go like that!!!" And, in this case, I should add the word 'dummy'. So, WD support system basically solved the problem, do not keep the external file plugged into the computer at shutdown. Why? Maybe because the system think its a "real nice hard drive," humm??? Or whatever. Anyway, just be very very careful. So, here is my recommendation.
The drive is good, except there needs to be (1) better testing at WD technical support so as to uncover this problem (2) better documentation at WD to warn any potential buyer that this external drive can cause problems - so backup your system before attempting the permanent drive attachment. (3) suggest strongly that the drive should be used only after PC has booted up, and must be unplugged before PC has chance to shutdown. This prevents any unwanted nightmares. (4) So why not add a driver and stuff - to make the system stay connected?
I would have given this external drive a 4 star rating - if it was not for the bad experiences, and the loss of time, loss of data from my PC, and the below par service support provided by WD technical staff. I would have given this external drive a 5 star, it it could have stayed plugged into my PC using a downloaded driver program, and software to manipuate its presence on the Xp Prof operating system.
Just purchased this from Walmart. It was shrink wrapped, so I doubt it was a return. Opened the box to find that the packers put in the WRONG cord! It does not have a USB end and neither end fits into the hard drive . . . Taking this one back to the store and ordering a 500g seagate
First, let me state my PC's running well and has more than enough RAM for operating an external hard drive to spec. I've owned the WDG1U2500 for about 2 months and the good news is it's handsome to look at, seems to be well-built, and is relatively silent in operation. The bad news - That operation has proven to be erratic - sometimes refusing to turn off (even though the on-screen icon indicates so), sometimes not starting up until the computer is re-booted, and frequently seems to run abnormally slow. So far, this external HD hasn't lost any of my files but these glitches make me wonder about its future reliability and seriously think about whether to buy another Western Digital product again. Reliability, afterall, must be the major factor with external hard drives.
This is a great deal. I have a 6-year old Dell Dimension, started with Windows ME then upgraded to XP a few years ago. Just plugged it in, easy to install the software, no problems at all. Works like a charm!
It worked all right for 2 days and then crushed my laptop ! My USB ports stopped working after that incident and never came back ! I dont really think that this was a coincidence.
This is another case of having the drive for literally 2 days and having it work once. It worked long enough to install on 3 different computers, and transfer several gigs worth of data onto the unit itself with no problem. However once I tried to plug it back in to one of those same computers to transfer the data off of it, it died. Now, out of the three that it was installed on, none of them will even recognize it anymore for the short periods of time that it stays powered on (seems random). I'm an experienced user, and the item was never dropped or misused in any way. WD tech support took over a week to return email and was of no help, asking me if I'd done things that I already told them I had in my initial email. Their final reply was to simply send it back for a replacement, but after reading other stories, I doubt I'll even mess with it. An expensive loss, but lesson learned.
I have only had this about a month, but I haven't had any problems wth it yet. It looks good, didn't require any software to get it to work, and I didn't have any problems with setting it up.
Was going to get it from Amazon, but over the couple days of looking at hard drives, the price on amazon went up about $20. Ended up getting it at Sam's Club, though the price on Amazon has now dropped down to about what it was before.
I'm giving it 5 starts cause I have no reason not to. I'm reviewing the hard drive, not Amazon's pricing policy.
This hard drive was purchased to use to backup my home computer. So far so good. The transfer rate seems pretty good for being USB based and on the PC this was a plug-and-play device as advertised, so no cds to worry about.
I did, however try to use this same device on a Macintosh (G3) computer and didn't have any luck. I assume the default format of the drive is the issue, but honestly I didn't have a lot of time to look into why the device was not recognized.
Overall, I'd say this was an excellent value for the storage capacity. Although it's not meant for a portable drive, it is compact enough to sit next to your computer and not be an eyesore. I'd definitely buy again for my needs.
the hard drive works great, but the plasticky construction makes it feel very cheap.
I returned this product immediatly because 2 things:
1) there is no backup software came with the drive, which means I have to pay extra$$$ to get one or I have to manually drag and drop
2)No tech support, I emailed Western Digital and request for help, no reply at all.
Couldn't be easier to install and use. Even my mother can use it.
Plug and play just as advertised. No CDs or discs containing software to install. It's all embedded in the drive itself, meaning you can utilize My Book with multiple computers without needing to carry any installation software.
I'll be buying more...Each My Book can sit in the bookshelf fulfilling my multiple data storage needs.
Nice product
I use My Book to transfer data between my PC and my Macbook. As well as general back up. It works great. Excellent product.
I use these terrific little drives for my photography business. Haven't had one fail yet!
I bought this drive and used it for about two weeks before it crashed and I lost all of my work. I have a few friends that have owned WT products before and they also have had problems with them. I cannot reccomend this drive
I bought this after the Simpletech failed. This one works on my laptop without any problems. On my desktop, it works only when it feels like working. I am having a hard time getting a drive the will work consistently. To anyone that wants to buy these, I would suggest that get one that you can return without penelty. That way, if you try it out and have to return it, it won't cost you anything.......
This drive seems good so far. We're using it primarily for document storage and backup. It has a lot of storage space and I doubt we will ever fill it. Any complaints from other reviewers about noise should be ignored, it's quieter than most desktop computers.
this is a great hard drive for what i use it for. it makes a little noise but other that that it works great.
This USB 2.0 external hard-drive was ready to use out of the box. It connected to the PC without any hitches, and the Windows XP Professional OS recognized it as a "Removable Drvie". And the drive is quiet, and the file-transfer speeds are quite acceptable. Overall, I am pleased with this product.
Drive works great. Came with free shipping and fast. I have no problems with it. Just make sure you have a 2.0 usb and youll love it.
This 250GB external hard disk is pretty sleak, manageable, maintainable and very easy to use.
All in all a decent product at a decent price, especially now that the price has substantially dropped.
As another reviewer said, you unpack it, plug it in, and BOOM--250 gigs of storage. I've had this drive for about 5 months and have NO complaints.
Cool design--easily reformatted to NTFS for backups--has NEVER interfered with other USB devices, which some card readers and other USB devices have done.
Makes backups with Acronis True Image a piece of cake.
I have always thought that WD delivers a good product at a good price--this drive continues the tradition.
I would have never purchased this drive, but I found it through a really good deal. I have owned it for over a month and it has provided some really benefitial help to backup data and store and transfer mass amounts of data from one computer to another. I can easily transfer data from my desktop to my notebook without having to burn it to media or having to wait for the transfer to complete through a network. I love how it's 7200rpm but I gave it 3 stars because the first one I received was DOA. I swapped it out with no hassle and it works like a charm...but for how long?
steps
1- Unboxed it.
2- Plugged the power cord
3- Plugged the usb cable to the computer
4- BAM!!! Additional 250Gb
I didn't install any software. Windows XP automatically recognizes this as an additional logical drive.
The only bad thing is that it comes formatted as FAT from factory. But nothing a good reformat won't solve.
Transfer rate is excellent. I actually plugged this to my server and shared it on windows so I could access it on my home network.
Now I can easily backup files from my laptop to this device (that's actually connected to the server)
For those giving bad reviews because it crashed... Keep it in mind that it's a hard drive... Hard drives do crash... That's just something they do. You should always keep 2 backups. Actually, I'm now researching online backup services (like Genie Backup).
What good are 10 backups in my house if there's a fire (knock on wood) and it destroys my computer and all the backups I had.
Really great product for the price.
The My Book is great. My hard drive is really small, so I use it for housing my pictures, music, and movies. My only complaint is that occasionally it'll have a very high-pitched whine sound coming from it. It might just be that my ears are sensitive though (I can hear when a tv is on).
We bought 6 for our office as back-up drives for each pc. They are now around 6 months old and have never failed. They work flawlessly. I don't know why people say they have had crashes. We back up large projects daily and have never had an issue with any of them.
I would highly recommend them to anyone considering an external hard drive.
I bought this drive about a month ago and it works great. It was easy to set up and it works very much like a large USB flash drive. I mainly use the My Book for backup purposes and leave it turned off a majority of the time.
I bought drive to backup my work files. Great design, fairly compact. No software included for backups so you have to provide your own. Worked fine for 1 month but drive failed. Would not power up.
RMA process costly and at your expense. You must ship in anti-static bag (so save box). No communication or response to 4 e-mails I sent - never had a company be so unresponsive. Not only did I lose 1 month of backups but it cost me quite a bit to ship back.
Recommend if you buy it to don't rely solely on it for at least a few months. You have a chance of losing your only copy of something if the drive fails. Hope replacement is more reliable.
*Update* Replacement drive was new (not refurbished) and has worked fine ever since. I must have gotten a bad unit. Drive is pretty quiet and power up quickly and is pretty intelligent to power down when not it use. Will be buying Acronis True Image or Norten Ghost to back up images/quicker to restore system than just backing up files.
It worked fine for 3 days, and now suddenly it does not power up anymore. Having just read the other reviews I'm sorry I bought it.
After getting a video ipod last year for christmas, I quickly ran out of space on my personal computer to keep all my music, videos & photos. I bought this external hard drive about 2 months ago and I am so glad I did. I now have all the space I will EVER need! If you don't have one, get one! If you're thinking about it - stop thinking and BUY IT! Seriously!
Purchased a new WDG1U2500 on September 9, 2006. Had to have it replaced and mailed the unit to WD. The replacement was also defective and it was a REFURBISHED one. Returning a defective new unit and receiving a refurbished one in exchange is not right. I hope the second replacement will be a NEW one. Had to pay USPS $17.70 (includes insurance and tracking) for the first return. Hope to make positive comments and give better rating after receiving a replacement and being able to use it. At the moment I wish I had not purchased the unit.
I've used this drive for about two months now. I would consider used moderately as I don't leave my computer running 24/7. I'm not sure if that qualifies for any type of stress testing, but in my personal experience, the drive has performed flawlessly.Highly recommended for the price.
I purchased the Western Digital 250GB "My Book" 250 GB Hard Drive about a month ago. Unlike a lot of products I purchase, I did not do a lot of research on this, I needed extra space for some files and I needed it soon. For the price, it was perfect compared to some of the other drives out there, which may boast more features but give you less total storage space.
I have not encountered a single crash with mine. I noticed from other reviewers that several are experiencing this. I don't know what else to tell you, the possible consumer, except for the fact that I have had no trouble with it.
The Hard drive is sleek and small, sitting next to any computer tower without taking up desk space. It's also small enough to easily carry in a backpack or small bag. Everyone seems to be going ga-ga over whether something is used with Fire wire or not, but with USB 2.0 I have no issues. Its not how fast I can get something on or off of this hard drive, my main concern was the space it offered. USB 2.0 is not bad at all and in less than 30 minutes had transferred over 35 GB of data to it in the forms of word documents, music files, movie files, Adobe documents, and pictures.
The only downfall is I cannot seem to find a carry case for this type of hard drive. Everything seems to be made either for a specific brand that is a hindrance since the size is not universal, or made for a laptop. In this case I guess I can improvise and just buy a hard shell meant for a handgun and cut the foam accordingly to fit the shape.
I've never had any issues when booting up, nor disconnecting. It may seem hasty I am reviewing it after only a month but I use it every day and have yet to have any bad experiences with it. I have not regretted purchasing it yet and have really enjoyed it.
This is a great item to have if u have alot of movie clips, songs, or stuff in general. good way to store them and it works for the mac also. good item good price
This drive has an extremely high failure rate. Mine functioned well for several hours and then-- dead. What an overwhelming disappointment.
We recently bought these for storing additional data on workstations at my place of business. They have worked wonderfully and with a very small footprint take up very little space when space is an issue. Fast data transfer, virtually silent operation, and virtually non-existant heat generation, great product.
Only few cons is the "utilities" that come pre-installed are not needed for business users and its an older version of Adobe Reader than is currently available, but those are hardly worth deducting a star.
All in all these have been wonderful, will definetly consider WD products in the future.
I bought a Western Digital My Book...turned it on- it easily transferred all my pictures and music onto it. It didn't even take as long as other hard drives I've been used to, and I delete everything off my computer so I could make room for a big program I needed ton install.
So the hard drive turns off after I'm done.
Never to turn on again.
Next day I plug it in to access those pictures and it won't turn on. I call technical support and even though they admit the product may have been faulty before I even used it, refused to help me out in recovery damages. I can take the hard drive back within 30 days though as covered by the warranty, but oops, I need the drive in order to get everything recovered! which will, of course, take more than 30 days.
2 days, used once, completely broken. Bad customer service.
All I needed was a backup solution for my 10 gigs of data. This drive is exactly what I was looking for - it's fast, reliable and has a really great look to it. No software required, just plug it in and go ! It can't really get any easier and for $99 (especially if you have some online coupons handy) it's worth the small investment. Nobody ever thinks to back up - this makes it easy for everyone.
This thing was almost TOO simple to set up. You just plug it in and it's all set. Some people will look for a CD or some other software and be frustrated, but you're assuming more complication than there is. The software is on the hard drive and it installs itself.
I also reformatted the drive to the newer standard, and I lost some GB in the process, don't know why, but with my computer it took less than a minute to reformat and partition the drive. I put programs in one section and files in the other.
The drive does turn off, or, as I think about it, go into sleep mode if you don't use it for a while. That means when you go to save something, you have to wait a couple of extra seconds for it to wake up. Once I understood this it didn't bother me.
I have this on my shelf, and not only does it look cool, I can't hear it at all.
You can't go wrong with this drive, especially for the price with all these rebates around.
I have no problems with this HD.is really good, looks stylish on my desk. If you need a simple External device to store data this is the perfect buy.
The 250GB My Book external hard drive from Western Digital is a great place to store all of your extra photos, videos and mp3s. I find that the 250GB Essential (essential meaning lowest pricing tier) hits the sweet spot between space and price.
For about 100$ (I actually got mine at Office Depot for less because of a great mail-in rebate) you get double the space of a cheaper 79$ 100GB drive. This is great because once you have all that space you'll fill it up quickly.
The single USB 2.0 connection is more then enough to play music, view/edit pictures and movies. Writing to the drive is slower then reading. I have edited video stored on the hard drive with little issues of speed or write/read times. The drive itself is fairly appealing to the eyes. It looks like a black leather-bound book. Of course with two wires (one for power and one for USB) it totally destroys that image but what can you do? The little green light around the button is cool.
The drive has two nifty features. The first is the auto-on/off. When not in use for a while the drive will simply shut off. It will turn itself on when you access it. This is a great feature because at 7,200RPMs this drive can get loud! Especially in an enclosed desk area. The second feature is that of a push-button backup utility. Good feature but I'll probably never use it.
Pros: Storage space vs. price, little green light, auto-on/off, mail-in rebate (if you can find one)
Cons: Noise, all those stupid wires, smaller drives can be had for less
Conclusion: A very nice hard drive especially considering the storage space vs. price issue when considering other external hard drives.
I was looking at different external hard drives. Majority of opinion agree that Western Digital is probably one of the best brand for HDD quality.
The HDD is very small, so good if you are going to college or want to carry when traveling. And the best is that heat doesnt collect, the HDD doesnt get very hot when transfering files.
The FAT32 format is abit annoying but a reformat doesnt take long.
I don't know why people say theres suddenly shut off, never happened to me.
It vibrates a bit, but that is easy to forgive in light of the really attractive design, a black-sheen case that evokes nothing less than a futuristic bible. Or maybe a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The Essential edition sports a green circle of light, and a single USB2 connection. The Essential edition is the budget edition of the line, lacking a FireWire connection and without a second ring of light that indicates (on the Premium and Pro editions) how much room is left on the drive. But who needs that? And personally I prefer the green illumination, anyway.
The circle of light doubles as an on/off button, conveniently located on the front. You may not need to tap that button much though, since the drive senses when you Shut Down (or Hibernate or Stand-By) your computer and automatically turns off.
Essentially, the design of the case and the automatic on/off are the two main reasons why these drives have become so popular within weeks of their debut. It took me three weeks to score one of these on sale.
You've probably read that the vents are a code. It reportedly spells out words such as "innovative", "reliable", "personal", "design", and "simple". The design of this drive is certainly innovative. The last memorable time when a designer got involved in making a case for an external hard drive was when the LaCie company hired F.A. Porche, but Porche, in what one could speculate was a bit of a cruel joke on LaCie, turned in a generic metallic brick (ooh I bet that angered LaCie). Western Digital, in contrast, has turned in a strikingly elegant case that would look great on a shelf. Expect other companies to follow suit with shelf-worthy case designs, now that good aesthetics have been introduced to this formerly purely-functional line of products.
One small unexpected complaint. You can see why they dubbed it "My Book", but rather inconveniently for anyone who is actually writing a book and already has a folder named "My Book", this drive is formatted with the name pre-designated as "My Book". But authors need not worry; that name is easily erased when one reformats the drive to the NTFS standard that current computers use (like nearly all hard drives, it arrives formatted in the old FAT32 format to accomodate users of older computers). Just plug it in, reformat the drive to NTFS (which takes an hour or so for a drive this size), and then it is ready to serve you. The drive came with some software on it, but none of it is needed.
So far, so good. If no one reports any design flaws, I expect people will be "swearing by" this book... ok that pun was lame.
Four stars rather than five, because of the slight vibration.
Just bought it and backed up my PC's hard drive. Absolutely no problem. Good price for a good drive. "I believe" in Western Digital. I've had good experience with them.
I have this unit and the drive randomly turns on and off in the middle of writing to it. Not recommended!
I bought 2 of these drives to backup digital photos that would no longer fit on my hard drive. I keep the same thing on both of them, just in case one crashes. So far I have had no problems. Plus the Google Picasa2 software that comes on the drives is nice for sorting all of my photos in an easy to view way. The drives are also pretty small and fit nicely on a small shelf beside my computer. They are also pretty quite while running, unlike some of WD's previous drives. If you need extra space, in a compact place, this is a good choice.
purchased through Amazon-arrived rapidly and was as advertised-no installation problems-just plug in to usb port and start using-really easy and fast
I was very excited when I received this HDD today, but only to be quickly disappointed. On the box, it clearly says "Window Vista Compatible," but the installation instructions are still for XP,ME, and 2000 operating systems. When I managed to get the My Book set up, looking all pretty next to my books, I plugged it into my laptop only to find out there are no drivers for this item. In fact, there isn't even support about how to get this to work on their site. Window's update couldn't even find a driver for this thing. Upond reading the box, it says "Works on some version of vista depending on PC configurations."
I wish I hadn't wasted my money on this. I was very excited about getting this the day I got my paycheck only to be quickly disappointed.
I bought this drive on may 2nd, 07. The next day I registered online. While doing so, I noticed the warranty ran out in dec. 07. I emailed WD, "What happened to my 12 month warranty?". The reply, "All warranty's start on date of manufacture." "Excuse me!" Then if it sit a year before being sold, NO WARRANTY!? I was told, to consider an update on the warranty, I must send in the Model#, Serial#, date of purchase, place of purchase, tele.# of place of purchase, everything they should have from the registeration process. I sent them a copy of my sales receipt from Amazon, with everything they asked for, informing them , Amazon displays no phone #'s. In a few days, I got an email with a list of "faq's", stating, if that didn't answer my question, to "reply to this letter, writing between the [ ] brackets. I replied. Got the same letter. During this time the drive developed a thumping noise, (which later disappeared) after 3 or 4 of these letters, I notified Amazon about my problem. They sent UPS to my door, picked up the drive & gave me a full refund. Two days later, I got an email saying my warranty had been updated. The next day, I got one asking for all the info all over again. I trashed it and listed their address in my spam filter. With a little research, I found Seagate gives a (5) year warranty and is a reliable co. from wayback. My fault I didn't get a Seagate to begin with.
.... Leave it formatted as a FAT32 disk. Though Macs can read an NTFS file, they can not write to it.
I find this to be an extremely effective way of transferring files between computers, able to handle extremely large files. Really you are only limited by the speed of the USB 2.0 connection (which is not all that slow).
I agree with the other positive reviews here, it is a fine piece of hardware for the money. Quiet, good looking, and ergonomically simple. Really can't go wrong with this.
I just bought his today and am copying a 250Gig to the My Book. In the middle I forgot about the FAT32 and got mad that I couldn't copy my larger video files. After some Google research I found this command CONVERT G: /FS:NTFS (check it out for yourself). This automatically switched the drive to NTFS after a reboot without loosing my data I had spent hours backing up. So far a great lil' drive.
This hard drive works well for what I need it for- backups and media storage. Transfer speed is fine, considering it is a USB 2.0. Looks great and fits nicely on my desk at school. I highly recommend this product for its amount of storage and its physical size.
This external hard drive has been great. The product was plug and play, and has caused me no trouble whatsoever. It is easy to use and requires little to no setup. As expected, it comes with software for the updating of backed up files, which is simple and clear.
Western Digital followed up numerous times about the purchase, ensuring my satisfaction. They provide substantial information about contacting them for any reason.
Overall, the entire purchase went very smoothly and I am very happy with the product. I highly recommend it.
I bought the WD 250 gb hard drive to back up the my Master's research. I haven't had any problems with it. I have it formated it with two separate drives. One is fat32 format which has video for my xbox 360 . The other is NTFS format and is were I back up my research and class files. It would have been nice to have the auto backup utility that comes with the more expensive version but it's not that bad to just drag and drop files onto the drive. Overall I would recommend this drive if you want more storage or you want to back up your files. If you want the auto backup spend the extra money for the premium edition.
This Western Digital 250 GB external hard drive is probably the best purchase I've made in several years. My 32 GB hard drive had filled up long ago, and it seemed I was waging a daily battle to free up enough room to add any kind of file or program. Now, those days are in the past. I've been saving things left and right on this drive for almost four months now, and it has yet to give me a single problem. Unless you need to use this as a portable hard drive, you can almost forget it's even there after you hook it up and install it. It comes on as soon as you boot up your computer, and it shuts itself down whenever you shut your computer down. (You can also shut the drive down manually whenever you want to.) Once it's in place, you never even have to touch it again.
Getting the drive up and going for the first time couldn't be easier. You'll want to use a USB 2.0 port to get the best speed and performance, but basically all you have to do is plug it in and let your computer recognize it. It comes with its own AC adapter, so you don't even have to worry about adding any more to the load your PC's power supply is already supporting. The only thing you have to do yourself is to reformat the drive as NTFS (it comes formatted as Fat32 by default) if you want to take full advantage of its huge capacity. If you don't know how to do this yourself, just ask a PC buddy or do a quick Internet search - there's really nothing to it.
I worried that this drive might run a little slower than my internal hard drive, in terms of accessing files and folders, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. I really couldn't be happier with this drive, as it's worked perfectly from Day One. I should note that I'm using a Windows XP machine, so I can't say how well this drive might work with the new Vista OS.
This hard drive works well, is relatively quiet and has a quick enough response to meet my needs. What else can I ask for. As far as reliability, I haven't had it long enough to properly comment.
I paired this drive up with the Linksys NSLU2 as a network drive and it has worked out very well. It powers on/off automatically with the Linksys and it also spins down when there has been no activity for a while. No problem with read/write so far.
Four stars only because I think one year warranty is bit short.
I purchased a new 250GB computer after using up all the disk space on my 100 GB computer. I had used a Maxtor 120 GB external hard drive with the old computer. Now I needed a 250 GB external hard drive which I use as a dedicated backup for my new computer. That along with Norton's SAVE & RESTORE software I have the perfect combo for backing up my hard drive to the WD 250. Everything is easy to use and practically automatic. I use Norton SYSTEMWORKS with SAVE & RESTORE and the WDG1U2500 and I get perfect backup and recovery.
I have been a fan of Western Digital hard drives for many years, but that ended with this product. I purchased an Essential Edition 250GB drive for my daughter as a Christmas gift, by New Years it was DOA. Giving WD the benefit of the doubt, I exchanged it for an identical replacement. This one made it until early March. Three clicks and it turns off. WD says there is nothing I can do, but I return it under a RMA. They can do nothing about the lost data. So much for using this drive for backing up important files. I've have had at least a dozen WD drives over the years and never had a failure, they just became obsolete because of their size. This product however....STAY AWAY!
Was easy to setup and connect. If you want the file format to be NTFS rather than DOS you need to reformat the drive. No backup software comes with the unit so you either need a version of XP or Vista with MS backup or will need to purchase software separetly. You can also purchase a different version of this unit with backup software included but it cost more. Unit has worked fine for a couple of weeks so far. Purchased this unit because reviews of some other products revealed disk crashes after some period of time.
We run a number of these drives to back up off of our Mac-based network. I see a number of problems in the other reviews, but in the last year or so we haven't seen any problems with the Mybook drives. They run extremely quiet for an external drive and work as advertised. We are of course running 3rd party backup software - have not tried anything included with the drive - but they work like a charm.
It's pretty and works well so far. I can always can feel a strong amount of heat rising from the grate when I put my hand over it while the drive is being written to. There is also a light buzzing sound coming from this thing nearly all the time and sometimes it makes a high pitched sound. The latter sound is very annoying but if you use headphones a lot it's not so bad.
I bought this external drive about a week ago (so my review is not that relevent in terms of long term reliability, but I'll come back and edit it if any issues arise). I bought it for extra storage and also for a quick easy way to transfer data from one computer to another.
So far, I'm very happy with it - Amazon's shipping was super fast and setting it up was a breeze (literally just plug it in and connect to your computer via USB and you're good to go, my 2 XP based PCs recognized it instantly). It looks good, it's reasonably compact, I haven't had any issues accessing data in terms of speed, and it doesn't seem to run hot or anything like that. It also came at what I'd consider a very fair price considering WD's brand name in data storage.
I'd highly recommend this external drive.
Once formated this product is doing exactly what I needed - a back up for my computer. Installation could not have been easier. Instructions for doing a computer back up were confusing to me, but I'm not a rocket scientist when it comes to computers. Re-formating the "My Book" solved the problem and I am now very pleased with it and would definitely recommend it.
Setup was easy, plugged it and I was done. Transferring files are done quick enough and the hard drive goes into a sleep mode when not used within a given amount of time. If sending a file to the hard drive when in sleep mode, it starts up and is ready in about 5 seconds. I'm happy with my purchase and will update if anything goes wrong.
One thing that bothers me somewhat is the amount of different sounds the drive makes. The sounds aren't exactly consistent, which worries me a bit. The sounds are quiet though, just the humming and ticking of a normal hard drive, but why the range? Is it trying to be a musical instrument?
I bought this unit to back up my entire hard drive every night. It came with no instructions other than "Installation Instructions". How to get it plugged in and set up. My assistant did this for me and showed me that she had set it up to back up every day around midnight. That was 4 months ago. This week I accidentally deleted my entire documents folder...which for some reason didn't even show up in the recycle bin. Alas, I could retrieve everything from the WD back up drive. NOT SO. There was nothing on the drive. When I called tech support at WD they said "What software are you using to back up?" OK. I'm not a computer geek. I didn't know I had to have software. I assumed the WD had built in software. It certainly appears to have everything it needs. A menu prompted us to say which files we wanted backed up...when we wanted to back them up and how often. Why should I have thought anything else was required. Even the computer geek I hired to come rescue me was baffled. So my investment to save my files failed me and I paid a geek more than I paid for the My Book back up drive to salvage 75% of my files. I am pretty sore that no documentation comes with the unit that says "YOU HAVE TO HAVE BACK UP SOFTWARE to use this thing...but if you don't...it will look like it is working just fine. You will just have a real sad surprise if you suddenly need to retrieve your files."
The WD 250 boasts on being an external drive, but neglects to mention that it must be unplugged from the computer before power down. Well, clumbsy me, I made the same mistake twice with this product. The desktop and the laptop both recognized the MyBook drive "ok" and had no problem writing data files to it. So, I thought all is well. But, in both cases, once the PC was turned off - it became a nightmare. Since both my PCs run in XP Prof mode, with all service pack software updated, latest and greatest versions of everything, I would assume nothing should go wrong. Not correct. In both cases, the Xp operating system was damaged to "the point of no return." Furthermore, all data on my PCs were lost. Now - why did I buy this external hard drive? Ok, this is not the first time some hardware has gone wrong on my PCs, but usually it does not take out the entire operating system - such that I cannot run a "restore," and get back to working. After calling WD on the phone, they suggested that I must unplug the MyBook each and everytime, before turning off the PCs. Well, that was pretty smart of them. They sounded like a comedy act - "Doctor, doctor, I have this pain in my leg, when I go ... like that (moving my leg to show the doctor)," and the doctor replies, "Well, then don't go like that!!!" And, in this case, I should add the word 'dummy'. So, WD support system basically solved the problem, do not keep the external file plugged into the computer at shutdown. Why? Maybe because the system think its a "real nice hard drive," humm??? Or whatever. Anyway, just be very very careful. So, here is my recommendation.
The drive is good, except there needs to be (1) better testing at WD technical support so as to uncover this problem (2) better documentation at WD to warn any potential buyer that this external drive can cause problems - so backup your system before attempting the permanent drive attachment. (3) suggest strongly that the drive should be used only after PC has booted up, and must be unplugged before PC has chance to shutdown. This prevents any unwanted nightmares. (4) So why not add a driver and stuff - to make the system stay connected?
I would have given this external drive a 4 star rating - if it was not for the bad experiences, and the loss of time, loss of data from my PC, and the below par service support provided by WD technical staff. I would have given this external drive a 5 star, it it could have stayed plugged into my PC using a downloaded driver program, and software to manipuate its presence on the Xp Prof operating system.
Just purchased this from Walmart. It was shrink wrapped, so I doubt it was a return. Opened the box to find that the packers put in the WRONG cord! It does not have a USB end and neither end fits into the hard drive . . . Taking this one back to the store and ordering a 500g seagate
First, let me state my PC's running well and has more than enough RAM for operating an external hard drive to spec. I've owned the WDG1U2500 for about 2 months and the good news is it's handsome to look at, seems to be well-built, and is relatively silent in operation. The bad news - That operation has proven to be erratic - sometimes refusing to turn off (even though the on-screen icon indicates so), sometimes not starting up until the computer is re-booted, and frequently seems to run abnormally slow. So far, this external HD hasn't lost any of my files but these glitches make me wonder about its future reliability and seriously think about whether to buy another Western Digital product again. Reliability, afterall, must be the major factor with external hard drives.
This is a great deal. I have a 6-year old Dell Dimension, started with Windows ME then upgraded to XP a few years ago. Just plugged it in, easy to install the software, no problems at all. Works like a charm!
It worked all right for 2 days and then crushed my laptop ! My USB ports stopped working after that incident and never came back ! I dont really think that this was a coincidence.
This is another case of having the drive for literally 2 days and having it work once. It worked long enough to install on 3 different computers, and transfer several gigs worth of data onto the unit itself with no problem. However once I tried to plug it back in to one of those same computers to transfer the data off of it, it died. Now, out of the three that it was installed on, none of them will even recognize it anymore for the short periods of time that it stays powered on (seems random). I'm an experienced user, and the item was never dropped or misused in any way. WD tech support took over a week to return email and was of no help, asking me if I'd done things that I already told them I had in my initial email. Their final reply was to simply send it back for a replacement, but after reading other stories, I doubt I'll even mess with it. An expensive loss, but lesson learned.
I have only had this about a month, but I haven't had any problems wth it yet. It looks good, didn't require any software to get it to work, and I didn't have any problems with setting it up.
Was going to get it from Amazon, but over the couple days of looking at hard drives, the price on amazon went up about $20. Ended up getting it at Sam's Club, though the price on Amazon has now dropped down to about what it was before.
I'm giving it 5 starts cause I have no reason not to. I'm reviewing the hard drive, not Amazon's pricing policy.
This hard drive was purchased to use to backup my home computer. So far so good. The transfer rate seems pretty good for being USB based and on the PC this was a plug-and-play device as advertised, so no cds to worry about.
I did, however try to use this same device on a Macintosh (G3) computer and didn't have any luck. I assume the default format of the drive is the issue, but honestly I didn't have a lot of time to look into why the device was not recognized.
Overall, I'd say this was an excellent value for the storage capacity. Although it's not meant for a portable drive, it is compact enough to sit next to your computer and not be an eyesore. I'd definitely buy again for my needs.
the hard drive works great, but the plasticky construction makes it feel very cheap.
I returned this product immediatly because 2 things:
1) there is no backup software came with the drive, which means I have to pay extra$$$ to get one or I have to manually drag and drop
2)No tech support, I emailed Western Digital and request for help, no reply at all.
Couldn't be easier to install and use. Even my mother can use it.
Plug and play just as advertised. No CDs or discs containing software to install. It's all embedded in the drive itself, meaning you can utilize My Book with multiple computers without needing to carry any installation software.
I'll be buying more...Each My Book can sit in the bookshelf fulfilling my multiple data storage needs.
Nice product
I use My Book to transfer data between my PC and my Macbook. As well as general back up. It works great. Excellent product.
I use these terrific little drives for my photography business. Haven't had one fail yet!
I bought this drive and used it for about two weeks before it crashed and I lost all of my work. I have a few friends that have owned WT products before and they also have had problems with them. I cannot reccomend this drive
I bought this after the Simpletech failed. This one works on my laptop without any problems. On my desktop, it works only when it feels like working. I am having a hard time getting a drive the will work consistently. To anyone that wants to buy these, I would suggest that get one that you can return without penelty. That way, if you try it out and have to return it, it won't cost you anything.......
I haven't had it long, but so far I am loving this thing.
I only use a laptop and it was getting painfully slow due to music and high resolution photos, etc. clogging up the memory, so that's all I've put on My Book so far, but it works like a dream. I don't know squat about computers, but transfer rates seem to me to be the same as if I were to copy the files to anywhere else on my computer (say, into the folder for a CD-R that I want to burn, but without the added time to actually burn a CD), sometimes even faster, now that I can clear out some of my laptop's memory. All my music plays right off My Book and my CPU is free to do the things I want it to do, which is all I needed this for.
I should add, however that, although it is plug and play, I read enough reviews to know that I should reformat it first. But as I said, I know nothing about computers. The instructions provided are extremely minimal, and while they, too, advise reformatting, they don't explicitly say how it should be done. They direct you to the website, which, for a person like me, had very difficult-to-comprehend computer-talk. (I thought about taking it down a star for this, but this is not a fault with the product, but rather an oversight by whomever wrote the manual.) So I took a much longer time trying to make sure I was doing it right than the Book took to reformat itself once I hit the okay button. (Actually, it reformatted instantly for me. I think it knew what I wanted it to do before I did!)
I haven't had any trouble with noise or vibration; my laptop is certainly louder. But I can tell that it comes to attention whenever I get close to clicking on anything that has to do with it....I think it's psychic....it certainly knows more about my computer than I do...
And, what can I say: I love books. It looks great next to my lineup of classical literature (see my photos). If not for the cords and my massive (but equally fabulous) printer, you'd never know I had computer gear on the bookshelf.
Bought it last year, and so far, has been one of my best purchases.
It is silent, you barely notice it's there. Great buy!!
Before Christmas I found this unit for just under a hundred dollars. I planned to use it to store backups for two of my laptops. Unhappily, the transfer rate was so slow (averaging about .50MB/sec - yes, that's "point five") that I found the MyBook not to be useful for this application. I tried the MyBook on several different machines and with more than one USB cable to rule the possibility that the drive was not really to blame. Unfortunately, my results were consistent. I recommend you avoid the MyBook if you plan to use it for high volume transfers.
Awesome drive, great reliability! Highly recommended as I have two of these with no problems.
My son's laptop was running out of space due to music, video's etc. He said he was going to have to buy one. However, he never shops around as he buys anything he THINKS is good. I read the reviews etc. and determined that this product was for him.
Purchased for $100 at Best Buy on sale. Installation was simpler than simple. Plug the device into a USB2 port. Your computer will recognize as another drive.
If you can use a toaster, you can use this! No noise, vibration or any other negative. Best value for the buck!
This drive seems good so far. We're using it primarily for document storage and backup. It has a lot of storage space and I doubt we will ever fill it. Any complaints from other reviewers about noise should be ignored, it's quieter than most desktop computers.
this is a great hard drive for what i use it for. it makes a little noise but other that that it works great.
This USB 2.0 external hard-drive was ready to use out of the box. It connected to the PC without any hitches, and the Windows XP Professional OS recognized it as a "Removable Drvie". And the drive is quiet, and the file-transfer speeds are quite acceptable. Overall, I am pleased with this product.
Drive works great. Came with free shipping and fast. I have no problems with it. Just make sure you have a 2.0 usb and youll love it.
This 250GB external hard disk is pretty sleak, manageable, maintainable and very easy to use.
All in all a decent product at a decent price, especially now that the price has substantially dropped.
I found the Western Digital external drive easy to setup and use. I also like the way it blends in as a book on a bookshelf. I intended to use the drive as a backup to my destop computer hard drive and as a backup for my laptop hard drive. The only thing I wish would have been bundled with the software is some backup software so I could perform full backups, incremental backups with little or no human intervention. Overall, I have been very happy with the drive, but if you do a lot graphics work or need to save and retrieve large video files on it, you are probably better off purchasing an external firewire drive.
Being used to dealing with PC peripherals I was concerned something was missing when I opened the box. Where was the driver CD? Where was the thick documentation on how to set it up? This wasn't missing. It just wasn't needed. I took it out of the box, plugged it in, connected the USB cable and it was ready to go. The enclosed quick setup guide pointed me to a knowledgebase article on the Western Digital site that showed the easy steps to re-partition this for Windows XP as NTFS so the whole 250GB would be recognized. All together this took maybe 10 minutes -- most of which was reading about creating the NTFS partition.
The lack of backup software is not a real issue. A Google search for "backup freeware" led me to many choices one of which I setup quickly to backup my My Documents folder where all my docs, pix and music are to the drive. I don't believe it would be worth the extra money to have the backup software included.
I love things that just work. This is one of those rare things.
Purchased this item back in September and have had no problems whatsoever. Simple to set up and begin using. All photos, movie clips, important papers, etc., are now backed up to this hard drive which can easily be transferred to my new computer. This came highly recommended and I have not been disappointed.
Plug in and use it. As for the people who have had problems with it shutting off; if you have old/poor quality USB ports, the hard drive will not funtion properly because it shuts off when it is not 'plugged in' to a usb port. If you leave it plugged in to your pc, the hard drive will boot up along with your computer. Anyways, so far so good, been working well since I bought it.
I don't really know why, but this drive is exceptionally slow in my experience. My USB 2 iPod and Firewire 400 drives leave it in the dust.
I don't know if it's the enclosure, or the drive inside, which is at fault. I'm tempted to try the disk in another enclosure.
Another complaint, though less important, is that it's rather noisy when it spins down.
As another reviewer said, you unpack it, plug it in, and BOOM--250 gigs of storage. I've had this drive for about 5 months and have NO complaints.
Cool design--easily reformatted to NTFS for backups--has NEVER interfered with other USB devices, which some card readers and other USB devices have done.
Makes backups with Acronis True Image a piece of cake.
I have always thought that WD delivers a good product at a good price--this drive continues the tradition.
I would have never purchased this drive, but I found it through a really good deal. I have owned it for over a month and it has provided some really benefitial help to backup data and store and transfer mass amounts of data from one computer to another. I can easily transfer data from my desktop to my notebook without having to burn it to media or having to wait for the transfer to complete through a network. I love how it's 7200rpm but I gave it 3 stars because the first one I received was DOA. I swapped it out with no hassle and it works like a charm...but for how long?
steps
1- Unboxed it.
2- Plugged the power cord
3- Plugged the usb cable to the computer
4- BAM!!! Additional 250Gb
I didn't install any software. Windows XP automatically recognizes this as an additional logical drive.
The only bad thing is that it comes formatted as FAT from factory. But nothing a good reformat won't solve.
Transfer rate is excellent. I actually plugged this to my server and shared it on windows so I could access it on my home network.
Now I can easily backup files from my laptop to this device (that's actually connected to the server)
For those giving bad reviews because it crashed... Keep it in mind that it's a hard drive... Hard drives do crash... That's just something they do. You should always keep 2 backups. Actually, I'm now researching online backup services (like Genie Backup).
What good are 10 backups in my house if there's a fire (knock on wood) and it destroys my computer and all the backups I had.
Really great product for the price.
The My Book is great. My hard drive is really small, so I use it for housing my pictures, music, and movies. My only complaint is that occasionally it'll have a very high-pitched whine sound coming from it. It might just be that my ears are sensitive though (I can hear when a tv is on).
We bought 6 for our office as back-up drives for each pc. They are now around 6 months old and have never failed. They work flawlessly. I don't know why people say they have had crashes. We back up large projects daily and have never had an issue with any of them.
I would highly recommend them to anyone considering an external hard drive.
I bought this drive about a month ago and it works great. It was easy to set up and it works very much like a large USB flash drive. I mainly use the My Book for backup purposes and leave it turned off a majority of the time.
I bought drive to backup my work files. Great design, fairly compact. No software included for backups so you have to provide your own. Worked fine for 1 month but drive failed. Would not power up.
RMA process costly and at your expense. You must ship in anti-static bag (so save box). No communication or response to 4 e-mails I sent - never had a company be so unresponsive. Not only did I lose 1 month of backups but it cost me quite a bit to ship back.
Recommend if you buy it to don't rely solely on it for at least a few months. You have a chance of losing your only copy of something if the drive fails. Hope replacement is more reliable.
*Update* Replacement drive was new (not refurbished) and has worked fine ever since. I must have gotten a bad unit. Drive is pretty quiet and power up quickly and is pretty intelligent to power down when not it use. Will be buying Acronis True Image or Norten Ghost to back up images/quicker to restore system than just backing up files.
It worked fine for 3 days, and now suddenly it does not power up anymore. Having just read the other reviews I'm sorry I bought it.
After getting a video ipod last year for christmas, I quickly ran out of space on my personal computer to keep all my music, videos & photos. I bought this external hard drive about 2 months ago and I am so glad I did. I now have all the space I will EVER need! If you don't have one, get one! If you're thinking about it - stop thinking and BUY IT! Seriously!
Purchased a new WDG1U2500 on September 9, 2006. Had to have it replaced and mailed the unit to WD. The replacement was also defective and it was a REFURBISHED one. Returning a defective new unit and receiving a refurbished one in exchange is not right. I hope the second replacement will be a NEW one. Had to pay USPS $17.70 (includes insurance and tracking) for the first return. Hope to make positive comments and give better rating after receiving a replacement and being able to use it. At the moment I wish I had not purchased the unit.
I've used this drive for about two months now. I would consider used moderately as I don't leave my computer running 24/7. I'm not sure if that qualifies for any type of stress testing, but in my personal experience, the drive has performed flawlessly.Highly recommended for the price.
I purchased the Western Digital 250GB "My Book" 250 GB Hard Drive about a month ago. Unlike a lot of products I purchase, I did not do a lot of research on this, I needed extra space for some files and I needed it soon. For the price, it was perfect compared to some of the other drives out there, which may boast more features but give you less total storage space.
I have not encountered a single crash with mine. I noticed from other reviewers that several are experiencing this. I don't know what else to tell you, the possible consumer, except for the fact that I have had no trouble with it.
The Hard drive is sleek and small, sitting next to any computer tower without taking up desk space. It's also small enough to easily carry in a backpack or small bag. Everyone seems to be going ga-ga over whether something is used with Fire wire or not, but with USB 2.0 I have no issues. Its not how fast I can get something on or off of this hard drive, my main concern was the space it offered. USB 2.0 is not bad at all and in less than 30 minutes had transferred over 35 GB of data to it in the forms of word documents, music files, movie files, Adobe documents, and pictures.
The only downfall is I cannot seem to find a carry case for this type of hard drive. Everything seems to be made either for a specific brand that is a hindrance since the size is not universal, or made for a laptop. In this case I guess I can improvise and just buy a hard shell meant for a handgun and cut the foam accordingly to fit the shape.
I've never had any issues when booting up, nor disconnecting. It may seem hasty I am reviewing it after only a month but I use it every day and have yet to have any bad experiences with it. I have not regretted purchasing it yet and have really enjoyed it.
This is a great item to have if u have alot of movie clips, songs, or stuff in general. good way to store them and it works for the mac also. good item good price
This drive has an extremely high failure rate. Mine functioned well for several hours and then-- dead. What an overwhelming disappointment.
We recently bought these for storing additional data on workstations at my place of business. They have worked wonderfully and with a very small footprint take up very little space when space is an issue. Fast data transfer, virtually silent operation, and virtually non-existant heat generation, great product.
Only few cons is the "utilities" that come pre-installed are not needed for business users and its an older version of Adobe Reader than is currently available, but those are hardly worth deducting a star.
All in all these have been wonderful, will definetly consider WD products in the future.
I bought a Western Digital My Book...turned it on- it easily transferred all my pictures and music onto it. It didn't even take as long as other hard drives I've been used to, and I delete everything off my computer so I could make room for a big program I needed ton install.
So the hard drive turns off after I'm done.
Never to turn on again.
Next day I plug it in to access those pictures and it won't turn on. I call technical support and even though they admit the product may have been faulty before I even used it, refused to help me out in recovery damages. I can take the hard drive back within 30 days though as covered by the warranty, but oops, I need the drive in order to get everything recovered! which will, of course, take more than 30 days.
2 days, used once, completely broken. Bad customer service.
All I needed was a backup solution for my 10 gigs of data. This drive is exactly what I was looking for - it's fast, reliable and has a really great look to it. No software required, just plug it in and go ! It can't really get any easier and for $99 (especially if you have some online coupons handy) it's worth the small investment. Nobody ever thinks to back up - this makes it easy for everyone.
This thing was almost TOO simple to set up. You just plug it in and it's all set. Some people will look for a CD or some other software and be frustrated, but you're assuming more complication than there is. The software is on the hard drive and it installs itself.
I also reformatted the drive to the newer standard, and I lost some GB in the process, don't know why, but with my computer it took less than a minute to reformat and partition the drive. I put programs in one section and files in the other.
The drive does turn off, or, as I think about it, go into sleep mode if you don't use it for a while. That means when you go to save something, you have to wait a couple of extra seconds for it to wake up. Once I understood this it didn't bother me.
I have this on my shelf, and not only does it look cool, I can't hear it at all.
You can't go wrong with this drive, especially for the price with all these rebates around.
I have no problems with this HD.is really good, looks stylish on my desk. If you need a simple External device to store data this is the perfect buy.
The 250GB My Book external hard drive from Western Digital is a great place to store all of your extra photos, videos and mp3s. I find that the 250GB Essential (essential meaning lowest pricing tier) hits the sweet spot between space and price.
For about 100$ (I actually got mine at Office Depot for less because of a great mail-in rebate) you get double the space of a cheaper 79$ 100GB drive. This is great because once you have all that space you'll fill it up quickly.
The single USB 2.0 connection is more then enough to play music, view/edit pictures and movies. Writing to the drive is slower then reading. I have edited video stored on the hard drive with little issues of speed or write/read times. The drive itself is fairly appealing to the eyes. It looks like a black leather-bound book. Of course with two wires (one for power and one for USB) it totally destroys that image but what can you do? The little green light around the button is cool.
The drive has two nifty features. The first is the auto-on/off. When not in use for a while the drive will simply shut off. It will turn itself on when you access it. This is a great feature because at 7,200RPMs this drive can get loud! Especially in an enclosed desk area. The second feature is that of a push-button backup utility. Good feature but I'll probably never use it.
Pros: Storage space vs. price, little green light, auto-on/off, mail-in rebate (if you can find one)
Cons: Noise, all those stupid wires, smaller drives can be had for less
Conclusion: A very nice hard drive especially considering the storage space vs. price issue when considering other external hard drives.
I was looking at different external hard drives. Majority of opinion agree that Western Digital is probably one of the best brand for HDD quality.
The HDD is very small, so good if you are going to college or want to carry when traveling. And the best is that heat doesnt collect, the HDD doesnt get very hot when transfering files.
The FAT32 format is abit annoying but a reformat doesnt take long.
I don't know why people say theres suddenly shut off, never happened to me.
It vibrates a bit, but that is easy to forgive in light of the really attractive design, a black-sheen case that evokes nothing less than a futuristic bible. Or maybe a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The Essential edition sports a green circle of light, and a single USB2 connection. The Essential edition is the budget edition of the line, lacking a FireWire connection and without a second ring of light that indicates (on the Premium and Pro editions) how much room is left on the drive. But who needs that? And personally I prefer the green illumination, anyway.
The circle of light doubles as an on/off button, conveniently located on the front. You may not need to tap that button much though, since the drive senses when you Shut Down (or Hibernate or Stand-By) your computer and automatically turns off.
Essentially, the design of the case and the automatic on/off are the two main reasons why these drives have become so popular within weeks of their debut. It took me three weeks to score one of these on sale.
You've probably read that the vents are a code. It reportedly spells out words such as "innovative", "reliable", "personal", "design", and "simple". The design of this drive is certainly innovative. The last memorable time when a designer got involved in making a case for an external hard drive was when the LaCie company hired F.A. Porche, but Porche, in what one could speculate was a bit of a cruel joke on LaCie, turned in a generic metallic brick (ooh I bet that angered LaCie). Western Digital, in contrast, has turned in a strikingly elegant case that would look great on a shelf. Expect other companies to follow suit with shelf-worthy case designs, now that good aesthetics have been introduced to this formerly purely-functional line of products.
One small unexpected complaint. You can see why they dubbed it "My Book", but rather inconveniently for anyone who is actually writing a book and already has a folder named "My Book", this drive is formatted with the name pre-designated as "My Book". But authors need not worry; that name is easily erased when one reformats the drive to the NTFS standard that current computers use (like nearly all hard drives, it arrives formatted in the old FAT32 format to accomodate users of older computers). Just plug it in, reformat the drive to NTFS (which takes an hour or so for a drive this size), and then it is ready to serve you. The drive came with some software on it, but none of it is needed.
So far, so good. If no one reports any design flaws, I expect people will be "swearing by" this book... ok that pun was lame.
Four stars rather than five, because of the slight vibration.
Just bought it and backed up my PC's hard drive. Absolutely no problem. Good price for a good drive. "I believe" in Western Digital. I've had good experience with them.
I have this unit and the drive randomly turns on and off in the middle of writing to it. Not recommended!
I bought 2 of these drives to backup digital photos that would no longer fit on my hard drive. I keep the same thing on both of them, just in case one crashes. So far I have had no problems. Plus the Google Picasa2 software that comes on the drives is nice for sorting all of my photos in an easy to view way. The drives are also pretty small and fit nicely on a small shelf beside my computer. They are also pretty quite while running, unlike some of WD's previous drives. If you need extra space, in a compact place, this is a good choice.