Advantages: small, lots of storage and really reliable
Disadvantages: less portable than a small form hard disk drive, needs main to use

...This is my second hard drive. The first one I bought was a sony vaio that I bought off of ebay - a portable 120GB hard disk drive from the far east. It started giving me disk read and write errors about three to four months after I bought it. Moral of the story, buy from a reputable manufacturer and seller. So I bought this from Amazon co uk, who are by far a superior online seller. Prices have come down and i managed to get this for £60 including free delivery. The drive is compact, not portable. It needs to be plugged into mains as well as the computer which makes it less portable, but it is so quiet I can't even hear that is switched on even when it is writing or reading. I would highly recommend this product or even one of the bigger sized ones, though I couldn't afford the 1TB mybook. Remember 500GB is marketing, actual... Read review

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Advantages: Compact Size, Quiet, Not an Eye-Sore
Disadvantages: Not in Black

...Basic information , its a 500GB hard drive which actually stores 465GB of data due to the method in which storage is calculated. Very Easy to install and get it up and running. Interface : Firewire 400, USB 2.0 and Firewire 800, in increasing order of data transfer rate. Firewire will give you a more sustained rate of transfer as compared to the burst in rates of USB. I use it on USB due to lack of firewire on my laptop, but if you can use Firewire 800 for maximum performance Build Quality : Seems to be very sturdy,I havent personally tested it out :P , my only complaint is that it is not available in black like the other drives. Another thing to remember that it has a power brick, but its not very big so it should not be a big problem . There is a Blue light in front as visible... Read review

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Advantages: Build quality, price,easy to use.
Disadvantages: Limited speed (USB2), no software.

...Before you buy this product, it's worth making sure that it's the one for you as there are 3 versions - Pro, Premium and Essential. As the name suggests, "Essential" gives you the basics - 500MB with USB2 support. It's easy to install, and although it should work via an additional powered usb hub (if you have one), it's probably safer to use a spare USB port direct to your machine. Other than that, it's really just a question of plugging it in and away you go. Your only main concern is which file system it comes preformatted with - at the time of writing it's FAT32, and most users will probably want to make their first job that of changing this to NTFS, which is both simple and quick. 500GB is obviously loads of space for either making backups on, or holding ripped copies of DVDs. The "Essential" edition has perhaps just two main... Read review

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Advantages: Small, Compact, Quite, Ease of Installation
Disadvantages: None that i can think of

...This is one excellent product. i bought one with my other 3 hard drives being filled with files and music etc. i thought that buying an external would cut all of my problems with the fact that i went through a lot of DVD-r's with burning data for work and other things. By jove has it done the job, i now store all of my work files, music, videos and all sorts of other data. i carry it into work in the morning and plug it in, i then use it for the day and then unplug, carry it home again and plug it in. i have tried in either port USB or Firewire and they both work like a treat. it is quiet and doesnt heat up tooo much.i also like the way that the led on the front has 4 differnet modes and these are the following: Power on state or power save mode Transitioning to System Standy Standby Mode System Standby Drive In Use... Read review

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Advantages: Fast and cheaper than others
Disadvantages: can always be cheaper

.... This is a serious buy, its not that much slower than enterprise hard drives like raptors. Raptors spin faster (10k rpm vs 7.2k rpm) and have lower latency but these benefits hardly show up to the average user at home and the drawbacks of much less HD capacity (36gb for the price of one of these western digital 500gb HDs) and also the running temp and noise of raptors are enough to warrent a purchase of the WD 500gb hard drive over any Raptor. Seeing as raptors are out of the Question (in my own opinion, although others will agree with me) you could go for something cheaper, but like i said, as you go down in price the value goes down a lot. For about 15 pounds less you end up with much slowers drives that dont have much capacity. These drives deserve an award for such performance price ratio as well as capacity price ratio.... Read review

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Advantages: Very easy to use
Disadvantages: USB only

...The ‘Essential Edition’ of the Western Digital MyBook only has USB2.0, which for me, is fine as I can plug it into any computer I wish. Other editions include Firewire, which of course costs more and not all computers support Firewire. It has a (fairly long) 3m power cable, a standard USB (type B) cable to connect to the computer and the box itself, that is very simple to set up and to use. The front has a green circle that lights up when switched on and flickers when in use. Apart from that, it is completely black in colour and has no other distinguishing features. It took me 2 minutes to set up and start to use, and that included opening the cardboard packaging! I decided to buy the 500gb capacity, as I already had another external hard disk which has 320gb, which was completely full. I needed another 500gb as backup and storing... Read review

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Advantages: Maximizes the amount of data vs the cost of the product
Disadvantages: heat issues, cord connectivity, and small installation problems.

...Some people call me ignorant for using Maxtor, but I honestly only order Maxtor for my hard drives. Now the only downside to the Maxtor 500 GB is that it is an external drive that, if not careful, can overheat and cause connectivity problems, transfer speed issues, or just annoyance from when the usb gets knocked out. That being said, if you can get past the downside of have an external I would recommend this product to anyone not using a Mac. The only reason I do not recommend this to Mac owners is because Mac is the only type of computer that I myself will not touch. I have filled this thing up to about half it potential and when I do manage to full it up, I will write agian to let you know the outcome.... Read review

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Advantages: Simple setup, Quiet, Small size, large capacity
Disadvantages: none

...SUMMARY The Western Digital (WD) My Book Premium 500GB is a small, well built external hard drive which is quiet in operation, with excellent capacity and choice of USB 2 or Firewire connectivity. As someone who is interested in technology, photography and video editing, I often end up running low on storage space on my PC. I had been looking to get another hard drive for some time and had seen the WD advertised in a magazine at a reasonable price. I bought mine from an online retailer and as of March 2006 have been using it for 3 months and I have not experienced any problems with it. FEATURES Well without wanting to make it sound as though it's not a good product, because I think it is, there's not much to it, it's just an external hard drive, however it is stylish and feels well built. It is quiet as there is noisy fan... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, nice design, prevents data loss and corruption
Disadvantages: slows down the start up time (unknown reason)

...General Western Digital specialises in producing external hard drives therefore their products are of good quality. The My Book Essential offers 500 GB which is more than enough for a standard user (Family usage). You can back up your pictures, videos, documents and programs without running out of space. Design The HD has a slick design and the shape of a book; it is small - however not small enough to be a portable hard drive. But this is not meant to be one so when you consider buying this HD think of it as your home HD. Performance The Hard Drive is connected via a USB 2.0 interface which allows standard data transfer. Unfortunately it needs to be plugged into the mains in order to function unlike portable HDs. With 7200rpm there is no delay when playing music or games from your hard drive, so you can avoid using up... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, nice to look at, easy to use
Disadvantages: Ummmm, the pro version is only available in white?

...As information for those who don't know, this is an external storage device. Basically that means that inside the device is a hard disc drive for storing your data and it connects to your computer via either USB or firewire (all types). There is lots of information about the device that need explaining. Firstly it can store up to 500Gb's of information in what is known as raw format. When you format the device to make it compatible with your computer you will only be able to store 465Gb's. This is because the device needs a file allocation table which is a directory of all the information on the drive. It takes up lots of space but the device is useless without it. The speed of the actual hard drive used inside doesn't actually matter that much. The speeds at which hard drives can exchange data is far greater that the firewire 800... Read review

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