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: 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... 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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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: 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: Good value for money, very simple to use
Disadvantages: Not portable and has a power cable and usb cable

...I received this for Christmas and I have never been more glad of a back-up. To give you a brief idea of what I have use it for, I have a large music collection, a large picture collection and movies also. I use it in conjunction with an Acer laptop that runs Microsoft XP and I am currently using up 205gb out of the 500gb available. Produced by Western Digital who are a confirmed producer of storage devices both internal and external, I chose it because of it's confirmed brand and at the time the price was good. It is a quirky shape in that as the title suggests it is book shaped. To give further guidance it is about the height and width of the paperback edition of the Da Vinci Code and as such fits nicely on a book shelf., obviously without the wiring. The good points are: - In comparison with other externally... Read review

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Advantages: small, fast big space.
Disadvantages: no regrets.

...It transfers at a rate of 480 Mbps which is fast. Access time was very quick, 12ms per second seek time, so within the hour i had backed up and transferred my files!. I have had no trouble streaming games and movies from my hard disk, with access to files within the disk is as instant as a normal hard disk drive. It can be stored on it's side, or standing up right. They can also be stacked, if 500gb isn't enough for you! There is no circular light around the on/off button to as on the MyBook western digital range. During powerdown of your computer, the hard disk will automatically turn off, so there is no need to turn it off yourself. This runs in the vein of similar products from Western Digital, and there are no differences in performance between the different offerings, apart from design. I would thoroughly recommend this product due... 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... Read review

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Advantages: Portability, 500GB storage, Speed, Reliability, Warranty
Disadvantages: Slightly strange brown colour

..., and it will be very easy to have the drive run from a different PC if I wanted to. The offer with DABS was actually very good, in that the cost of the drive was going to be less than that for an internal 500GB SATAII drive, bargain ! I placed the order ( and I have to say, was very happy with the ordering / delivery process ) and I received the drive within 2 days. Once received, you can see that the product is very well packaged ( which is something I am very keen on, it shows that the product will be well protected during transport - not very good for us Eco-Friendly people, but the majority of packaging was cardboard containers, so its all recyclable - which is a plus ) Once you open up the box, (which also has a security seal on to show whether its been tampered with - which is also good ) you see the following FreeAgent desktop drive... Read review

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Advantages: Holds tonnes of files!
Disadvantages: It is quite heavy.

...I decided to buy an external harddrive as I store a lot of music and photographs on my computer and I would like it to be backed up in case my computer breaks and my files are irretrievable. I decided to start on Amazon.co.uk and searched "external harddrive" on their main page. A number of different models came up - the Western Digital My Book external harddrive came up a few times with different storage sizes - 160GB, 320GB, 500GB etc. The Western Digital My Book external harddrive stood out next to the others as it looked to be a nice size, it was better looking than most of the others available with its smart black casing and it had more variety of what storage size you can get. Space The 320GB harddrive holds up to 90,000 photos or 80,000 songs or 25 hours of film. The 160GB harddrive holds up to 45,000 photos or 40... Read review

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