First MyBook in my shelf

Advantages: large capacity, standby mode
Disadvantages: only USB

...This MyBook is the first largest capacity external drive I ever had. I have been saving some money for some quite time to finally purchase this product. The Look and Features MyBook from western digital has a very simple design, simillar to an average book from a library shelf with round front side. With black piano finish with overall look so simple and less futuristic design. MyBook Essential is one of the low-end products with minimal features. This external drive doesnt have an ON/OFF switch anywhere. The front side is just a line of LED for indicating that the device is turned on or read/write activities. The connectivity this drive uses only USB 2.0. with mini the only one mini-USB port at the back side and connected to a normal USB port of your computer. Performance The first thing to do when I opened the package...

sibibip 23.04.2009 · Read review
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Review of My Book Essential Edition 2.0 WDH1U10000 1 TB

WD My Book Essential Edition 250 GB - great buy!

Advantages: looks great, quiet, funky green ring light on the front, good value, easy/no setup
Disadvantages: cant think of any yet

...hard drive, i also wanted to have a backup of everything that is on my laptop, this my book allows me to do this, as i only had 2 usb ports on my laptop, i also had to buy a one to 4 usb hub to give me more inputs for example my mouse, webcam etc, this only cost me 5 pounds and may not be an issue to yourselves. soon after buying this, my flatmate bought the very same package, mybook 250 gb and a usb hub. overall i tihnk its a great buy, its great value, looks great and does the job very well.....what more can we ask for?!...

peterthompson1986 28.08.2006 · Read review
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Review of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDG1U2500 250 GB

Western Digital My book 500GB hard drive

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...

jupiter28 20.03.2008 · Read review
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Review of My Book Essential Edition 2.0 WDH1U5000 500 GB

MyBook, Me Like

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...

orrin31 30.05.2007 · Read review
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Review of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDG1U5000 500 GB

My little black book

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...

matties_bitch 11.03.2007 · Read review
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Review of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDG1U3200 320 GB

My Book 250Gb

Advantages: stying,price,reliability
Disadvantages: storage may not be enough for some people,FAT32 format from factory

...I suppose i bought this hard drive about a year ago. I chose it because it was reasonably priced,it had good capacity and it looked plain,simple but also stylish. I think i paid about £75 as i bought it on a trip to the states. I initially needed it to cope with my growing collection of MP3's that my 80Gb laptop drive was trying to deal with. Upon getting it home ease of installation was simple. Its pretty much a case of unpacking it,plugging the power cable in,plugging the USB cable in and hey prestowindows automatically recognizes it and you've got an additional 250Gb of hard drive space. The package comes with the hard drive,usb cable,power cable and a quick install guide although you dont really need it. The drive comes with built in drive management which means it both turns on and off with your computer which is very...

zakkman 23.01.2008 · Read review
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Review of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDG1U2500 250 GB

A book which takes no time to be read!

Advantages: Fast fast fast, good looking, quiet
Disadvantages: none so far

.../ planet saving feature no waste of energy, and no more forgetting to turn off the unit!). Also, the HD turn itself off with the computer, and start along with it. So no need to think again about it! Just plug, and that's it! THE GEEKY BIT: THE SPECIFICATIONS **************************************************** * roduct Description: My Book Essential Edition WDG1U3200 - hard drive - 320 GB - Hi-Speed USB * Type: Hard drive - external * Dimensions (WxDxH): 14.1 cm x 17.1 cm x 5.7 cm * Weight: 1.3 kg * Localisation: Middle East, Africa, Europe * Capacity: 320 GB * Interface Type: Hi-Speed USB * Connector: 4 pin USB * Data Transfer Rate: 480 Mbps * Average Seek Time: 8.9 ms * Spindle Speed: 7200 rpm * Buffer Size: 8 MB * OS Required: Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Microsoft...

monsieur.Joda 02.04.2007 · Read review
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Review of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDG1U3200 320 GB

Western Digital My Book

Advantages: Very reliable
Disadvantages: Can get firewire which is faster

...I purchased this external hard drive about 2 years ago for roughly £90. Since then I've used it to save large video files which has been great since it doesn't slow down my main hard drive to clog it up. Its helped make my pc run faster however it does take a longer time for my pc to boot up. A couple of things about the specs are: Serial Bus Transfer Rate (USB 2.0) 480 Mbits/s (Max) Requires a seperate power supply 100-240 VAC A few things to note about hard drive is the estimations are never accurate. Although its a 750gb, when they are formatted they actually only store 698gb on a FAT 32. This leads me on to a second point which is FAT 32 limits file size to 4gb. But in most cases this shouldn't be too much of an issue. But if it is you can always reformat the hard drive to NTFS which will resolve the problem. This has...

Gazf06 18.11.2008 · Read review
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Review of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDH1U6400 640 GB

MyBook 500gb - Very Good but One Slight Niggle

Advantages: Fast, Easy to Install, Quite cheap.
Disadvantages: Slightly Noisy

...I received this hard drive for Christmas last year and I've been using it as a time machine for my MacBook. It sits in my bookshelf about 45cm away from my laptop, and in my opinion it looks quite nice between hardback books. When I plug it in there is no waiting for it to 'warm up' like there was with my old external hard drive. 500gb is enough for backing up my whole laptop, and for Mac users it is great for Time Machine, because there is easily enough space for backing up everything you delete. It was very easy to set up, I just literally plugged it into my Mac and it asked me if I wanted to use it for Time Machine, and it immediately started backing up. For Windows users it is just as easy, you just plug it in and it recognises it, no drivers needed. The only problem I have with it is that when it backs up, especially when...

Stuey-Poo 07.04.2009 · Read review
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Review of My Book Essential Edition 2.0 WDH1U5000 500 GB

Book-shaped external storage? Brilliant!

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...

Ohajiki 19.11.2007 · Read review
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Review of Western Digital My Book Essential Edition WDG1U5000 500 GB