Advantages: Cheap, Sturdy, Reliable, Small, High RPM, Plug and Play
Disadvantages: Lack of space

...I bought this drive to store all of my video and audio (I do a lot of Music Technology) on. It has a fantastic transfer speed and is structurally sound without any loose bits. The rubber around the bottom provides a very sturdy base and absorbs any mild shock that may occur to the device whilst it is in use. At times I actually find that it runs slightly faster and less jittery than my internal laptop hard drive during video playback. The only downside to this product is the size. It has only taken me around five months to occupy 60 gigabytes but it is perfect for mild use. I recommend this product to anyone wanting a reliable hard drive that will last for years and never let you down.... Read review

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Advantages: Great speed, great storage space, low price, stability
Disadvantages: A little hot, A little noisy

...I used many Hard Drives drives until this one and I'm finally satisfied. As a multitasking user i open many programs at the same time: antivirus, internet, multiple downloads, winamp and even gaming at the same time and often I even game sometimes and this hdd really does a good job. The 500GB (470 Gb actually) are sufficient for storage and comes at a very decent price. The wd are really reliable , I had a small problem but it was my fault, I've insanely overclocked the processor and I the hdd drive partitions didn't appear. I've recovered eventually the data without loss. It works still great. The transfer rates are insane: 80 Mb max at data read and 75 Mb max at data write, about 13 ms access time. The temperatures are pretty hot in summer, I recommend cooler. Stability: 4 full days of massive downloads, in summer is enough for you... 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 40,000 songs... Read review

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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?!... Read review

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Advantages: 250GB Lots of memory, Low power consumption, Cheap
Disadvantages: 2.5-inch limits it to USUALLY Laptops but can be used in desktop computers

...Fairly decent hard-drive. Western Digital are a well trusted company, especially for computer equipment. 250GB is a massive storage device, you could store ALOT and with low power consumption makes it even better. Looking at the prices too this is a real bargin! I really recommend this hard-drive, the real-time data protection will help if your computer ever shuts off. It is also a 2.5-inch hard-drive which usually associates with laptops, however there are some desktop computers which could use this. If you did want to buy this for a desktop computer but your computer could only use 3.5-inch then you could buy an external hard-drive shell which could plug straight into your computer OR laptop through USB or Firewire. Overall I think this is a very nice hard-drive and a good bargin at the price it's avaliable for.... Read review

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Advantages: Very Stylish, Great Value, and Quiet. A USB hard drive for backups or storage
Disadvantages: A Little on the large side and another mains cable.

..., but not good for moving around several locations. And my only regret about this purchase.......... ...... not buying and the next size up. My Books are available in 80GB, 160GB, 250GB and 320GB Some models also support Firewire connection, Older models of Western Digital USB drives are reported to have a short lifespan and therefore short not be trusted totally as a backup device. No lifespan data is available on the My Book range yet.... Read review

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Advantages: Reliable, cheap
Disadvantages: Can't think of any

...not for there are settings on the back that allow the device to slow down to SATAI speeds. So if your using a SATA system and your thinking maybe you will upgrade to SATAII in the future this would work for you. Western digital are great company, I always buy my hard drives from them because I have never had one fail on me. This particular device is an 80Gb derivative and will contain a maximum of 74Gb of data when formatted using NTFS. When a drive is made it is not formatted. The idea of formatting is to allow your computer to know where it has stored its data on the device. As such a large table is made which compares the location on the hard drive to the data stored there this takes up about 8% of your overall space. NTFS is just a file system standard and doesn't need to mean much to most people. I have shown the sequential read/write speeds of the device... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Silent, Price
Disadvantages: Nothing

...There's not an awful lot to say about an hard drive really, but I'll try my best. I've bought several hard drives in the past which were either Maxtor or Western Digital, unfortunately my Western Digital failed but all the Maxtor hard disks I've purchased are still going strong. I bought an 80gb Samsung Spinpoint drive so I could use it with my Maxtor 60gb drive and use one for operating system and the other for games/files. When I turn on my computer you hear the Maxtor spin up is a high-pitch whirring sound but not a whisper from the Samsung, I have never known a hard disk to be as silent as the Samsung, you really cannot hear anything out of it. I haven't done any benchmarks on the Samsung drive but I haven't had any problems with speed, everything seems to transfer as fast, if not faster, than it did with the Maxtor alone. Price... Read review

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Advantages: Portable, easy to use, never failed on me yet!
Disadvantages: Perhaps only the disc size, but it has taken me 2 years to fill it!

...Wester Digital, a respected brand name, and i agree! I have owned the unit now for around 2 years, and have 0 problems. My internal hard drive has died on me twice but my external one, never! This 80gb HDD is perfect for storing large files, home movies, photo albums, music etc. It's ideal when transfering data from one place to another, simply unplug it, plug it in elsehwre and hey presto! It supports drag & drop so moving files couldn't be easier. Standard power adpater with 3-pin plug, and USB 2.0 connection to your pc, mac, server etc. It is easily recognised by each operating system and i have yet to find one that doesn't support the unit. Plug it in, wait around 30secs and it's up and running. Can be stored horizontally, and if you have 3 like me, you can stack them perfectly, or store them vertically with the feet... Read review

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Advantages: small. light, fast and plenty of space
Disadvantages: none....

...A few months before Christmas my laptop decided to be an utter git and my hard drive crashed. I lost hundreds of photo's, my whole itunes library and two years worth of uni work. After getting a new hard drive fitted I laboriously set about uploading all my music onto it and pleading with itunes to let me download all my purchased music (all £150 worth) again for free, managed to find some old back up copies of photo's and work as well. All was not lost. However this little catastrophe did open my eyes to the benefits of backing things up on your computer and so I decided rather than buy hundreds of discs I would invest in a very shiny new external hard drive…… Price I was looking to buy just a 60 GB hard drive but after looking around a bit I found that I could buy 120 GB Western Digital hard drive for exactly the same price as a 60... Read review

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