Customer Reviews:
 Great product! November 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this to clear some space on my 3 year-old iBook, as well as to backup important files from law school. It's a fantastic product and so far I'm very pleased with it! It's quiet, it has a ton of space, it's easy to use, it's easy to set up, and it's works very well. I'm happy with how reliable it seems and has been so far. No problems at all. It does take a little bit to load, but not very long. Overall, I'm very glad that I bought this Western Digital product. I was confused about which external harddrive to buy, and I'm glad I got this one!
Western Digital MyBook November 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I never thought that my hard drive would crash, and that I would lose all my photos, bank records, and important documents. But guess what...it did and I lost everything! So, I learned a lesson the hard way...back up your data! My son and friends recommended the WD MyBook external drive (500GB) as the best back up drive for the money. Amazon's price was the best around and the free shipping sealed the deal for me. It arrived in perfect condition within a few days after I placed my order. I am not a techie, but it was really easy to install. Just plug it in and the software takes care of the rest. Within minutes, I was backing up my photos and files. It couldn't have been easier.
 Sleep mode makes drive a boat anchor on your system. November 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Here's the problem. This drive goes into sleep mode after 20 minutes of inactivity on the drive.
So I am working on my computer, I load up my image editing software and the software - which used to load in seconds - checks all the drives connected to the system.
This wakes the WD MY BOOK up from its sleep. Which takes about as long as I take to wake up in the morning - or so it seems.
Then after an eternity (in CPU cycles) it wakes up and my software continues loading.
Ok, so you don't edit images? Click on "My Computer" It will show a list of all your hard drives. WAIT FOR THE WD MYBOOK to wake up...
NOW you see them.
This hard drive basically slows your entire system to a crawl while it waits for the drive to wakeup every time it is in sleep mode. The net effect is to drastically decrease the usability of your entire computer.
And can you turn it off? Not that I've found. It just shuts down after 20 minutes of inactivity (the external hard drive - not your computer) so that any time you need to access it, or worse - anytime your computer THINKS it needs to access the My Book, you WAIT and WAIT and WAIT.
 More trouble than it's worth November 12, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought one of these, and used it for several months, and liked it so well that I bought a second identical one.
These drives are supposed to spin down and go into sleep mode after a period of inactivity. The first drive did that just fine, UNTIL I got the second drive. Now both of them spin down and spin back up again immediately, with much noise and blinky light action. Off and on and off and on, forever. EXTREMELY annoying and distracting.
I spent approximately six hours total (over several days) on the phone with Western Digital tech support. Their final conclusion was that I needed to use a utility (which I downloaded from their site) to shut the drives down manually. This utility works, but only after several tries. Once the drives are shut down, I can only access them again by unplugging the drives physically, plugging them back in again, then waiting a minute or so while they start up.
It should be noted that the first drive I bought had been going into sleep mode perfectly. When I added the second, BOTH drives fail to go into sleep mode. And the original drive never goes into sleep mode anymore, even without the second drive installed.
As a result of all this, I have two drives which make great long-term storage, but are unusuable as additional hard drives to be used in real time. The latter is what I need, not the former. I'm out the money, and I still need some external drives I can USE.
BEWARE!!
 Good external HD, but use ONLY for backup/data storage November 2, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've been using Western Digital HD's for nearly 15 years now and never yet have had one of them fail on me (though there's always a first time!) I currently own two of these My Book 500GB external drives which I have hooked up to my newest system. These drives are attractively designed, quite sleek with good ventilation and very easy to set up; the only things you need to do are (1) plug in the power adapter and connect it to a suitable socket and (2) connect the USB cable to the computer; Windows XP and Vista will do the rest of the setup process automatically. (There's a version for Mac.) As others have noted, the drive is formatted FAT at the factory, so you'll need to reformat it if you want to use NTFS - do remember to copy over the tools to another drive first if you want to use them. They're also decently sturdy; I accidentially knocked the first one off my desk not long after I bought it, but it took no damage and is still running smoothly 8 months later. The drive goes to standby automatically when not in use to save power and reduce heat, so it will take a few seconds to get it spun up after a period of inactivity. Also, USB 2.0, though quite speedy, is still slow compared to the internal hard drive's PATA or SATA connections, so keep that in mind when transferring data.
A very important caveat: ***heed the advice of other reviewers and use this drive, and ANY other model of external hard drive, ONLY for backup and data storage.*** Do NOT rely on any external hard drive for primary storage or running programs or operating systems. External hard drives are designed and intended to expand your storage space, not to serve as primary drives. Remember this and you should have a highly satisfying experience with this hard drive.
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