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Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive
 
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Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive

by Western Digital
3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (308 customer reviews) More about this product
Price: £61.99
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In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by eXpansys UK Ltd.

35 new from £54.99 2 used from £49.99

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this item with Kensington PocketHUB Mini USB 2.0 - Hub - 4 ports - USB

Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive + Kensington PocketHUB Mini USB 2.0 - Hub - 4 ports - USB
Price For Both: £65.80

These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Show details

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive
62% buy the item featured on this page:
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Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive 3.6 out of 5 stars (308)
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Technical Details

  • Easy to set up, easy to use- just plug it in and it's ready to use
  • USB 2.0 interface - A simple connection that offers convenience and compatibility
  • Fits right in - Takes no more space than a paperback book
  • Smart and energy efficient - Turns itself on and off with your computer
  • Works with both Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later
›  See more technical details

Product details

  • Product Dimensions: 13.7 x 5.4 x 16.5 cm ; 1.2 Kg
  • Boxed-product Weight: 1.8 Kg
  • Delivery Destinations: Visit the Delivery Destinations Help page to see where this item can be delivered.
    Find out more about our Delivery Rates and Returns Policy
  • Item model number: WDH1U5000E
  • ASIN: B000WP0NM8
  • Date first available at Amazon.co.uk: 13 Nov 2007
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (308 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 510 in Electronics & Photo (See Bestsellers in Electronics & Photo)

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Buy This Product and Related Accessories

Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive

Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive

£61.99 Select this Item

Product Description

Manufacturer's Description
Are you running out of hard drive capacity? Do you need to archive some important digital documents, photos, or music? This elegant external hard drive, reminiscent of a book, is the perfect solution. It takes no more space than a paperback book. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf.

Easy to set up, easy to use - Installation is a snap because you don't really install this drive, you just plug it in and it's ready to use.
USB 2.0 interface - A simple connection that offers convenience and compatibility among multiple computers.
Fits right in - Takes no more space than a paperback book. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf.
Smart and energy efficient - Turns itself on and off with your computer.
PC and Mac compatible - Works with both Windows® 2000/XP/Vista and Mac® OS X 10.4.8 or later
Ideal for

  • Instant storage
  • Easy to use
  • USB 2.0
  • Saving and organizing your digital photo collection

System Requirements

  • Available USB port
  • Windows® 2000/XP/Vista®
  • Mac® OS X 10.4.8 or later


Box Contents
  • External hard drive
  • USB cable
  • AC adapter
  • Quick Install Guide

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    Customer Reviews

    308 Reviews
    5 star:
    		 (140)
    4 star:
    		 (69)
    3 star:
    		 (13)
    2 star:
    		 (15)
    1 star:
    		 (71)
     
     
    		 
     
     
    Average Customer Review
    3.6 out of 5 stars (308 customer reviews)
     
     
     
     
    Share your thoughts with other customers:
    Most Helpful Customer Reviews

     
    181 of 185 people found the following review helpful:
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. Quiet, compact and reliable. Plus - a tip for Mac users., 10 Jul 2008
    By JackJack (Glasgow, UK) - See all my reviews
    This is the third My Book drive I have bought. I have been very pleased with all of them, and am still using the (smaller capacity) one that I bought 3 years ago!

    Reasons to recommend this drive:
    - Quiet
    The external power supply and well-ventilated design means that this drive can stay cool without a fan.
    - Reliable
    I have never had a problem with any of the 3 My Books that I have bought over the past 3 years.
    - Small
    The drives take up very little space on a bookshelf, and the external power supply is tiny.
    - Stylish
    I'd much rather have this thing on my desk than a bulky horizontal case. If you're going to use a drive every day, might as well have it look good!

    Essential tip for Mac users:

    - THIS DRIVE IS PARTITIONED FOR WINDOWS. Please excuse the capitals, but this is important and it isn't in the manual. If you want to use this disk with a Mac, the first thing you should do is repartition it.

    Go to Disk Utility, click on the My Book disk, and select the "partition" tab. Create at least one partition (don't just leave it at "current"). Then click "options" and select "GUID partition table" if you have an Intel Mac, or "Apple Partition table" if you have a PPC mac. Finally, click "Apply". Then reformat the drive in HSF Extended + Journaling format.

    Why bother doing this? The default MS-DOS parititioning will work, but it will be slower and you are more likely to run into errors. I honestly believe that failure to repartition the drive is the main reason that people have reported problems with using this drive on a Mac.
    Comment Comments (10) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



     
    344 of 359 people found the following review helpful:
    5.0 out of 5 stars An external hard drive that actually looks nice., 20 Sep 2008
    Okay, there are a lot of reviews for this product already and a lot of misinformation so I thought I'd try to clear the air a bit and lay down the key points for external hard drives:

    * You will not get 1TB of storage on this product. The industry measures 1TB as 1000 GB, but your computer measures it as 1024GB. The same goes for GB into MB. The true capacity of this drive when formatted will be in the region of 930GB.

    * It comes with a multi-plug. Follow the instructions to clip off the USA plug and clip on the UK plug. No tools are required (except fingers) and most children of 5 could complete the task.

    * The drive turns on and off with your computer and 'sleeps' when inactive to reduce power consumption and heat. In sleep mode it uses less power than your mouse, but if for whatever reason you want to turn it of simply right-click the drive icon and select 'safely remove'.

    * Don't let the 'I lost all my files' reviews put you off. Some hard drives do fail. This is the same for all manufactures and cannot be avoided. Valuable data should always be backed up on two separate devices.

    * If you are planning to store video on the drive it would be a good idea to format the drive to NTFS straight out of the box, don't worry about overwriting the files that come on the drive, you don't need them.

    Compared to other drives on the market this one is nicer to look at, and thanks to it's sleep mode, quieter and cooler than most. Getting (nearly) a Gigabyte per pound isn't too bad either!
    Comment Comments (13) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



     
    57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
    4.0 out of 5 stars Tried & Tested..., 2 May 2008
    By S. Franklin "tomcatmedia" (UK) - See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)   
    Well I thought I'd wait for a while until I review this Ext HDD.
    It came pretty quick, the interchangeable plug isn't a problem. I think it's quite clever myself!
    Setting up is a piece of cake, just plug & play. It looks stylish (which doesn't really bother me) but like what most people say, it doesn't have an on/off switch. But you can switch it off from your desktop by safely removing the USB drive. This will switch it off.
    Compared to my ICE BOX 500Gb drive, it is slower in read/write speeds. I found this strange as they are both 7200RPM drives, but it definitely works slower. The ICE BOX is like lightning, and it has an on/off switch!

    All round it's a good buy, and does the job of backing up all of your important data.
    Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


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    Customer Discussions

     Beta (What's this?)
    This product's forum (19 discussions)
      Discussion Replies Latest Post
    		bang! - Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive 3 1 month ago
    		transfering data 1 1 month ago
    		on ps3? 3 1 month ago
    		I-Tunes 1 2 months ago
    		USB ports? 0 2 months ago
    		Connecting to dvd player 0 2 months ago
    		I lost the power cable / ac adaptor 2 2 months ago
    		Not portable? 2 April 2009
    		product key 1 March 2009
    		synchronisation capacity for external hard disk 0 December 2008
    		Help!! WD My Book Essential 500GB: Works on XP but Vista not recognising it. 1 December 2008
    		USB1.1 3 November 2008
    › See all 19 discussions...  
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