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Western Digital My Book 500GB Essential USB2.0 External Hard Drive
 
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Western Digital My Book 500GB Essential USB2.0 External Hard Drive

by Western Digital
3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (145 customer reviews) More about this product

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1 used from £70.00

Technical Details

  • Product Description: My Book Essential Edition WDG1U5000 - hard drive - 500 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
  • Capacity: 500 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: 16 MB
  • OS Required: Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition, Microsoft Windows XP, Apple MacOS X 10.2.8 or later
  • Power: AC 120/230 V ( 50 - 60 Hz )
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Product details

  • Product Dimensions: 17 x 14.1 x 5.7 cm ; 1.3 Kg
  • Boxed-product Weight: 2.3 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: WDG1U5000E
  • ASIN: B000EXZB0M
  • Date first available at Amazon.co.uk: 11 April 2006
  • Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (145 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 11,311 in Electronics & Photo (See Bestsellers in Electronics & Photo)

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Product Description

Manufacturer's Description
Small, simple, elegant, and very easy to use. Just plug it in, and you've got plenty of room to back up and save your valuable data, music, photos, and movies.The elegant case, iconic of a book, takes up less space on your desk, stacks horizontally, and allows two or more drives to nestle neatly together like volumes on a shelf. SmartPower automatic power on/off and LED activity lights make this drive especially easy to use. Inside the case is an exceptionally fast (7200 RPM spin speed), ultra quiet, cool-running hard drive from WD, of course!

Product Description
HDD 500GB USB2.0 UK-PLUG MYBOOK 7.2K RPM 8.9MS 16MB CACH 480MB/S IN

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Customer Reviews

145 Reviews
5 star:
 (55)
4 star:
 (18)
3 star:
 (9)
2 star:
 (11)
1 star:
 (52)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.1 out of 5 stars (145 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Quiet, discrete external HDD, 17 Jan 2007
By John "John" (SURREY United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
Bought this external drive to store music files and photos. It runs very quietly so is ideal for siting in a lounge or TV room, where ambient noise would be a nuisance.

Comes with minimal documentation, although there is a web link where additional manuals and tech support can be found. Pleased to say, I needed neither. Plugged drive into the mains adapator and a USB port, Windows Explorer found it automatically and I was able to use it immediately.

Access speed seems fine. It took about 90 mins to write 150GB of music files, read speeds present no problem. My drive feeds Slimserver and a Squeezebox without any difficulty.

My only minor complaint and not enough to drop 1 star: The manual makes a reference to the FAT/ NFTS formatting issue, but the warning could be more explicit (if you start using FAT default you need to reformat the entire drive to switch to NFTS). That said, the drive is empty when you get it, so Windows Quick format option does the trick and formats in NFTS in about 10 seconds. Just make sure you know what format you need before using the drive.
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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Just returned second defective drive..., 3 Nov 2007
By Peter Button "Sales Team Coach" (Banbury, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
My first Western Digital My Book 500GB drive was dead on arrival. The second arrived this morning. (I'm very impressed with Amazon.co.uk)

The replacement powered up and was recognised, unlike the first. However, I was immediately aware that it was very noisy. I placed it on some foam to try to lessen the sound. That's when I began to hear the occasional sound of what I take to be the heads touching the discs.

I had spoken with the Western Digital telephone help desk when I had the first problem. I was told that it was best to replace through Amazon because "all replacement discs sent out by Western Digital are reconditioned units".

When I suspected likely future problems with the second drive I didn't hesitate for a moment and the drive was immediately packed up and is about to go back.
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106 of 113 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice backup external drive, 22 Jan 2007
By Matt Haswell "morbius29" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Nicely boxed, containing usb cable (about 1.5m), power block and power cables - both British and American. Nicely solid metal "pages", despite the black plastic "book cover". Quite stylish green circle on the side, although not ultra bright.

It doesn't power on until you plug in the usb cable as well as the obvious power cable, but once set up it is automatically picked up by Windows 2000 (or above) and starts up a window asking if you want to install Google software (toolbar for IE, Google desktop search and Picasa), Acrobat and the pdf manual or Western Digital disk tools. WD Tools seem slightly pointless apart from a disk eraser tool but even then I would download a free open source military grade version from the internet to use rather than theirs. The WD tests just seem to say Pass or Fail - would have liked to see more information about these. Apparently the disk contained is a SATA WDC WD5000KS disk.

Copied 1.9gigabytes (as measured by Windows folder properties rather than the 2gb WD would call it) as represented by 2500 files, to the disk in about 7minutes 35seconds - so a rough throughput of 250megabytes a minute. Very quiet buzz&clicking when writing data - not bad considering you can actually look in through the cooling vents and see the physical disk inside.
Gets slightly warm after extended effort so placing it on it's end like an actual book seems best due to the cooling slots then available on top.

It powers itself down from it's already quiet state to utterly silent after about 15minutes and then takes about 7 seconds to power back up if you access it. Very quiet unless on a resonating surface (i.e. a wooden desk) when it makes a slight hum from the vibration - however the supplied sticky rubber feetpads only have mounting points if it's laid down on it's side so you'll need to improvise.

All in all, a very good drive for backups at a very good price point.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Gave up after 2 years
Bought this to add some extra storage, quickly and easily. Was working fine for a couple of years, with the odd glitch, but nothing that I couldn't handle. Read more
Published 1 month ago by N. Bowman

2.0 out of 5 stars Good HD but with several flaws
I bought this hard drive dec 2007 and recently it's not detectable when I connect to my laptop. I even tried to connect it to other pc but still the outcome remain the same. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Samuel

4.0 out of 5 stars great drive.
really useful to have one of these. i've had mine for two years, and had no problem with it. it only makes a little noise, and shouldn't need any software to use, making it easy... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Andy Cook

5.0 out of 5 stars Reliable, cheap, good buy
I have been waiting quite long before posting this review because my main concern about HDs is reliability and I wanted to see what happened on the long run. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr. A. Tanca

5.0 out of 5 stars User
Excellent in what it does. Sadly software provided for sleep etc fails it completly. Tried on 3 computers and same results each time, Computer becomes very sluggish. Read more
Published 5 months ago by D. Lindsay

1.0 out of 5 stars Buy at your peril!
This hard drive worked perfectly well for a good 12 months and then ceased to work for no apparent reason. Read more
Published 6 months ago by T. Sullivan

1.0 out of 5 stars Drive stopped working after 8 months of use
Well I thought that WD was a reliable brand in hard drives and external hard drives. I was mistaken. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mr. Achilleas Rigas

1.0 out of 5 stars Beware
After working reasonably for 2 years, with only minor connection hiccups, this product decided THREE days after its warranty ran out to stop working and refuse to accept that it... Read more
Published 8 months ago by John Kington

1.0 out of 5 stars BEWARE: THE WD BRAND
The product is okay but my second one broke down and I sent it to WD (at my cost - subject to numerous ridiculous specifications (e.g. Read more
Published 9 months ago by M-M K. PCE

1.0 out of 5 stars Heap of rubbish
Used it twice, third time it wasn't there and couldn't be seen by either PC. Don't buy this junk!
Published 10 months ago by Mr. C. J. Downing

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