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Western Digital 500GB "My Book" Premium 1C External Hard Drive USB2.0/Firewire - Retail kit
 
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Western Digital 500GB "My Book" Premium 1C External Hard Drive USB2.0/Firewire - Retail kit

by Western Digital
3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews) More about this product

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Technical Details

  • Easy to set up, easy to use
  • Dual interface
  • The My Book drive turns itself on and off with your computer and Safe Shutdown" prevents the drive from being powered down until all your data has been written
  • 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
  • Inside the case is an exceptionally fast-ultra quiet, cool-running hard drive from Western Digital
  • Free Google" software
›  See more technical details

Product details

  • Product Dimensions: 17 x 14.1 x 5.7 cm ; 1.3 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: WDG1C5000E
  • ASIN: B000EXLVG0
  • Date first available at Amazon.co.uk: 8 Mar 2006
  • Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 26,665 in Electronics & Photo (See Bestsellers in Electronics & Photo)

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Western Digital 500GB "My Book" Premium 1C External Hard Drive USB2.0/Firewire - Retail kit

Western Digital 500GB "My Book" Premium 1C External Hard Drive USB2.0/Firewire - Retail kit

Product Description

Manufacturer's Description
They're your photos...your music...your videos...your important files. Make extra room for them, back them up, and keep them safe on WD's My Book Premium. This reliable, easy-to-use external hard drive is the perfect storage solution for all your precious digital assets.

Product Description
Technical DataStorage Hard Drive / CapacityGB500Technical DataStorage Hard Drive / Average Seek Timems8.9Technical DataStorage Hard Drive / Spindle Speedrpm7200Technical DataStorage Hard Drive / Buffer SizeMB16Technical DataDimensions & Weight / Widthcm5.7Technical DataDimensions & Weight / Depthcm14.3Technical DataDimensions & Weight / Heightcm17.2Technical DataDimensions & Weight / Weightkg1.32Technical DataStorage Hard Drive / Interface TypeIEEE 1394 (FireWire) / Hi-Speed USBTechnical DataStorage / TypeHard driveTechnical DataHeader / Product LineMy Book Premium EditionTechnical DataHeader / ModelWDG1C5000Technical DataHeader / CompatibilityPCTechnical DataHeader / ManufacturerWestern DigitalTechnical DataHeader / Packaged Quantity1Technical DataStorage Hard Drive / Hard Drive TypeExternal hard driveTechnical DataExternal Hard Drive / Power SourceIncluded AC adapter

See all Product Description

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Customer Reviews

22 Reviews
5 star:
 (6)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (6)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.1 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
59 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Impressive, fast and neat backup drive., 29 Aug 2006
An impressive external drive. A few tips: you need to install it on USB first to allow the FireWire drivers to copy over, then if you have FireWire, you switch the cables and away you go for faster throughput. If you only have FireWire you can download the drivers from the support website. It works very well, the drive is fast and virtually silent. The two blue circle indicators are a nice design touch. It comes formatted as FAT32, but is simple to reformat and partition using the disc manager in Windows XP should you want to. It's not worth paying more for the Pro version in my opinion unless you need Firewire 800 speed (only for video editors), this version has 1 USB2 and 2 Firewire 400 connectors. It also comes with all cables (including both firewire and usb). It has some bundled Google software and a simple backup manager too.
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35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great external drive, 7 Sep 2006
By S. Quinn "rainhead23" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I've tried many external enclosures and none have been as good as this. It's very quiet, keeps the hard drive cool enough (a big problem with external drives without fans) due to its good ventilation design that doesn't use a fan.
A big advantage of this drive is that it stops the hard drive spinning after a period of time and automatically switches it into standby when the PC is switched off or put into standby. After powering up the PC the "My Book" automatically powers backup seamlessly. I use the Firewire connection and that seems to be the quickest.
Only problem I can see is that after a power failure, or you disconnect the power supply, you have to press the button on the front to switch it on.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Great for Mac, but let down by bad software/support, 16 Feb 2007
I bought this for my eMac, running Mac OS X 10.3.9. Connecting up (as recommended in the booklet) with both USB 2 and FireWire cables, it worked immediately, and within a few minutes I was able to remove the USB cable and just use the FireWire connection. It is fast, easy to manipulate, the lights are helpful and aesthetically pleasing, and it is very quiet (in fact, the eMac is louder than the drive, so I notice nothing from the drive). All this would warrant 5 stars... BUT: the backup software provided on the disk has clearly just been converted from a Windows version (even using Windows-style minimise and maximise buttons in the top-right corner), and cannot read the Mac OS HD properly. I have an 80gb internal disk, and yet when I want to do a full backup, it tells me I have files totalling 311953120.00gb and this will not fit on the 500gb external HD! This number is always the same, clearly indicating a fault. I have submitted a query to the WD "support" site, but a week later, nobody has bothered to reply. I'm going to look for other backup software that has been designed for a Mac.
So: a great product, let down somewhat by poor software and non-existent support.

UPDATE: 22.2.07
After finally forwarding my query to the WD publicity department and alerting them to the above review, I did receive a meaningful response. I quote from the email a technical support person sent me: "...WD Backup only works properly when backing up your Documents folder. Although, the software will let you choose the folder such as your library folder, this will not work as you may have noticed. This is a very basic program that essentialy works like a copy and paste feature but is automated." So, be warned - even WD knows the software they provide is pretty rubbish!
Nonetheless, the hardware itself really is great, and if you can get alternative backup software, I really would recommend this disk strongly for use with a Mac (of course, I don't know if the backup software is as useless on a PC, but presumably it would be).

Another update! 28.5.07
I now have a new MacBook with OS X 10.4.9 and the WD software does seem to be happy to copy the entire internal HD to the WD external drive correctly. So it would seem that if using a newer version of the OS, then using the WD software will be ok. Of course, what will happen when Apple release the next version of OS X is anybody's guess!
By the way, if you're using an older version of OS X (such as 10.3.9 as on my old Mac), then I found that PsyncX worked really well, available from sourceforge.net (open source software). This would allow you to buy the drive (which is good), and have it work properly despite the WD software.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars If you value your data - don't bother
I bought one of these 18 months ago and up untill last month had no problem at all. It was instantly recognised under windows XP and I was using it to store all kinds of... Read more
Published 15 months ago by A. A. Jones

5.0 out of 5 stars This is my 3rd one!
I have had two of these 500GB drives for almost 2 years and have moved them about a bit,turned them off and on hundreds of times, plugged in and out and dropped them a couple of... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Cezanne Rafiuzzaman

4.0 out of 5 stars Good at the price
Good drive. Quick & easy installation in Vista.
Used as backup on 2 Vista 1 XP PCs ... no probs. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mr. Raymond J. Wilton

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing product, drive failure after a year.
I bought this back in Aug 2006 in the belief I could back up my photos and music collection; to listen to with my Squeezebox 3. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Num Hammer

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst Drive Out There
This is probably the worst drive i've ever used in terms of failure. When i first bought this drive it failed after 3 months. Completely broken. Read more
Published 20 months ago by disgruntled

3.0 out of 5 stars Misleading capacity
The 500GB capacity they say the drive has is it's Decimal capacity, not the Binary capacity that most computers use. So you'll find that there's only 465. Read more
Published 21 months ago by L. Hamilton

3.0 out of 5 stars Second thoughts
Hmmm... Sorry to add more fuel to the fire, but... I bought the 320GB version of this drive a while back and was very pleased with the performance. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Elektrikgypsy

1.0 out of 5 stars waste of money
I had this for my birthday in march 07 everything was perfect easy to install and connect, converted all my music collection to mp3 and saved it on the hard drive, then in august... Read more
Published 23 months ago by dan tha man

4.0 out of 5 stars Value for Money - Prompt delivery
The item arrived within 2 days (on free delivery) - a feel good factor. The product is straight forward. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Mr. M. Raghavan

5.0 out of 5 stars "I" Book by Western
Bought from Amazon three months ago. I wish I had had it three years ago. This is an excellent way to backup any information to free up the hard drives on your PC. Read more
Published on 13 Jul 2007 by L. Mcneill

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