Blog Shop Reviews

Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDH1U5000N
From Western Digital
List Price: $129.99
Price: $89.99

Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Ships from and sold by J&R Music and Computer World

64 new or used available from $74.99

Average customer review:

Customer Reviews

1 Year Review
I purchased this 500GB hard drive at a local electronics store sometime in December 2007.

Pros: Does what it should. Plugs in the PC through USB, installs the driver software, and is ready to go. The blue external lights look great in the dark and also matches the glowing blue icons on my laptop and speakers. If left plugged in, it will power on and off with the computer. A good amount of space.

Cons: Not a huge deal, but the icon of the hard drive just dissappeared. Slightly annoying, but may just be a local problem. Remember that all hard drives will fail in the long run. I know it can be slow… but ALWAYS BACK UP IMPORTANT FILES ONTO A CD OR DVD!

Little piece fell out, now whole thing doesn’t work
Sure it worked fine. For a few months. Then a slight jostle caused a metal loop on the USB port to fall out and inside the case, rendering the whole drive useless and all my data on there lost. Now I’d have to pay at least what the hard drive is worth to recover the data. WD refuses to fix the slight problem – they want me to send in my drive and get an empty replacement.

Not Happy
I purchased this drive in January of 2008 and it has already broken down, leaving me without access to a lot of back-up files, in addition to all of my iTune music.