Western Digital My Bookâ„¢ Essential Edition 2.0 (1000 GB) 1 TB USB Hard Drive

Pros: Noise, design, capacity, value, ease of installation and use
Cons: Somewhat sparse documentation

Quick Summary Good size, quiet, unobtrusive, works as expected. Good value, tons of space. What’s in the Box MyBook, AC adapter, USB cable. Aesthetics The outer shell is a very nice glossy black. The bottom has small ...

Pros: Stylish design, large capacity, budget-minded price, power-saving feature, update to original product line
Cons: Questions about hard drive longevity, no power switch, no fan, Mini-USB cable

Western Digital has released v2.0 of the My Book Essential external hard drive series, redesigned for late 2007. The Essential series is the value line from Western Digital's external hard drive product line. Featuring a USB-only connection, the ...

Pros: Compact, quiet, fast, reliable.
Cons: Should include automatic back-up software.

The Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB external hard drive is a worthwhile purchase for several different types of folks. I actually purchased this product for one reason, and am now using in a slightly different capacity. It has performed very ...

Pros: Inexpensive; Fast Searching Speeds; Durable; Quiet
Cons: Only USB connectivity; Not extremely portable

The MyBook, made by the leading manufacturer of external hard drives Western Digital, is a compact warehouse. It's not exactly 500 GB, as it really holds around 485, but that's more than enough for me. Personally, I would rate external hard drives on ...

Pros: Compact, one terabyte, plug & play, easy to partition, USB cable included
Cons: Formatted FAT32, limited documentation, slower than internal drives

Twenty years ago, a Terabyte of hard drive space would have cost you $1 million - if you could afford a Cray Computer. Today, you can get your own Terabyte (1,000 GB) for under $200.This Western Digital Hard Drive delivers on all fronts. I ...

Pros: Simple, reliable, quiet, quick installation, cheap, good electronic specs, and housing design
Cons: No software included. Formatted as FAT32 for Mac compatibility.

For an executive summary, read only the bolded items.   UPDATE: This drive works so well I bought another.  As a 'green' design, it consumes less power than many other models, including all the current external drives I ...

Pros: Never cheaper per GB, easy to connect, simple to use.
Cons: Not much of a manual, but is USB 'Plug and Play'.

Western Digital has always had a good reputation for excellent design, superb quality control, and solid service and support. The My Book Series of external USB hard drives is no exception.The case is attractive, well designed, and extremely ...

Pros: Silent operation, nice status LED
Cons: No chaining of multiple drives

I am a Macintosh guy. My iMac has a 320Gb hard drive (about 100Gb free). With Leopard, I am making use of the Time Machine automatic backup. Time Machine works great but it eats up drive space. I used to use a 250Gb external but it would only hold ...

Pros: Slick shiny design, Consumer friendly, Compact and portable (1TB platter instead of 2x500GB)
Cons: average data transfer only 1 USB port, average price, software is useless

Design & Portability I had 2 external HD's, which were 250GB and 150GB. It was in two different enclosures, so where ever I went, it was a real hassle carrying two HD's. MyBook is pretty compact with 1TB platter inside, helps slimming the width. ...

Pros: The My Book is a great storage, compact, attractive, portable, and  very reliable product.
Cons: No cons for me but would be nice to have a built in virus protection.

      Let me just say I absolutely love this hard drive. The My Book has paid for itself 100 times over well probably 1000 times over. This product allows you to keep so many things, it has been a life saver for me more then ...

Pros: usb 500gb compatible convenient portable small easy external
Cons: firewire ethernet slow

I originally bought the MyBook Essential ES (has ESATA connector as well) so that I could expand the HD DVR box that I was renting from Cox and be able to record hundreds more hours of movies and TV. I wasn't able to get it to connect up right to the ...

Pros: - 500 affordable gigs of storage
Cons: - Slow boot up

I purchased a Western Digital My Book (with 500 gigs of storage space) just about a year ago at Best Buy. Back then the price was still closer to $200, but I was still happy to buy it. I needed space for my music library - my computer was on its last leg ...

Pros: It arrived fast....which is due to PCConnections' delivery service.  It looks okay. 
Cons: 1.  Incorrectly formatted 2. Unreasonably painful reformatting process. 3. Mis-assignment of serial numbers. 

First some context.....15 years ago when I worked at MCI, MCI spent >$150m to set up a data center with 1TB of online storage to support customer invoicing. Today, I have a 1TB hard drive that cost $120 sitting on my desk and I'm irked about the ...

Pros: Plenty of storage space.  Customer support helpful and resolved issue.  Small size and quiet. 
Cons: Didn't run on initial installation.  Slows down start up time of PC. 

Purchased this drive wanting a decent price on a ton of storage and a reliable name.  So far after 6 months of using the drive  it has some strengths and weaknesses.  This drive is very quiet and compact allowing it to stand vertically or horzontally.  Installing the cables to my PC was very easy as well and it starts automatically with everything else.  The drive is quick and I currently use it to back up music for ITunes and pictures.  Unfornately installation was not seemless.  Ran into a snag with the initial installation and had to call Western Digital's customer support.  After a 10 minute conversation with customer service my drive was up and running.  Customer service was friendly, helpful and patient.  Only other issue I have with the drive is that it delays the intial start up time of my computer by about 30 seconds.  This is unavoidable but something to consider, so far on only one occasion the drive did not start up with the rest of the components.  Comes with additional eSata input and cable. 

Pros: Cheap, quiet
Cons: Won't stay connected (interface problems)

This drive constantly "hangs" and needs to be rebooted to reconnect to my PC. I have read similar stories on other review sites...

I have tried all the external interfaces (bought it primarily for the E-sata)... The E-sata interface appears to be the main culprit...