WD My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

The WD My Book Essential 1TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive has been a reliable companion for our movie collection. While I no longer use it, it served us faithfully for many years, providing ample storage space and easy accessibility. The 1TB capacity was perfect for our needs, allowing us to store and organize our extensive movie library with ease. The USB 2.0 connection made data transfer quick and efficient. Its durability and longevity impressed us, making it a worthwhile investment that contributed significantly to our home entertainment setup. If you're in need of a dependable external hard drive for your media storage, the WD My Book Essential delivers both performance and durability.

This is great product! I'm a professional photographer and I have six of these! I started using them about four years ago. Knock-on-wood - I've never had any problems with them. They're great if you need a lot space & don't want to fill up your computer hard drive. Great for backing up photos, documents or anything else you want to have duplicates of in case your computer crashes (which happened to me last month). I was so glad I had all my photos and information backed up on all of my WD Books. It was a life saver! It's better if you just drag and drop when your coping your files to the WD Books. I would definitely recommend this to my friends.I might buy my Dad one for his Birthday next month. :)

While this drive may work just fine in many circumstances, apparently it has known issues. I have existing multiple drives, and there are local drives that have been assigned the letters following my CD/DVD drives (CD/DVD drives designated as E and F) and other local drives already designated as G, H, and I that I want (and need) to remain as they are currently designated, which means I have a problem that Western Digital technical support has no solution for other than removing my other (G,H,I) drives and/or changing their letter designations so that there is an "empty" letter following my CD/DVD drives. Otherwise, the system would NOT recognize that the drive had been attached, and I was NOT be able to use it the way it came out of the box. This drive has a partition that is recognized by the system as a CD drive, and the rest is in a separate partition that is recognized as a local drive, so some of the drive is not available for storage (as it comes out of the box). Also be aware that Western Digital does not provide a driver for the drive. If you are able to get the system to detect the drive, when the new hardware detected wizards starts, you must let it search for a driver. The only reason I gave 2 stars instead of 1 is that it probably works fine except in this particular circumstance, but it didn't work well for me and my circumstance. This review is for the Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAF0010HBK-NESN.

I run Mac OS 10.5.8 and couldn't get the software to install correctly, nor get the updates to install at all. This included uninstalling everything and following the instructions in the manual step by step. Although it appeared that my data was on the drive, I couldn't retrieve it, so I gave up. I wound up erasing and reformating the drive to use time machine. The manual claims the drive will offer you the option of using time machine with this version of Mac OS, but the install never gave me that chance. After reformating the drive with disk utility I realized that USB2.0 is really quite slow - I have 56gb of stuff to back up (initially) and the back up is taking hours. I shoulda bought a drive with a firewire. My experience with external drives is that they die unpredictably after a year or more, so my plan is to buy a second, faster, higher quality product and alternate using them

The Good: Silent - no fan. No need in fan either - it doesn't get that hot, just warm plastic "book covers" and warm air coming out of the grill. Crappy backup software CAN be removed. 2 years warranty at the time of purchase March 2011. Doesn't cost a fortune. I couldn't find anything cheaper AND with warranty longer than 1 year from reputable brands - it's either long warranty or low price. The Bad: Junk sofware that needs to be removed and preferably with reformatting (See below). Not everybody can format HDD and then locate and set up a decent backup freeware. The Ugly: Book-shaped case with blinding white lights. Lights shine like halogen headlights - who needs this? Book shape is obsolete - nobody will place it on bookshelf between the books (it needs some room around it for heat dissipation). Besides, the "book" isn't quite stable in vertical position. When it turns on, it makes buzzing sound like a wasp for a second or two - not terribly bad but not nice either. More details: Bundled software resulted in transfer speeds of 7-15 GB in HOUR(!!). It starts fast, after few GB slows more and more until stalls completely. I have a modest 191 GB collection of movies and music. At that speed I should run it 3 nights (I can't run my old PC 24 hours non-stop). Frustrated after first 50 GB I upgraded the firmware - and it started copying everything from the beginning, this time even slower than with old firmware. After an hour or two it falls into some "sleep mode" - there is no warning, it just stops copying and never finishes the job. The bottom line - bundled backup software DOES NOT WORK. I re-formatted the disc and used old simple backup freeware called Second Copy 2000 (newer versions are not free). With acceptable speed of 30-35 GB/hour it quietly copied my 191 GB in half a day. Again, - this is old freeware and my PC is old 2.66GZ P4 (though with new internal WD HDD, updated Win XP SP3 and ample 2GB RAM). In defense of my old PC, it rips 8GB DVD movie to internal HDD in 15-20 minutes, which means 24-32 GB in hour - mind you, reading from DVD is slower than from HDD. My external WD drive came with USB 2.0 interface. There is a newer USB 3/2 drive (USB 3 drive backward compatible with USB 2 PC) but it doesn't sound from the reviews that newer one is awfully fast either, and I don't have USB 3 on my PC anyway. Note: the software that came with my WD My Book Essentials DOES offer a choice to install itself or not - when you connect this external HDD to computer. But after 2 days of wasted time I was so pissed off that chose not only to uninstall the soft, but also to reformat this external HDD. Giving it 4 stars because it's in fact a barebone drive with enclosure, it needs 3-rd party backup soft and a decent stand to place it vertically. OTH, it does the job, price is reasonable and warranty is decent.

Intel Mac mini、OS X 10.5.8でTime Machineに使用することを目的に購入しました。 他社の類似ドライブを選ばなかった理由は次の点です： ・内蔵ドライブのメーカーが選べず、余り信頼していないSamsung製のドライブが搭載されていることがある。 ・WesternDigital社のドライブは静粛性に優れているとの評判を聞いていた。 ・冷却ファンが無いこと。 冷却ファンは耐久性の面から見るとあった方が良いのでしょうが、静粛性を最優先しました。 USB Hubを使わず、MacのUSBポートに直接接続すると、仮想CD「WD SmartWare」とハードディスク「My Book」が自動的にマウントされました。 さっそくディスクユーティリティーで「My Book」を「Mac OS 拡張（ジャーナリング）」で初期化しようとしましたが、「フォーマットに失敗しました。」と表示されて初期化できないだけでなく、「My Book」がマウントされなくなってしまいました（ただし、ディスクユーティリティーではドライブリストに名前があり認識されている）。 何度試みても失敗して途方に暮れましたが、つぎのようにすることで初期化することができました。 １）OS標準の「ディスクユーティリティー」で「###.# GB My Book #### Media」をクリックして選択する。 ２）右の欄の上にある「パーティション」をクリックする。 ３）「ボリュームの方式」から「１パーティション」を選択する。 ※複数のパーティションも可能かもしれませんが、「１パーティション」以外は試していません。 ４）「オプション」ボタンが使用できるようになるのでクリックする。 ５）オプションで「マスター・ブート・レコード」が選択されていましたが、「GUIDパーティションテーブル」をクリックして選択します。 ４）「名前：」（名前は後から変更可能）をつけてから「適用」をクリック。 以上で「Mac OS 拡張（ジャーナリング）」でのフォーマットが完了しました。 今のところエラーも無く使用できています。 My Book用のユーティリティーを収めた仮想CD「WD SmartWare」はアンマウントしてもすぐに強制的に再マウントされるだけでなく、「ディスクユーティリティー」で初期化しても消去できません。このようなユーティリティーは、ユーザーが自分の意思で消去できる領域に置いて欲しかったと思います。（私にとって）不要なソフトの為に、たとえ219MBとはいえ記録領域を浪費されて、消去もできず、毎回強制マウントされるのは感情的にストレスを感じます。この一点で、もう一台購入の計画は白紙に戻しました。

PS3＆torneと電源連動、長時間アクセスしないときはスリープなど問題無く動作します 動作音も静かです。 ※PS3につなぐ前にPCにつないで行う作業 1.標準ではNTFSフォーマットなのでPS3用にFAT32フォーマットにする 2.バーチャルCD機能を無効にする。 これはウェスタンデジタルのホームページにてソフトウェアとファームウェアをダウンロードする必要があります。

Have two and they both have never caused any issues. Not as mobile because of external power supply but I don't need to move them just use them for backup.

I've had this item a long time now. Never fails. Great buy.

Awesome product. Happy with all!