Price : Too low to display
2TB my Book Essential USB
This review is from : Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
Seamless connection slow copy . I bought the 2TB WD My Book in exchange to the aging 1TB My Book (and previously the 500GB My Book). There are very few changes. This time they fixed the loose usb coupling on the unit. Everything works as advertised. The unit connects easily to my windows xp sp2 laptop as well as to my windows vista laptop. With the 500GB I had to reboot windows vista. Now i don't. The only thing I don't like is the speed, it only averaged 5MB/s of write speed when I copied the data from the old one. I also recommend to format it to NTFS since it comes with FAT32. Formatting to NTFS makes it work faster and allows you to copy 4GB+ files which many of us increasingly have. A marginal plus is the polished black finish that goes with my Panasonic flat screen.
Seamless connection slow copy . I bought the 2TB WD My Book in exchange to the aging 1TB My Book (and previously the 500GB My Book). There are very few changes. This time they fixed the loose usb coupling on the unit. Everything works as advertised. The unit connects easily to my windows xp sp2 laptop as well as to my windows vista laptop. With the 500GB I had to reboot windows vista. Now i don't. The only thing I don't like is the speed, it only averaged 5MB/s of write speed when I copied the data from the old one. I also recommend to format it to NTFS since it comes with FAT32. Formatting to NTFS makes it work faster and allows you to copy 4GB+ files which many of us increasingly have. A marginal plus is the polished black finish that goes with my Panasonic flat screen.
Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive Reviews
Very good external hard drive . This is a great external hard drive. We bought two, and swap them out weekly for backups, and it has performed fantastic. The transfer speed is very fast, and hookup was simple and fast. I would definitely buy this hard drive again.
Very good external hard drive . This is a great external hard drive. We bought two, and swap them out weekly for backups, and it has performed fantastic. The transfer speed is very fast, and hookup was simple and fast. I would definitely buy this hard drive again.
Good Drive. . The space is more around 1.8 gigs. But its solid. Not fast but solid. I use it with WDTV and its perfomance is right where it should be.
Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive Opinions
Good drive -- Lousy Software . WD makes the following claims about this software.
1. It's easy
Yes, basically this one is true.
2. You can see your life safe in one place
Well, you can see part of your life safe in one place. But there are significant peices of your life that are missing. WD's FAQ indicates that there are significant folder hierarchies that are not backed up by Smartware and some of those folders contain very important portions of your life!
3. It's always on the job
True, except for the part of the job that SmartWare doesn't do. See above.
4. You can bring back lost files effortlessly
Yes, but only if it's not one of the many things that SmartWare doesn't back up. If you need any of those things that aren't backed up, you are scre...well, not going to be happy.
5. You're in control
Nope, not even close. You cannot control the most basic thing like what files you back up. You can't change the exclusion list. Every backup software on the planet -- except Smartware -- gives you the control to change the exclusion list.
Bottom line -- Avoid Smartware like the plague. Buy the drive if you want but find some other software to do your backups!
Good drive -- Lousy Software . WD makes the following claims about this software.
1. It's easy
Yes, basically this one is true.
2. You can see your life safe in one place
Well, you can see part of your life safe in one place. But there are significant peices of your life that are missing. WD's FAQ indicates that there are significant folder hierarchies that are not backed up by Smartware and some of those folders contain very important portions of your life!
3. It's always on the job
True, except for the part of the job that SmartWare doesn't do. See above.
4. You can bring back lost files effortlessly
Yes, but only if it's not one of the many things that SmartWare doesn't back up. If you need any of those things that aren't backed up, you are scre...well, not going to be happy.
5. You're in control
Nope, not even close. You cannot control the most basic thing like what files you back up. You can't change the exclusion list. Every backup software on the planet -- except Smartware -- gives you the control to change the exclusion list.
Bottom line -- Avoid Smartware like the plague. Buy the drive if you want but find some other software to do your backups!
Quiet And Compact . Plugged it in and it was there. Am using WinXP, so I reformatted the drive. It runs very quiet, and appears to be well ventilated to keep it cool. We use it for music and seems very fast. I would definitely buy it again. Amazon had a very good price.
The Future is here . WD has done it again. This 2TB External Hard Drive is the essence of simplicity and modern design. The external size is the same as the 500 GB WD that I purchased mere months ago. Now, it contains 4X that memory.
This makes eight WD drives in my Media Center and I have had perfect success.
Thank you WD!!!
This makes eight WD drives in my Media Center and I have had perfect success.
Thank you WD!!!
Very Good External Drive . I recently purchased a 2 TB external USB 2 drive. This was about 2 weeks ago and so far not one single problem. I did find the software a bit annoying at first, but have since ignored it mainly because I didn't buy it as a backup, I just wanted the storage. I have a couple of other drives all from different manufacturers(External). And while some reviews on this particular drive complain it's slow, I can't say that at all. It's every bit as fast as my others if not faster. I guess if you are using it for a HD back-up it would take a long time to complete. But just to store files on it's like I said. It's as fast as it needs to be.
The software that comes with it is the first thing that fires up after you plug it in. That took a couple of minutes before I was able to really use the drive and that bugged me, but once all that was done I used it like any removable drive and simply accessed it from "My Computer" and placed files and folders in it.
It's to early to tell how reliable it is, but since I got mine for $146.00 and it's 2 TB,, right now I'm very happy with it!
The software that comes with it is the first thing that fires up after you plug it in. That took a couple of minutes before I was able to really use the drive and that bugged me, but once all that was done I used it like any removable drive and simply accessed it from "My Computer" and placed files and folders in it.
It's to early to tell how reliable it is, but since I got mine for $146.00 and it's 2 TB,, right now I'm very happy with it!
Much more dependable than other versions of WD's products. . I bought 2 of these 2 terrabyte Western Digital My Book Essential external drives. I've had very good results with them! This is unlike the reliability of the 1 terrabyte My Book that I bought. It has been a nightmare. I also got a 500 gigabyte My Book with my computer system and although I've had problems with it, it seems to have settled down. I would recommend these drives to anyone who needs lots of storage.
Cons Review
Haven't got it to work yet. . I received the My Book Essential 2 TB external hard drive before the Labor Day holiday weekend. I bought it to archive my photo, video and document files. The first thing I did was copy a folder containing photos and video clips to the My Book. Some files copied ok but some would not copy. I got the following error message:
"Error 0x8007045D: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."
I called the technical support phone number after 5 p.m. on Friday and a recording indicated that the office was closed. So I went to their web site and it said that once you call for technical support you get free technical support for 30 days, after which you will be charged $14.95 per call. I then sent an email to technical support explaining the details since they don't have coverage 24/7.
I've tried to copy files on 2 laptops with the Windows Vista operating system and one laptop with Windows XP and the problem occurred on all 3. I will update this review as to the outcome of the technical support request.
I later returned the unit to the seller for a full refund.
"Error 0x8007045D: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."
I called the technical support phone number after 5 p.m. on Friday and a recording indicated that the office was closed. So I went to their web site and it said that once you call for technical support you get free technical support for 30 days, after which you will be charged $14.95 per call. I then sent an email to technical support explaining the details since they don't have coverage 24/7.
I've tried to copy files on 2 laptops with the Windows Vista operating system and one laptop with Windows XP and the problem occurred on all 3. I will update this review as to the outcome of the technical support request.
I later returned the unit to the seller for a full refund.
Didn't even last long enough for me to buy a mirror disk to prevent catastrophic loss of data . I bought this just under a month ago. I have completely boycotted Seagate for their dire external disk quality and switched to Western Digital. However I have lost 2 hard drives since March. The first was a 1Tb drive which admittedly was a couple years old, but I expect these things to last several years otherwise what's their purpose, other than to lull users into a false sense of security. On that occasion I lost 2 years of valuable data.
The replacement was a 2Tb WD drive. Today, without any warning or slightest hint something is wrong, the drive simply stopped working, not being recognized any more by the Mac, and even attempting to reformat has not been successful. When I lost 2 years worth of data I committed to never relying on a single drive again. So I bought a replacement and started storing my data on it. This weekend I decided to go out and buy a mirror disk which is one main one and one backup. I'm starting to believe this is the only reliable solution if you value your data.
I have had hard drives for nearly 2 decades and never experienced such a high failure rate as this. Sure I'd have drives fail after 4 years, but that was mostly down to living in a place susceptible to lightning strikes. Just in the past 3 years I must have gone through at least 15 drives in all my devices including internal and external. As mentioned I'd already abandoned Seagate, but if I abandon Western Digital I'm not left with much choice. Before anyone thinks I use hard drives as cricket stumps or as a hammer, all the drives I've referred to have been in a vibration reduced cool area, in other words, looked after.
Perhaps stuffing so much data onto a single drive is compromising the reliability too much, but I'm incensed over the low reliability of this latest drive. Thank God I have the receipt and it's going back for a refund rather than exchange.
The replacement was a 2Tb WD drive. Today, without any warning or slightest hint something is wrong, the drive simply stopped working, not being recognized any more by the Mac, and even attempting to reformat has not been successful. When I lost 2 years worth of data I committed to never relying on a single drive again. So I bought a replacement and started storing my data on it. This weekend I decided to go out and buy a mirror disk which is one main one and one backup. I'm starting to believe this is the only reliable solution if you value your data.
I have had hard drives for nearly 2 decades and never experienced such a high failure rate as this. Sure I'd have drives fail after 4 years, but that was mostly down to living in a place susceptible to lightning strikes. Just in the past 3 years I must have gone through at least 15 drives in all my devices including internal and external. As mentioned I'd already abandoned Seagate, but if I abandon Western Digital I'm not left with much choice. Before anyone thinks I use hard drives as cricket stumps or as a hammer, all the drives I've referred to have been in a vibration reduced cool area, in other words, looked after.
Perhaps stuffing so much data onto a single drive is compromising the reliability too much, but I'm incensed over the low reliability of this latest drive. Thank God I have the receipt and it's going back for a refund rather than exchange.
Product Image
Feature Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
- Easy to set up, easy to use: Just plug it in and it's ready to use. There is no CD to install.
- Automatic backup: every time you save something it's automatically backed up.
- Fits right in: Takes no more space than a paperback book.
- : Designed to save power by going into standby mode after 10 minutes of inactivity
- Interface: USB 2.0
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Product Details
EAN : 0718037741901UPC : 718037741901
MPN : WDH1U20000N
Brand : Western Digital
Color : Black
Weight : 4 pounds
Height : 6 inches
Length : 9 inches
Width : 7 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Manufacturer : Western Digital
Model : WDH1U20000N
Publisher : Western Digital
SKU : MCE88-SY2395532
Studio : Western Digital
Where To Buy
You can buy Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive on Amazon . Click here to Read More
