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Western Digital My Book Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

$225.50 at  
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Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

The software is totally the issue here. Doesn't work and no customer support. There is a trial version of Memeo autosync that does work but at the end of 30 days, you have to buy for $30. Total ripoff. Will never buy another Western Digital product again.

Mine died after about 1 year, but before that I struggled with it because the backup software overhead was so great I could not do anything else on my computer. Bottom line is their back up software ends up ruling the universe so I usually killed the process everytime I logged in. Another thing I did not like was after a software update, the drive restarted the backup from scratch.

I recommend you only use this for backing up (not necessarily with WD's software). The drive is very, very noisy when idle. I am using it only for backup. I'll be leaving it unmounted (in the Mac OS) when not needed. Since I've been burned by the quality of this item (the noise began outside the 45-day return window of the retailer), I'm now prospecting for a new brand.

Don't buy this hard drive. Look elsewhere. Mine died after only 2 years. Found an internet site that discussed how to remove the drive from the casing and use it as an extra internal drive. THat's my plan as of now as there seemed to be power issues with using it extenally. There are better drives out there so do some research.

Didn't work with my 3 year old laptop from day one, huge waste of my time. Bought a Seagate and it is user friendly and works great.

I have 2 WD drives, the 500 and a 750 and have never had an issue with either. The 500 has been going strong for almost 4 years and the 750 for 3 years. They are primarily used for storing music and movies. They both booted right up when connected to windows, without using their software.<br />The only downfall is that they still need the a/c adapter to run. I would definitely buy another given the right price.

I bought one last year. I won't bore you with repeating what others have said, but the main reason I hate these drives - and the newer Passport versions as well - is the stupidity of a business like Western Digital to rip off a big hunk of the drive capacity in order to stick users with some Carny Sideshow Software Fiasco that can NOT be removed, and which forever screws up the operation simplicity that is a key attraction of an external drive. Those responsible for this Epic Design Failure have been so slow to deal with it that it is now a marketing catastrophe that has literally thrown their brand into the ditch. Sorry to be so sour, but avoidable trainwrecks tee me off.

I saw this item at Costco and was impressed with the price and was also impressed (wrongly) with the WD brand. It began to die on me a few weeks ago, just dropping entirely off the system. It could be brought back on by unplugging both cable but then would die after after an hour or two. Upon bootup XP told me it had lost sectors at some point and neither the WD utility nor Norton Disk Doctor could bring it back. Thank *God* I had the presence of mind to make a mirror copy of it to another machine or I would be an even unhappier camper right now. I'm hoping I can get Costco to accept it as a return after two years so I avoid the dance I have little doubt WD will put me through (paying for shipping, waiting a month for a repair or replacement... This will be my LAST purchase of a WD product.

I chose to do a fake review to save people money,the wd 500 gb mybook essential external harddrive is now $55 at walmart(.com).why pay extra dollar on here when it can be saved,plus you get free shipping from them too and to your house.hope this helps save someone some $$$$,comment.

WD smartware never worked after the first installation. Everything seemed to install correctly, then a couple weeks later I checked the drive and nothing was backed up. Next step I am going to see if I can reformat it and use it without the WD software.