Western Digital WDH1CS5000N 500GB My Book Home Edition External Hard Drive

List Price: $149.99 Discount Price: $100.00

Features:

• Storage Capacity: 500GB; Rotational Speed: 7200 rpm
• Data Transfer Rate: 300MBps External Maximum External SATA/480Mbps External Maximum USB 2.0/400Mbps External Maximum FireWire 400
• Interfaces/Ports: 7-pin Serial ATA/300 External SATA /6-pin IEEE 1394a FireWire /USB 2.0 USB
• Form Factor: 3.5" External Hot-swappable
• Standard Warranty: 3 Year(s) Limited

Accessories:
3-Year Extended Service Plan - Covers Electronic Items $0-$200 - Repair	Caselogic HDC-1 Medium EVA External Hard Drive Case (Black)

Customer Reviews:

worked great, died after 18 months [Posted on 2008-09-19]
This unit installed and worked perfectly, a real delight. Looked just like a drive (F:) on my PC and I backed up to it successfully for about a year and a half. One day, it just turned up stone dead. My opinion is that disk-drive based hardware should last about 5 years.

Reliable and Fast [Posted on 2008-09-21]
I wrote the following about the first generation of "My Books."

"Although the drive access is loud, this drive is a solid performer. As such, I have made this the standard external hard drive in my house. I will purchase several more for archive purposes."

This remains true and I will be purchasing more.

Too unreliable [Posted on 2008-10-05]
I have 3 Western Digital My Books attached to my PC and this 500Gb Home Edition is inferior to the others (which are Studio and Essential editions). This drive will randomly un-mount or go to sleep while in use. I have lost data when this drive just randomly "disappears". It's just too unreliable to trust your data to. I really cannot recommend it - buy something else.

Do NOT use the WD Auto Backup! [Posted on 2008-10-08]
The Memeo backup software included on this My Book is seriously outdated. Do not install it! Instead, do the following:

1. Go to memeo.com and install the latest version of Memeo AutoBackUp Standard.

2. Use the same software product key that is on the quick install guide of this My Book.

You will save a lot of time!!

Absolute Rubbish. [Posted on 2008-10-12]
I bought this hard drive mainly to back-up all the music files I recently had to re-rip to my new computer (about 70GB of mp3's were lost when my old computer got infected with a really nasty bit of malware and had to be re-formatted to insure its removal). Needless to say, I didn't want to lose all those files a second time, hence the external hard drive.

On with the review... Build quality appears to be good. The drive is very compact and looked good at my work station. Connections are simple; Just connect the power cord from the drive to the wall and the USB (or Firewire) cable from the drive to your computer. The drive powers up and down automatically with your computer.

Once powered up, the fun starts. The device drivers seemed to load OK, but the drive also loaded a diagnostic tool with the driver and without my permission. Then the set-up auto run kicks in and wants you to install a bunch of junk software. I de-selected all of the various pieces of software that set-up wants to force upon me and click continue several times to effect. Finally I click cancel, and Windows (running Vista Home Premium 64bit) gives me a warning that some software may not have installed correctly, which I ignore for the time being since I chose not to install any. I then try to access the drive via My Computer so I can delete all the junk that's been pre-loaded. It shows up as a hard drive (about the only thing that works), but when I double click on the icon, it just takes me back to the set up screen and once again tries to force its junk software on me. Same thing as above, I refuse and cancel and get the same windows warning (changing auto run in the control panel to "take no action" makes no difference). A right click will give me some options, properties, etc., but I still can't get into the drive to delete those pre-loaded files. Finally give up and just try to reformat it completely, but had no success with that either. I closed all my windows and tried to eject the drive using the "safely remove hardware" button in the task bar, but windows says it can't eject the drive because it's in use (even though it's not). I give up and shut down my computer and disconnect everything once its all off.

Now things get really interesting. When I tried to re-start my computer, I got a blue screen warning me of certain doom and destruction, and windows can't start properly. I had to do a system restore in order to get my machine running properly again! Whatever Western Digital loaded on to my machine really messed it up bad! This computer is a month old and was running fine prior to hooking up this WD external drive, so there is no other probable explanation.

I don't see why its necessary to try and force this garbage software on people by linking it to a setup.exe when you try to access the STORAGE device you just spent your hard earned money on. I bought this to store data on, not play with cheap, and obviously corrupt, software. Sure, put it in a folder on the drive and let me install it IF I WANT TO. And whats with it loading its diagnostic program with the driver package? Why let cheap marketing tactics get in the way of what could have been a OK product.

So, whatever you do, DO NOT BUY A WESTERN DIGITAL EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE!! Perhaps WD and Norton should team up...together they could dominate the "Trash Your Computer" market.

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