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Some have even purchased their own enclosures(usb drive cases) and have had success. It has two ports on the back, one for a USB plug and one for the plug in DC power adapter that came with it. It seemed to work okay at first then after a month the following things seemed to happened in this order:-The drive started taking longer to appear in windows when plugged in.-The drive kept powering down constantly (light still on), even while in use which caused an MP3 or video playing to get stuck while it powers up again.-The drive started to make strange ticking noises at random times during the day-The drive sometimes had to be unplugged from AC power then plugged back in because it refused to power up when connected to the computer.-The drive (letter) would all of a sudden disappear from windows, then reappear with no drive size or name under "my computer" and when you click on it you get ["The drive in E:\ is not formatted would you like to format it now."]I have read that people have removed the drive from its enclosure and put it inside a PC which fixed the problem. I am starting to ponder that with all the failing external drives due to bad drive cases and the constant low prices.is Western Digital about to go out of business just like Mad Dog Multimedia did. The reliability and reputation of this company prompted me to choose their products every time and without disappointment until.One day I bought the drive we are talking about here, the "My Book Essential Edition 500GB". It's some thing to consider.I would still stay away from WD external drives unless you plan on getting a new enclosure for each one you buy. I haven't had a chance to try this yet.
It's obvious that the Western Digital USB and SATA drive 'enclosures' are the problem. This review is long but you can scroll to the bottom of it for the main point:-)I have one of these drives, my model# is WD5000C032-002 it looks exactly like the one in the picture. Then I bought a WD 320 Gigabyte internal EIDE drive from Circuit City - no problems to this day. I purchased it from Target at a surprisingly low price (this is how WD catches you). Previously I had 2 western digital internal EIDE drives(The Caviar WD400 - only 40 Gigabytes though ) they had outstanding performance, my wife had dropped one on the floor and it survived. Only this idea would actually offset your savings on the sale price.
I've had this computer for a year and a half so far to backup my laptop and keep my work files and to keep my music and photos so I hope it never fails.It has worked great and quickly for me all this time. I did have one panic when my computer stopped recognizing when I plugged it in---but this was fixed by unplugging everything and replugging it in again.
Drive was used moderately and never moved or dropped. Thankfully I had my pictures backed up elsewhere, as after 8 months the drive wiped itself clean. My review is similiar to the multiple horror stories that other owners have told.Bought one of these drives, running on Windows XP, to provide a safe storage for vacation photos. After owning the drive for a year, the drive sounded the "3 clicks of death" swan song and was unusable.Bottom line, don't rely on this drive for safe storage of data, as this product is not reliable.
Sadly I didn't back most of my stuff up, and next thing you know, it died. It started making 3 clicking noises, then 3 more clicking noises. I had this hard drive for about a year in a half. It would be recognized by my computer but basically the drive couldn't be read. I'm not sure if the data is still there but I would have to pay $1700 to send it out to drive savers which is not worth the money as of right now.When this drive worked for me, it was really good, but I have to give it 1 star because of how quickly it failed after buying it. It had pretty much all my stuff on it. Moral of the story, only buy this if you plan on rarely using it for backups and other things, because this drive WILL fail in a certain amount of time.
The unit stays in a sleep-state when it is powered but not connected to a PC. Size and form-factor are great for my needs. I use this device to backup both my laptops and have never had any problems with it. I've had it for around two years now (I don't like to write reviews until I've had some experience with a product).I like that the drive can be easily disconnected from the power and data cables. It wakes up instantly when a data connection is sensed / plugged in.The only thing I haven't been able to do reliably is connect it directly to my router for wireless access but that isn't a big deal to me because I worry about the security of using it that way (even though I keep my wireless network secure, there will always be a hacker smarter than me.).
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