Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDH1U5000E
• Released on: 2007-11-25
• Dimensions: 6.50" h x 2.13" w x 5.39" l, 2.54 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Are you running out of hard drive capacity? Do you need to archive some important digital documents, photos, or music? This elegant external hard drive, reminiscent of a book, is the perfect solution. It takes no more space than a paperback book. Collect two or more and they nest neatly together like volumes on a shelf

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Review of External Hard Drive
I bought this product a few months ago and it has broken, I have been unable to get any of my files off of it and it would not even let me reformat it so I have had to bin it

Free your hard drive
Got this drive because it was the cheapest I could find for the size. I'm no computer whiz but have found it easy to use. Have used it with an XP desktop and a Vista laptop with no problems. I didn't need to install any drivers for it. Never used the software so I can't comment on it. For the desktop I use it for extra storage and for the laptop its used for back ups using Norton 360. Its possibly a bit slow but as I'm not in any great rush when saving or backing up I'm quite happy with it

best buy I've made
The MyBook external harddrive (hd) works like a dream. 500 gb is more than enough for me.

It is very quiet, and has a slick design. If there is one thing wrong with it, it would be the absence of a power button.

I considered formatting it to NTFS, and in fact twice tried only to cancel it 30 seconds later because it took too long. Thankfully, it didn't damage/corrupt my data. However, I will be considering to convert it to NTFS from the default FAT32 it comes with, primarily because of FAT32s limit on filesize where 1 file can be max 4 gb. I want to create an ISO of my laptop hdd as backup, so obviously NTFS would be feasible in this case.

There are software that the hd comes with, most of it is junk to me like the google software. However, one notable and quite important software for me was the WD diagnostics. This program performs a SMART scan on any physical harddisks (not jus the mybook) so you can be forewarned in the event of failure. Perhaps there are many better free utilities like this if u search the web, but that requires effort :P.

I have used it on both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0, and whilst we would all prefer it on USB 2.0 (due to transfer speeds), it still works on USB 1.1 which is good. Further, I have also tried it on a USB 2.0 cardbus, however the cardbus cannot provide the same transfer speeds to a "natively built in" USB 2.0 (for me at least anyways). A 2 GB file transfered in 5 minutes.
Also noteworthy is that if you transfer several files of small sizes, then the myBook is bound to make "seeking" noises. For large single files (e.g. ISO files which I transfer a lot), then you can expect it work as quiet as a mouse.

Overall, the myBook certainly is cheap compared to others. Time will tell if it proves to be reliable. However, with a 2 years warranty, it may pass the test of time.