External hard disk that looks like a book! (Western Digital My Passport Essential WDME5000 500 GB)

Member Name: DarkestGrey

Product:	Western Digital My Passport Essential WDME5000 500 GB
Date:	24/07/09 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Design. Powers off when your computer is off. Price.

Disadvantages: Can have a delay when first accessed after a while.

The Western Digital external hard disk is easy to use storage for your computer.

Although it connects via USB with one cable, you also need an AC power adapter as well. This is included in the box but may make it unsuitable for use with a laptop on the move. Once all two of the cables are connected which are both of a nice length, you are up and running.

Presumably for compatibility to older computers, the disk is formatted in a format type known to geeks as 'FAT32'. Now, this may not seem like such an issue, however FAT32 discs cannot store files larger than 4GB. If you are trying to back up your computer then 4GB is not likely to be large enough for most backup software. So you need to reformat the disk into NTFS format to get around the problem. As software provided with the disk is actually stored on the disk itself, you may want to copy those files to your hard disk before you format the disk, since formatting will wipe everything off. I can't remember exactly how long it took to format but it was probably somewhere between two and three hours.

However, whilst you wait you can examine the quality of the product and see how noisy the drive is. You often get clicks and a delay if you haven't accessed the disk for a short while. These are not noisy and are about the only sounds the device makes.

The outer case is a nice black colour and it stands vertically. It's even designed to be put on a book shelf and hence the shape is book-like. I like this idea as it doesn't have to stand out as more technical geeky stuff in your house. On the front are just two LED's. They are thin and long and vertical and best of all blue. Both lights stay on when the drive is on, they alternate when the drive is in use. When you shut down your computer, the drive automatically shuts off and the lights go out which is a nice idea.

Even though it is made of plastic, it feels very sturdy.

Now the hard disk is formatted, you can examine the software. I use Windows XP and the software supplied all seems to be trial software. There is some sort of backup software that lasts for 30 days before you have to purchase it, so I decided not to bother with any of the installed software at all. There is a folder on the disk with software for Apple Mac computers but I can't comment on what is in there.

It does use up a USB port however and this uses the USB 2.0 standard. This is the faster version. It isn't compatible with FireWire which I am told is even faster. Since most computers do have USB ports these days and very few have FireWire, USB is a good choice for Western Digital to choose. I have played some movies from the hard disk to test the speed and they play just fine. It can stutter at times when playing music in music making software since it may be trying to read 32 music tracks at the same time and transfer them through the USB connection. For most people, playing your MP3 collection from this disk is no problem whatsoever.

This disk is a nice little thing for your computer. They now seem to be available in 1TB and 2TB as well now, if you need more space.

The price was very reasonable too. Although I did pay trade price, I have seen these for under £70 with one or two companies even under £60. A price worth paying for backing up any important data.

Very simple to use. Nice design. Shame it requires AC power cable and is formatted to 'FAT32', these are the only two reasons to put you off from buying one.

Summary: Very nice for backups or extra space on your computer. Recommended.

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