Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBACW0020HBK-NESN

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is an awful product. It's one goal is to store computer material and it couldn't even do that. Mine worked fine for a total of like 2 months then start running extremely slow, wouldn't let me add anything to it, wouldn't let me take anything out. It was basically a paper weight.

I spent a solid 3 months dealing with the idiots at customer service which sucked because the return email for their site doesn't work. They finallllllly agreed to replace it and when the replacement came they didn't even include a return slip or address so I had to go out and pay for postage to fix THEIR mistake.

I am mostly venting right now, when the hard is running 100% it is great but it doesn't work 100% and dealing with the Western Digital Clowns almost gave me a heart attack from the stress.

Don't make my mistake

This drive is functioning properly for me, but it tries to install extra proprietary drivers when I plug it into the USB2 ports on my Windows 7 PC. I have another USB 3 external drive and it does not do this.

This drive is advertised as a USB drive and one of the great things about USB is that it is a widely supported standard: I can plug USB drives into any computer (or even a tablet and phone now) and they will work without any special drivers. This is particularly useful when it is not your computer so you don't want to make any changes to it.

I should point that I have been able to get it to work without the extra drivers, so it is capable of operating as a normal USB2 drive on Windows. I have not been able to find any explanation for why it wants the extra drivers and what I lose by not installing them.

I bought this hard drive 3 months ago. This week it started to make weird noises so I immediately started to backup everything on it onto another disk I have. Too late. The disk stopped turning, blinking light still flashing and no copying. After many tries, I finally made it to backup the essential but the disk is less and less stable every hour! I ran a Drive Genius scan and it showed it had bad blocks. This means my disk is diing.

WD used to make quality products, only a few years ago when 500GB was the big thing. Bigger cords, firewire and usb compatible, that disk lasted 4 years. But the second I opened the My Book Essential 2TB, it immediately felt cheap. Indeed.

At the most, this disk can be used as a cheap backup drive but even that could be too much for it too handle.

Very disappointed. Do not buy.

bought this product (2nd one) to back up my hard drive on the computer. Got it ready and the My Book began backing the hard drive. Half-way through it stopped. I phoned their assistance included in the purchase (the phone number) and we re-set it up and it began again. It went further the next time but did not complete what it was supposed to do. Called the phone number again and told them of the recurring problem. There answer: it was my fault due to my computer being faulty and to them, it couldn't possibly be there product. They were not prepared to do anything. I told them that they have lost a customer, and that i will never buy their product again. I'm telling everyone i know never to buy from them again.

I bought one a few weeks ago. It was delivered in 2 days, with standard shipping.

After installing on my P4 2GB RAM XP Pro system with USB 2.0, I removed the Smartware as I only want this drive for archival storage of system images and video files. No problems - it ran fine. However, I wanted to see what speed increase I could get via a USB 3.0 PCIe card that I had installed a few days ago.

A 12GB transfer of 5 video files via USB 2.0 took 8 min. 40 sec. I then ran the same transfer via my new USB 3.0 port, which took 6 Min. 40 sec. All conditions were equal - no other jobs were running.

My expectation was that the USB 3.0 transfer would be 2 or 3 times faster than USB 2.0. My conclusion is that the WD disk speed is only about 25% faster than the USB 2.0 pipe can transfer the data - if the disk was faster, greater speeds could be obtained via USB 3.0.

Despite the modest 25% speed increase, I ordered another identical WD drive for making a 2nd copy of the files on the first drive.

I buy mostly from Amazon.....Very well shipped before given date....Good Shipping...So i am happy.
Also it requires special driver - and brouchure does not say in the QUICK SETUP - that you can get this driver in the given CD...I downloaded from internet.
Once you connect it took me a lot time to back up my data - 750GB so many hours....so slow...Now i have new computer but with
USB2.0....I do not have eSATA or USB3 - could be a reson nearly only 6-9 MB/Sec...
I got software installled and copies my data as well....
Now question is i want to delete back up taken by software.....I could not find any option to delete on the software...I need that...So my overall satisfaction is good...

I've been using this product for about a month now and it works well. I got the 2tb version because it was $10 more then the 1tb version that was available in local stores. My only complaint is that it needs its own power source.

I needed more storage space for my Apple Time Capsule and this USB external hard drive works just fine complementing the TC.

This works great and rexonized drive right away, If you are using 32 bit and Windows XP like I am that you can only use a maxium of 2TB hard drive thats all the portion drive will reconize with windows Xp. I am having no issues with it first day.5 star first day.

J'aime le produit lorsqu'il fonctionne bien. La prise USB 3.0 est trop sensible et je perds parfois la communication avec mon WD.