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Home > Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
Show more by Western Digital
Average Rating: 3.0 star rating (78 Reviews)
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  • Automatic, continuous backup
  • Visual drive control center
  • Password protection and 256-bit encryption
  • Illuminated capacity gauge
  • USB 2.0 interface
Product Description:
 
The world?s best-selling external hard drive now features a new, smart, visual backup solution that protects your data automatically. Smaller, sleeker, more streamlined design - WD has made these award-winning drives even smaller, sleeker, and more elegant. As always, this book-like shape takes up less space on your desk and allows two or more My Book drives to nestle neatly together like volumes on a shelf. WD SmartWare - A control center for your drive that gives you the power to: Protect your data automatically - Relax. Your data is secure. Automatic, continuous backup will instantly make a second copy whenever you add or change a file. See your backup as it happens - Seeing is believing. Visual backup displays your content categories and shows the progress of your backup. Bring back lost files effortlessly - Retrieve your valuable data to its original location whether you?ve lost all your data or just overwritten an important file. Take control - Customize your backup, set drive security, run diagnostics, manage the power settings, and more from the WD SmartWare control center. Drive lock - Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and military-grade 256-bit hardware-based encryption. Illuminated capacity gauge - See at a glance how much space is available on your drive. USB 2.0 interface - A simple connection that offers convenience and compatibility among multiple computers. Power miser - My Book external drives are designed to save energy. WD GreenPower Technology lowers internal drive power consumption by up to 30%, a sleep mode reduces power during idle times, and a power-saving feature turns the drive on and off with your computer. Planet friendly - We designed a small box to minimize waste and used recycled material. We encourage you to recycle it. Ready to plug-and-play with Windows PCs - if you?re a Mac user, check out our Mac version of this product.
 
 

Our best-selling My Book external drive is an elegant, high-capacity storage solution for all the chapters of your digital life. Our latest edition now features visual, easy-to-use, automatic, continuous backup software and drive lock security protection. At last, beauty, brains, and simplicity together.

Elegant design.

This book-like shape takes up minimal space on your desk and allows two or more My Book drives to nestle neatly together like volumes on a shelf.

See your life safe in one place.

WD SmartWare software - A visual control center with a single screen view of all your data. From it you can back up, retrieve, and secure your files.

Password protection.

An extra level of security with password protection and 256-bit hardware-based encryption.


Features at a glance
  • Automatic, continous backup
  • Illuminated capacity gauge
  • Password protection and hardware encryption
  • WD SmartWare software
  • 2-years limited warranty

Smaller, sleeker, more streamlined design - We've made these award-winning drives even smaller, sleeker, and more elegant. As always, this book-like shape takes up minimal space on your desk and allows two or more My Book drives to nestle neatly together like volumes on a shelf.

WD SmartWare? - A control center for your drive that gives you the power to:

-- Protect your data automatically - Relax, your data is secure. Automatic, continuous backup will instantly make a second copy whenever you add or change a file.

-- See your backup as it happens - Seeing is believing. Visual backup displays your content in categories and shows the progress of your backup.

-- Bring back lost files effortlessly - Retrieve your valuable data to its original location whether you?ve lost all your data or just overwritten an important file.

-- Take control - Customize your backup, set drive security, run diagnostics, manage the power settings, and more from the WD SmartWare control center.

Find out more about WD SmartWare?

Drive lock - Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and 256-bit hardware-based encryption.

Illuminated capacity gauge - See at a glance how much space is available on your drive.

USB 2.0 interface - Powered directly from the USB port on your PC. No separate power supply is needed*.
* An optional cable is available for the few computers that limit power from the USB port.

Power miser - My Book external drives are designed to save energy. WD GreenPower Technology? lowers internal drive power consumption by up to 30%, a sleep mode reduces power during idle times, and a power-saving feature turns the drive on and off with your computer.

Planet friendly - We designed a small box from recycled materials to minimize waste. We encourage you to recycle it.

Ready to plug-and-play with Windows PCs - If you're a Mac user, check out our Mac version of this product.

Ideal For

  • Protecting your data with automatic, continous backup
  • Retrieving lost data effortlessly
  • Adding extra storage space for photos, videos and music
  • Securing private or sensitive data

Compatibility

Formatted NTFS
Windows® XP, Windows Vista®, Windows 7
Mac OS® X Tiger®, Leopard®, Snow Leopard? (requires reformatting)

Note: Compatibility may vary depending on user's hardware configuration and operating system.

What's in the box

External hard drive, WD SmartWare software, USB cable, AC adapter, Quick Install Guide.


Backup software you'll really use ? WD SmartWare

Five great reasons to love it:

1. It's easy - Data backup can be a chore, but it's your family photos, your movies, your music - your life - and it's important to protect it. So we made this software extra easy because we really want you to use it.

2. You can see your life safe in one place -
See your content displayed in easy to understand categories like movies and photos. Watch the progress of your backup as it happens with the instant-feedback color bars. Now you can truly be sure that all your stuff is backed up.

  • A unique visual interface lets you see the drives connected to your computer.
  • WD SmartWare will automatically scan your computer and find all of your personal files, including e-mail.
  • Content category gauges show how much information you have to be backed up in each category. You can even mouse over a category to see a file count.
  • Simply click Run Backup and WD SmartWare will automatically start backing up your files.
  • As your backup is running the category gauges will change color showing you the backup as it happens.
  • When finished, you?ll see a status screen and information about your backup. You only have to do this once. After the first backup your files will be backed up automatically every time you change or add a file.

3. It's always on the job - WD SmartWare is always watching your computer, so when you change a file and save it, create new files, add new pictures, movies, or songs, WD SmartWare will instantly back them up.

4. You can bring back lost files effortlessly - If you ever accidentally delete an important file, or need to get an earlier version of a file, you can find and retrieve it in seconds with this easy-to-use interface.

  • Restore files and folders by categories ? photos, music, video, for example.
  • Find a lost file with the search function.
  • Go back in time to retrieve an older version of a file.

5. You're in control - WD SmartWare software is also a control center for your external drives. From it you can:

  • Customize your backup
  • Set drive security
  • Run diagnostics
  • Manage the power settings, and more...
 
Customer Reviews:  
Add Your Own Review
5.0 out of 5 stars.  It's a backup drive, for gosh sakes..., April 29, 2010
By R. Fisk (Lewisburg, WV United States)
I go to Amazon whenever I want to purchase any equipment, even if I purchase it somewhere else. I do this because the reviews are amongst the best you can find on the internet. However, anyone who has read reviews like this for more than a few months begins to realize that reviews are written by 1) those who have received a defective product, or has a feature they don't like, or 2) those who truly love a product. You never hear from the other 99% of the customers purchasing the product who don't fit in these categories. In particular, purchasers who get a defective product are typically angry and vindictive, as though it was a personal vendetta. I find this unbelievable, as buying any product has a risk of failure attached to it. These angry reviewers don't accurately reflect the failure rate of a device, or the commonest opinion of a product characteristic.

I purchased the 2 Tb drive and it works fine. I did NOT install the Smartware, as I wanted to selectively back up specific directories. Some customers will want the auto back up, and that works for them. The case is no cheaper or poorly-designed than any other mass-produced electronic product these days. I don't find the switch to be a problem--it's designed to prevent accidental shut off of the device. If you want a large back up drive for a decent price, this works fine. If you want ultimate flexibility, get an external drive not designed for simple back up. Complainers should get a life.....

58 of 63 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  You Can Disable SmartWare!!!, November 6, 2009
By JonKron (Hopeful, USA)
Hello people- you are either being lazy or incompetent. Western Digital's website gives you instructions on how to disable the SmartWare technology (which is, in a word, horrible). After doing so, the drive operates just like any other external hard drive. WD should include this information upfront and let the user choose how to configure their HD- clearly an error by their product team. However, a quick Google search got me where I needed to go. Drive works great- 2TB for $200.

Link to instructions on how to disable SmartWare:
[...]

36 of 42 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  This drive has serious issues, October 11, 2009
By Wildness (Colorado Plateau)
This drive is embedded with Western Digital's SmartWare virtual CD that will ALWAYS and FOREVER boot to your Mac computer. This Virtual CD cannot be disabled, unmounted, removed, eradicated, or partitioned away - EVERY!!!!! It says so right on WD's website buried in the tech support area, not on the box where this kind of "don't-buy-our-product" warning belongs. Western Digital has decided to embed their Virtual CD Smartware into this drive so that you cannot, under any circumstances, disable or remove the VCD. It will forever mount this unwanted intrusion to your Mac (Windows is no better apparently) and their website essentially tells you that you can do nothing about it.

Can you tell that I am upset?!? I own seven other Western Digital hard drives and I will not own this one. Nor will I buy another in the future out of fear of getting the same results.

Like many people, I have no need for their backup or security software as I just want external drivers for pure storage. If I were to buy more of these like I had planned, My desktop would be cluttered with a bunch of meaningless virtual CDs. This intrusion may not annoy Windows users as the Virtual CDs will just clutter up your "My Computer" window; but, on a Mac this type of unalterable intrusion is beyond unacceptable. I cannot believe that Western Digital could not see the alienation of every Mac user on the planet from ten miles away on this one.

Western Digital and other drive makers have, for a while now, put their software install packages onto the external hard drives that they sell; but, it has always been just stored on the drive where it can be deleted or is removed when the drive is reformatted - at worst it was on a separate partition that could be removed. But, not with this new version (version 3?) of the My Book Essential Drives where it is embedded into the drive's hardware and cannot be deactivated. Until Western Digital rethinks their strategy and changes this practice, their hard drives should be avoided and boycotted.

(For more information, see all of the review on the 1TB version of this drive.)

UPDATE: After returning the Essentials drive, I purchased two of Western Digital's Elements External 1TB Hard Drives; Exactly what I needed in the first place... an external hard drive that is built like a tank and is only what it is supposed to be: a hard drive. No "fancy" value-added software embedded in the hardware to muck up the works on this drive. I highly recommend the Western Digital Elements external hard drives for all of your storage needs!

15 of 21 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  READ THE LATEST REVIEWS FIRST Absolutely no problem; so far so good, August 26, 2010
By Augustus (Washington DC)
PLEASE READ THE LATEST REVIEWS OF THIS PRODUCT FIRST! WD HAS APPARENTLY CORRECTED MANY OF THE INITIAL COMPLAINTS ABOUT SMARTWARE SOFTWARE. Here is my story (and keep in mind that every review is just one person's experience, good or bad, and that the vast majority of purchasers do not submit a review, in most cases most likely because they had little/no problem with the product).

Yesterday I received my WD My Book Essential 2TB External Drive with Smartware. I also downloaded the online complete user's guide from the WD website (something which it appears many of those who had a negative experience did not do). Installing was very easy, but just to be sure, on a couple of points, I called the WD support line, immediately got through and every time the techie was helpful and resolved the issue. The software installed, no problem, and the drive appears to be running, no problem. All my files (about 60 GB) were backed up in less than two hours, as the WD techie predicted. Since then, the drive has been working fine, no excessive on and off, just humming in the background with minimal activity. And this is on default settings. I get no intrusive "pop-up" of any icons. Yes, the smartware shows as a CD drive on the My Computer panel, but so what. All in all, the drive is doing just what it claims to do.

FYI, my computer is a relatively new Gateway with a Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS, Intel Core 2 Quad processor, with 6 GB of RAM memory and a 1 TB hard drive. It gives no indication of being slowed by the Smartware software. My guess is that my experience is probably pretty typical of many if not most buyers of this product. So far so good, and I will report back if I have an unexpected problem. And BTW, my purpose in buying the drive was to obtain an efficient, easy-to-use means of keeping my computer backed up on a real-time basis, without having a scheduled backup period and a lengthy backing up, each time, of the entire contents of my computer. Once it conducts its initial backup, the My Book only backs up what has been newly added to my computer. Exactly what I want.

12 of 13 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  So dissappointed, October 24, 2009
By F. Wong
Why does WD change something that doesn't need to be changed. The previous generation of 2TB drives were plug and play great on my MAC. This hunk of junk needs reformating, and then has all this uncessary software autoinstalled. HOrrible. Will never buy another WD harddrive.

11 of 14 people found the above review helpful.

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  OK Drive, horrible backup software that takes over your PC, October 25, 2009
By Ken (Houston, TX)
I have seriously mixed feelings about this product. It's a decent hard drive, but the bundled software sucks (see below).
Pros:
- HDtune was showing an average read transfer rate around 32 MB/s, which isn't bad for USB 2.0.
- The outer casing is very nice looking, but somewhat flimsy. Part of the back panel wasn't snapped in completely on mine, so I had to pop it back into place.
- Drive can be used for storage without installing the included software

Cons:
- WD embedded their software on a virtual CD drive partition on the drive.
- The virtual CD disk partition can actually be disabled in the device manager in Windows. After you do that, the partition will disappear from "My Computer". I'm not sure about the workaround for macs
- If you do try the software, be aware that it runs in the background all the time. Even with the drive unplugged it will randomly consume 60-80% of your CPU. My i7 8-threaded CPU was getting all threads loaded up to this amount. It's not even doing any back up operations. I got so sick of killing the process that I just uninstalled the software. I'm running windows 7 and it has a fairly easy to use backup system. I've moved over to that and it works fine with this drive. You can also just drag and drop files on the drive as well.

8 of 9 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Waste of Time, September 9, 2010
By Troy Ancona (Maine USA)
I purchased this product to simply gain the ability to back up my PC automatically. This is the third WD External Hardrive I have purchased, the first one failed in less than two weeks. The second one ran for about two years. This one never worked right from the beginning. First it ran and took over a day to back up my laptop, which is a brand new Dell Studio. Then I could not get the program to run at all. Finally I uninstalled the software and then reinstalled it. Then updated the software. It ran much better for about a day, then quite again.

This will be the last WD item I will ever buy!

6 of 7 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  KILL IT WITH FIRE, Western digial is DEAD to me, March 4, 2010
By Hassan B. Bn Hadhram
I'm not overreacting seriously just read my review and you will understand how terrible is this drive, i will try to make an objective review as much as i can, I'm a huge Western digital fan (Always bought my internal and external hard drives from them exclusively)

But this External drive is horrible ! and downloading the software/firmware updates does not fix its faults

It's not sturdy at all and WILL fall with the slightest touch unlike their previous my books
The POWER button on the back DOES not work for my unit so why is it there exactly?
The included software require downloading updates to fix it but you will never get the 1GIGA~ Lost from the installed software (The updates only hide it and do not remove it) and removing this horrible software deny you access to the password protection feature

Also after going through all the updating and so you imagine you would get your happy ending right? NO.. every time i plug my external hard drive now i get Windows Error pops up

Western digital went from the best to the worst in the split of a second, they lost a customer for life with this horrible drive and i hope whoever is responsible for putting this hard drive in the market to get fired for the damage it did cause.

6 of 8 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Excellent, compact but large capacity backup, ext. hard drive, October 6, 2009
By Kirk Clagstone
I was looking for an ext., large capacity hard drive with options/uses in addition to a std. hard drive backup devices. I had read a negative review on this product but with the return policy, knew I could get my money back if I had problems. I had the retail outlet install the software - no problems with this. It's compact, has state of the art features, 2TB = plenty of backup space and after 4 weeks of use, it's lived up to what was advertized - no problems and I would recommend this to anyone who wants a large, user friendly external hard drive with automatic features.
Kirk

5 of 7 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Excellent storage for my iTunes library, August 29, 2010
By iTunes Lover!
I love my new Western Digital 2TB external hard drive. It's perfect for my ever expanding iTunes library. It plugs in and plays perfectly right out of the box. There are 1.8 gigs of usable storage space on this drive. This is my third and largest external hard drive. I've loved them all. No problems whatsoever. I'm using my smaller externals for photo storage.

4 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  A host of annoyances... and terrible software., August 21, 2010
By Lieven Leroy (Santa Clara, CA United States)
2TB for this price seems a good deal, and WD is an established name... so, I grabbed it without checking for reviews. This was a mistake which you, gentle reader, are hopefully not making...

The software for this device is haphazard, confusing, actively harmful. And it takes up space you paid for! Given all the other negative reviews of the software I've found online since, it leaves a bad impression of WD that they have not done anything about it.

The hard drive itself runs quietly, though the case has fairly cheap feeling construction. The power button feels fragile.

When you connect the drive:
(1) 'SmartWare' software auto-installs. That would be convenient, if the software weren't terrible. It also does not offer an uninstall option, and the tray icon it adds, while it offers an 'Exit' option, does not actually exit.
(2) When the application starts it shows the drive has 1.8TB free. (That's odd, I paid for 2TB...)
(3) It then proceeds to index your files in a confusing way -- not by directory but by file type (Pictures, Music, ...). Does backing up this way work? I'll never know, it was so painfully slow it literally would have taken a day to back up my 200GB main drive.
(4) So I checked for updates. There's a button in the application for that, but it just takes you to a website. Where you have to manually select your drive and operating system. Clearly, better software could easily make this determination for you and save the world a lot of time and incorrect selections. The site then offers options to update the firmware and the backup tool. (The firmware update requires you to power cycle the drive. The power button doesn't work for this, so you'll have to yank the power cord.)
(5) On attempting to restart the backup, the software just sat there. No indication of progress, no drive activity. After a half hour I exited.

I resorted to a manual backup. The copying runs 3-4x faster that way. No backup management, of course, so that is a major setback.

I will probably keep it simply because it would be too much of a hassle to wipe the drive of my files.

4 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Works great with my MacBook Pro. Glad I didn't buy into all of the negative hype here, May 19, 2010
By peppersdad (Los Angeles)
I purchased this from Costco a few days ago. Before opening the box, I took a glance at the reviews here and got a little panicky. But I figured I could return the item to Costco easily, so what did I have to lose by testing it out?

As it turns out, absolutely nothing.

Because I'm a MacBook Pro user (Snow Leopard 10.6.3), this item was plug-and-play for me. As far as WD's much-maligned, pre-installed backup software goes:

1) I don't need it because I use Apple's Time Machine program, which works flawlessly with this drive; and

2) the WD website now offers an optional free download (Windows and Mac) of a very easy fix that permanently prevents the program disc from mounting, which took me no more than 5-10 minutes to download/install. So the seemingly endless numbers of complaints here about the attached software should now be moot.

I had no trouble smoothly connecting the two included cables (power and USB) to the drive and my computer. So far, the drive works quickly and very quietly - much more so than the poorly engineered, overhyped, insanely overpriced Apple Time Capsule that it is replacing on my desk. Finally, this drive takes up no more workspace than a standard paperback book. In a nutshell, the WD My Book Essential drive inconspicuously and effortlessly does exactly what it is supposed to do, and at a long-awaited, record low price for 2TB to boot.

UPDATE ON 7/13/2010: It's been pointed out to me that my review did not address complaints about how it is impossible to delete the reviled backup software. My response is that this is a 2TB drive where that software uses only a very tiny percentage of its space. Given the price and the quality of this product, that insignificantly small loss from the drive's capacity ought to be a trivial consideration for the vast majority of purchasers. Reality Check: Many, if not most, of the people complaining/whining here that they cannot remove this one feature will waste exponentially more space backing up other wholly unnecessary junk onto whichever external drive they own.

4 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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3.0 out of 5 stars.  Beware of Amazon's description, October 21, 2009
By roghaj (Anaheim, CA)
I was sold on this drive by the info that I grabbed off Amazon's site about it being able to be powerd by the USB cable. This is quoted from Amazon:

USB 2.0 interface - Powered directly from the USB port on your PC. No separate power supply is needed*.
* An optional cable is available for the few computers that limit power from the USB port.

This isn't true. I tried a powered USB hub as well as USB on several computers. Turns out that this isn't a claim from WD, it is a claim that I could only find on Amazon's site.
Speed: This drive isn't terribly quick. Faster than my old WD but slower than my FD.
Sound: Very quiet.
Style: Looks pretty cool.

I do agree with the other post about the mounting of the fantom CD drive. Let me disable it, and I'll be happy
Would I recommend this drive. Yes. I know the review seems down, but for the money, it is a great deal.

4 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  The last WD external drive I will ever buy, July 4, 2010
By Brian (Indiana, USA)
Western Digital is well into the damage control portion of their latest debacle: hard drives that try to force virtual CD drives and associated software onto their users. While you can go online and update the drive's firmware to disable the virtual CD drive, you can never actually remove it from the drive you bought. While you can disable the virtual driver through Window's Device Manager (STARTright-click My ComputerpropertiesHardwareDevice Managerright-click the drive and choose Disable), you can't actually remove the virtual drive or software from the external hard drive.

Every drive I've ever bought had software on it, but I was always able to remove it and format the drive to my liking. Not so with these new Western Digital drives. So this will be the last one I ever buy.

4 of 6 people found the above review helpful.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  Great Drive for MAC Time Machine / Drive Can Be Password Secured, December 4, 2009
By jwalker99 (NY, NY USA)
Its kind of funny. For all the poor reviews and cursing this 2 TB drive created, it actually is a perfect Mac Time Machine backup device ironically because of its hardware based password security -which of course cant be erased -and is what users are complaining about .

Pros

-Hardware based 256bit encryption based security password security means that my Time Machine Backups are locked up tight. So storing an off site backup of this hard presents no security risks. (assuming of course the hardware security cant be cracked)
-Same sturdy, cheap and simple Western Digital hard drives I have relied on for 3 yrs now as backups.
-Cheap enough (At costco) ($169 w/ coupon) that you you can store a few off site backups and know data is safe.

Cons

-Bloatware non re-movable backup software is useless and eats up 12% of disk space 250 gig of 2TB. They really shot themselves in the foot on this one and makes you wonder how out of touch they are with their customers.
-Western digital should stick to its knitting and just focus on making good hard drives rather than backup software. They have failed multiple times in the past w/ backup software.

3 of 3 people found the above review helpful.

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  inelegant bad design, June 7, 2010
By Craig Youngman (Columbus, OH United States)
I'm disappointed in this WD drive. It's a bad design. First when you plug it in, it appears as two drives. One drive is used for the utility/backup software install disc. This is a dummy drive that is only there to hold the installation software. It emulates a CD ROM drive. The second drive is the actual drive. You can't get rid of the dummy drive. So if you have multiple WD My Book Essential drives on your computer, for each drive you will use two drive letters. One for the dummy drive one for the actual hard drive.

Everyone includes backup software and utilities when you purchase a USB drive. But everyone else just puts the software on the hard drive itself. They don't create dummy drives that consume drive letters for no reason. It's just pointless to do it this way.

For all this trouble the software is not very good. The software runs very slowly, taking considerable time to change the screen when different options are selected. Also the software is just inelegant and cumbersome, it's just not very well done. I'm tempted to pull the hard drive out of the case and put it in another drive enclosure. I believe the hard drive itself is fine, but the unit as a whole is not designed well.

3 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  problems resolved, January 7, 2010
By Mr. TCP/IP (Miami, Florida United States)
1) The cable is a 'standard male' to 'MICRO USB male.' The same one NOKIA uses as DATA cable for their cel phones to communicate with computers Note that this is a MICRO (not a MINI)plug.

2) For the VCD you just follow the link shown at the beginning of this amazon page indicating news about the related software upgrade. Then choice your model and download the firmware utility and the vcd manager. Follow the quite long (24 steps) but otherwise easy procedures and remove the wired partition. you can use MAC or Windows software (both available) First make the firmware upgrade and then run the vcd manager and VOILA the extra icon disappears! My hard drivers came NTFS from FACTORY. I formatted MAC HFS (WITH GUID partitioning )with DISK UTILITY and THEN made the upgrades running the downloaded mac software. Mac owners ADVICE: try to stop spotlight (for the drive upgraded) while upgrading. Is more on the safe side (even if not strictly mandatory I guess). Good luck. Excellent Hard Disks!.

3 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  Best External (I love WD Stuff), October 23, 2009
By guitar soldier (IRAQ WAR ZONE)
I've got several HDD's, nearly all of them are WD. I jumped on this one because it was a VERY GOOD PRICED 2Terabyte and it had the neato-keen backup software.

SOFTWARE WAS A CINCH TO INSTALL! When the device mounts, a virtual CD opens up gives you the chance to start the install of the SmartWare.

It's THINNER than my ONE TB's!~!! I don't know how they did that, but it's super nice.

It lets you PASSWORD LOCK the drive! That is a COOL function. It's an extra step to input the password EVERY TIME you mount the drive, but it mitigates the chance someones gonna get into your personal files! GREAT FEATURE! The smartware runs 24/7 as a tray icon. Very slightly annoying. It's getting crowded down there , LoL . . .

It lets you do an initial backup of your C Drive. very easy. It's like two button clicks. That takes a while since it's only USB, and the transfer speed on that isn't so hot when you're moving 100 GB or more of data. But once you start the backup process, you dont have to touch it! You do not have to manage the file backup process. SmartWare runs every time you plug in the drive and it updates WITHOUT YOUR INPUT. It has automatic power modes ( I haven't detailed it all yet, LoL)

COOL THING!!! IT WILL BACK UP WHATEVER THE HECK YOU WANT! If you open the SmartWare you can choose whatever HDD or USB flash drive you want and it will back it up WITH NO FUSS!! I've backed both of my internal drives (laptop, dual HDD), and my 16GB flash drive. I got no issues whatsoever with this device.

It runs quiet, and I love the white lights on it, So dang cool. This is BY FAR the best and MOST USER FRIENDLY external storage device I've ever had. [only 4 stars because NO FIRE WIRE, hmmm]

3 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  WD MY BOOK ESSENTIAL 2 TB USB 2.O DESKTOP EXT HD, March 26, 2010
By Ward Fantroy (Reynoldsburg, OH, USA)
I bought the hard disk despite some of the negative comments that I read on Amazon. I found that most, if not all, of the negative comments found on Amazon regarded issues with the HD that had been resolved; and the HD and the improvements provided through program updates made this customer very happy and totally satisfied. I simply followed the installation instructions and answered the questions asked during the installation process so that the product performed the functions for which I purchased it, which is to act as an external back-up hard disk drive for the data and programs stored on my computer. The purpose for buying the product was to ensure that such data is not lost if my computer crashes for some unfortunate reason and is not lost if some virus manages to get past my virus protection software. The installation was easy and took several minutes but the time was not inordinate and the backup process also was done in a reasonably expeditious time, considering the amount of data to be backed up. After the backup was completed, I chose to disconnect the WD external drive and to reconnect it only when I want the backup program to run. By doing this, the program is not running and using processing space that slows down computer operations when I am doing routine work. When reconnected, the program automatically picks up where it left off, scans all computer drives and discovers any changes made to the data and programs on the hard disk on my computer and then updates the data previously backed up on the external drive; and that is exactly why I purchased it. Thanks to WD, my needs have been satisfied completely.

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3.0 out of 5 stars.  Bottom Line Folks, January 15, 2010
By Original Kings Fan (Nor Cal)
The Good:
> Solid drive
> Looks good
> Good value and price
> Western Digital reliability
> Relatively simple to fix the bad attribute of this drive

The Bad:
> Total bonehead move by WD to force its "smartware" on their customers
> Shouldn't have to "fix" a brand new drive

The Bottom line:
Great drive, but only after the buyer goes to Western Digital's website, updates the firmware, uses the VCD manager to disable the VCD, and shakes off the bad aftertaste remaining from having to go through such a goofy exercise. It's not hard to do. There are step by step instructions on the website, but you definitely shouldn't have to do it. Just a completely horses ass move by WD and I won't be surprised if they lose some customers solely on principle. I'll give them a pass this time because perhaps they really were just trying to help us poor brainless users who have to be protected from ourselves in this manner- but live and LEARN here WD, with the operative word being LEARN. Pull something like this again and I and many like me will be using your competitor's product to store our "data" on.

Good luck everyone!

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Oooh, it's pretty. Too bad it CAUGHT ON FIRE, January 10, 2010
By Greg Roe (Littleton, co United States)
Horrible drive. I'm a professional photographer so I depend heavily on reliable back up of my photos. This drive caught on fire and started smoking when plugging it in. Data recovery on this drive even while in warranty is in the 4 figure range. So obviously my recommendation is to not go near this drive. Much better options out there.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  "Usually ships within 1 to 2 months", October 17, 2009
By Tami A. Gould (Woodbridge, VA United States)
The description state: "Usually ships within 1 to 2 months"

Why on earth would it take 1-2 months to ship this product? Who would wait that long?

I was all set to check out when I saw this. I can't wait that long. I need a new drive now. I guess I'll be running out to BestBuy to pick one up tomorrow. Even though their price is almost $50 higher, at least I'll have the darn drive!

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Great product, worth the money, November 2, 2010
By Kyle Gibson
The Good:
-Not as big as you think. It is about 1.3 times as tall as a WD Passport drive and is only 3.5 times wider.
-HUGE capacity
-I got it for $110 at Best Buy, not at Amazon
-Semi-Quiet, not too loud but you can hear it
-It moves files SUPER fast. It takes me 13 minutes to move 22Gb of video.
-The Virtual CD program, WD Smartware, CAN BE DISABLED with a few minutes of updating the software

The Bad:
-My digital capacity gauge stopped working after I plugged it into another computer, but the drive still works perfectly fine
-Not the most stable hard drive casing. I just propped it against my screen and the wall, so it won't fall over if I hit my desk, but otherwise it would.

I am a WD customer for life, after owning only 2 of their drives. This drive is the best 2TB hard drive out there, taking into account the price and the reliability.
If you need to auto-backup your computer, I guess you could use their Smartware software, but it's not for me.
BUY THIS DRIVE, it's worth it. You'll probably never fill it up, it's does NOT break easily if you're careful with it, and it's cheap.

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3.0 out of 5 stars.  Cost effective offline storage, but not for everyone, March 31, 2010
By Kyar Kano (NJ)
First let me say I'm an IT professional, so I'm more comfortable with hardware than the average consumer. I'm working with a data archiving project and this 2TB usb drive is a cost effective solution. I have four of these so far and plan to purchase more of the same as needed. The first thing to note about this is that of the four I've received, two were not aligned in their casing on arrival, so the power and usb cable ports didn't line up with the holes in the casing. One snapped into place with a little fiddling and the other is just horribly misaligned, but I was able to get them all up and running. Given the apparent 50% "failure" rate on being properly mounted in the case, I'd recommend against this drive if you aren't comfortable with having to adjust it. Once connected to the PC, each unit appears as -two- drives, one for their read-only software/firmware and one for the 2TB of storage. Windows does still allow safe usb removal for both drives as one item. I don't use manufacturer supplied backup software, so won't comment on it. Appearing as two drives isn't going to be a problem for typical -offline- storage where you just need to backup your data as I'm doing and disconnect, but it could be a problem if you want to keep many such drives online as it will eat up available drive letters. If you are comfortable adjusting hardware and need 2TB of usb storage for offline backup purposes, its a decent drive. Otherwise, you'll want to look elsewhere.

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  WD SmartWare -- boo!!!!!, January 9, 2010
By P. Gagliardi (Horsham, PA United States)
Let me start by saying the two stars are purely because of the WD SmartWare VCD that accompanies this drive. I have always bought Western Digital for the reliability of their drives, and this one seems to be no exception in that regard. As for the WD SmartWare, this seems to be just another case of a vendor thinking it knows better than the consumer, so it goes and protects its software on a hidden partition. When I buy storage, I expect to be free to decide how to use the whole darn drive. The fact that it is only 644 MB is beside the point. This software, which loads a Virtual CD Drive when it runs (thus using up an available drive letter) cannot be removed, only disabled. For anyone in need of instructions, they are furnished by Western Digital here: [...]
**Beware that you must first apply a firmware update to the drive just to run the software that disables the SmartWare.**

Another peeve of mine is that yet again the design of the drive has changed. I would imagine that most consumers are looking for two things when it comes to storage: more space and reliability. The few consumers who are actually concerned about a variety of sleek designs have got to be far outweighed by those who would prefer uniformity if they have several drives. I'm sure if you're at the point where you need 2 TB of storage, you probably need even more than that and perhaps own multiple drives. For the sake of those who do, why not keep the design the same, since it wouldn't really matter anyway to a first time buyer that it's a new design? I hope that when the next size drive is released by Western Digital, they would've learned a bit from their customers here who seem almost universally disappointed with their irremovable WD "Smart"Ware.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  USE AS BACKUP ONLY. DO NOT TRUST YOUR FILES TO THIS EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE, April 16, 2011
By Opheliashuman (California)
A warning to everyone who is using this just as an external hard drive...DON'T. Use it only as a backup even if it means you have to by another external hard drive to back this up (as keeping 2TB of stuff on your PC is impossible). The casing it is in does not align well with the port in the back, so plugging it in is difficult. After 6 months of light use (I rarely unplug it, but it comes unplugged easily on its own)the connector sheared off and dropped into the case. Read the Western Digital Community posts to see that this is an issue many have had with My Book and WD is glib, at best, about it. Their customer service tells you to ship it to one of their partners for data retrieval...at a cost of up to $1,000 or more! If you attempt repairs on your own (suggestions have been to go in and resolder it), then it voids the warranty. People on the Community posts try to be helpful, but most everyone to whom this has happened can tell you that attempting to remove the board and putting into another case will not work as it is encrypted and will not work in another housing. Someone in a Community post has offered to do the soldering for $50. So you're pretty much screwed. And the Community Manager seems to put the blame back on the customer, accusing them of doing something wrong.

I had tons of movies and music in there (over 1.5 TB). Nothing that isn't replaceable, but it took me time to get it all together. I'm very disappointed. I held out such hope. Had never used an external hard drive. This one was easy...plugged it in and instantly started moving stuff over from my PC. Later, I just downloaded stuff directly to the drive. Guess I would have gotten around to buying a backup, but didn't think I would need to do so after only 6 months of normal use.

So, a lesson learned. Before you move your irreplaceable family photos, documents, or other data or files that you really care about, make sure you have it backed up elsewhere (preferably not another WD external drive)--unless you want to pay handsomly to get it back...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB, July 5, 2010
By T M
My second WD My Book external hard drive. Simply a no brainer for installation and use. Even the most inexperienced user would be able to be setup and in use within 20-30 minutes.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Software with Drive is worse than Windows ME, June 1, 2010
By Lawrence L. Rodman (Seattle)
Drive seems solid but WD backup software is slow, buggy, unreliable, hangs, and gives no clue if it really works - looks pretty but is a risk item

WD needs to apologize for selling such junk

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  READ RECENT REVIEWS, May 6, 2010
By Ally (Florida)
People should read recent reviews because the old ones are out of date. Seems to me that this product it is quite good and the people that don't know anything about back-up shouldn't purchase Western Digital. Go western digital!

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  WD 2TB Drive, April 5, 2010
By pupdogg (Florida)
Great Drive. I love the WD hard drives. This is my third one. Very easy to use.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  It's not the end of the world, SmartWare can be disabled..., February 18, 2010
By tech collector (Midwest, USA)
Follow the instructions that Western Digital has on their website to disable SmartWare. I know it is a pain (more so if using Linux), Western Digital should have a built-in option to disable it, but it's not the end of the world.

[...]

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Western Digital Mt Book Essential 2 tb, October 7, 2010
By Robert Corby (Antelope, Ca)
Very good product. Easy to set and use. All was well until one day it erased all my pictures and quit working. The warrenty period had expired so I am out the purchase price and have lost most of my pictures. Not good!!

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  DO NOT BUY!, September 19, 2010
By Mark Bauer (USA)
This is not a standard USB hard drive. It has a virtual CD image that is NOT REMOVABLE. You cannot format it away, it just sits there and takes up about 600MB of your drive space. From what I've read (after purchase unfortunately), you cannot remove this drive from the enclosure and put it in a PC either.

If you plan on connecting this to a DVR any non-PC based host prepare for it to not work.

Had I realized this before I picked one up. I would not have purchased it. I will be returning mine and getting a standard USB external drive.

Stay far away from this product.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Not happy, April 14, 2010
By B. Zimmermann
I am happy with the MyBook Essential 1 TB.

So I decided to get the 2 TB version. So far not a good decision:

The case is poorly assembled, its loose and the USB and power inputs are half hidden - its nearly impossible to plug in the cables.

As I was finally able to plug it into my Mac the WD Smartware immediately mounted. If one tries to unmount the WD Smartware, which is on a the virtual disk, it immediately mounts itself again. The disk is formatted in NTFS, so read-only from my Mac. Since WD Smartware is constantly mounting itself I cannot reformat the disk under MacOSX. I guess I have to find a Linux machine somewhere to swipe the disk clean.

Or lets see if I can return this to Amazon.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  HORRIBLE PRODUCT!!!!, March 22, 2010
By designNerd (Brooklyn, NY)
I bought this MyBook a month ago. Received it and the ports were not aligned with the casing making it unusable. I thought perhaps this was a fluke thing and returned it and bought another one. This one, was also, not aligned but also missing one of the ports. How careless can one company be to produce such a crappy poorly manufactured device?

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Beware of the shill reviewers here, November 16, 2010
By Laconic (Okinawa, Japan)
This product sucks. I just returned mine (2TB). WD is apparently painfully aware of the negative impact of free speech on Amazon and is launching a campaign to powder it up. Look out for those carefully worded reviews which skillfully minimizes the negative points of this product. Why, they even launch a new version of this external drive (with USB 3.0) in a separate entry here, and crank up its review with keyboard-for hire "vine reviewers. WD, correct your problems instead of trying to fool consumers. And, consumers, vote with your wallets!

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Great drive overall!, February 6, 2011
By ShadowMario3
Well, my parents got this drive from a Staples deal for $85 new, and I just tested it out this past weekend when I got home. It easily found all the drivers online, and it showed both the Drive (1.8 TB) and the Virtual CD (around 700 MB) under Computer. I explored the CD, found the program to hide it, and it was easy as pie. I also downloaded the latest driver from WD, and it worked just as well. As soon as I did all that, I backed up 396 GB of data overnight, and everything was copied successfully without fail.

I have to say, this is a great drive. Lots of space, and it is pretty durable. Hopefully it will last for over two years just like my 640 GB Western Digital, which is still strong.

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3.0 out of 5 stars.  Too bad about the VCD, July 2, 2010
By whidbeypix (Whidbey Island, Washington USA)
I should have checked the reviews about this and would have known about the "SmartWare" problem. Would have let it work but on my HP with Vista, after doing the recommended firmware and software updates, SmartWare went into limbo. I configured it but it would not back up, would not maximize ... who knows? It's a shame I can't eliminate the virtual CD and firmware that wants to use this junk, but I'm just using the drive and ignoring all of that.
Of course USB2 is a real slug when doing a backup of 600GB of data (mostly images ... I'm a photographer). Using TeraCopy it is estimated to take more than six hours, so 100GB per hour over USB2. I look forward to USB3!
Bought this for the price (same at Costco as Amazon), size, thinking the bundled backup software would be handy and have had really good experience with WD drives; I currently have one WD 500GB, one Seagate 500GB and one WD 1TB as internal drives. Well, due to the nonfunctional SmartWare, I give this just an OK rating.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  great product fast shipping, June 7, 2010
By TiffanyMontano
I used a Western Digital 500 gig external and this is an upgrade from that. I love it.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  WD 2T HD, June 5, 2010
By geoff Waller
This is my fuorth Western Digital Hard drive and I like the product. I use all types and sizes of HD's. I've found them excellent.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  Piece of cake, March 12, 2010
By Tony D. Wong (LA, CA USA)
I bought this as an upgrade from my portable 500gig. Istalation is the same except for the additional electrical plug. Its pleasantly surprising that even with the unit plugged in electronically, it stayed cool overnight. Plenty of storage for the price. I recommend it if you have photos & videos & music & movies to back up.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Poor Quality, February 6, 2010
By Green Dumpster in Wailua (Between C and B-sharp)
Of the two I purchased here on Amazon, 4 months apart, both had case/connector alignment problems. The USB and power plug are half way covered by the case; meaning they were not correctly mounted inside the case. I thought these were isolated incidences but I bought the same thing at Best Buy with the same results. Can't return them either since the time lapsed between when I ordered it and when I actually used it.

So with 3 popsicle sticks and a credit card, opened the cases and made the correction to the alignment of the board so the connectors won't get in the way of the plastic case. I shouldn't have to correct this junk as it should have been ready to plug in out of the box. No more WD external drives. Buying Seagate from now on.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  Problems with Windows XP, but not with Windows 7, December 19, 2009
By Richard Moller (Ontario, Canada)
I have been using this drive for about a month now and am very happy with it. The only draw back happened when I tried to initially install it on my laptop using Windows XP and Norton security software. Unless I turned off the anti-virus software the computer would almost instantly go to the blue screen of death. Once I got my new laptop with Windows 7 however this problem went away and it now works perfectly and with no problems.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  "a title for your review", March 6, 2011
By JB
Just finished filling it up. So far so good. I hear USB 3.0 is way faster, but transfer rate seemed fine to me.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Confusing setup for Mac user but customer service was top notch., February 27, 2011
By Mac User
This is the second My Book I've owned and the last one I had connected intuitively to my MacBook computer. For whatever reason, when I connected this 2 TB unit in the same fashion, the device seemed blocked and I couldn't really use it. I installed the drivers and got the updates but none of that helped. Then I called Customer Service and a guy named Vladamir knew what the problem was, walked me through the steps to reconfigure the hard drive, and then it was working good as new.

All's well that ends well. I'm happy with the overall quality of the device and think it's a good price for the memory space.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  I don't get the negative reviews, November 26, 2010
By Khanh T. Ngo
I bought the product from Meijer.
Although the software is not nearly as good as I expected. Not enough functions, and no clue how the software back up the data. But I think it works for me. Even though it is not easy and useful but it's not that ridiculously buggy useless. If you *DO* know how to use a PC computer properly (say, you don't complain that your computer runs slow because it is 5 months old), you should know how to use the software.

I use Win 7. Things are perfect.

It's $100 for 2TB so I think it's cheap.
and it backs up your stuff.

-1 star for the strange, unreliable looking case and the not-5-star software.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  excellent value-, July 1, 2010
By bubblesup (Williamsburg VA)
my son uses it for college projects and video blogs and it fits the application perfectly.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Beware - does not backup most PSD files, June 22, 2010
By D. Fanning
Western Digital drives have been very reliable for me for many years. No WD drive had failed for me but I've witnessed many other drives of other brands die. So, I thought buying a WD My Book external drive as a backup device for my sister's computer was a good idea. I was wrong. The 2 TB My Book Essential I purchased for my sister has been a nightmare. She had many JPG and PSD files from her photography work that she wanted to be sure to save on a backup drive since her computer was starting to behave badly (internal HD problem). We hooked up the My Book, went through the short setup, and let it start its thing. After many hours the backup was done. Then the not so unexpected happened - her computer's HD toasted itself. Not to worry, we had a very current backup! Well, after setting up a new computer for her, we discovered things were not rosy. The My Book did not backup 99% of her PSD files! Checking online we discovered that we were not the only ones to experience this fatal flaw. I do not recommend that anyone consider buying this device. No log file or any other type of warning is given to let anyone know if a file was skipped during the backup. If someone does have this device, I would recommend not using the included software - Handy Backup (from [...]) will back up PSD files but I am sure there are many other good back up programs available just not the one included with this drive!

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Expensive, but you get what you pay for, May 6, 2010
By B. Jeanjaquet (Denver, CO)
Western Digital is known for their drives, so you won't be disappointed in this one. In our IT department, we need products that will do the job without us worry about them. Something simple that does what we want it to do, no questions asked!

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  Hard to Believe, February 15, 2010
By Pyanfar Chanur (USA)
After reading the reviews here, I figured I'd be fine if I just treated the WD MyBook Essential 2TB like I did the 1TB drive I bought 2 years ago: format it, wipe all the junk off the drive, and use it as-is. Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case.

The first 2TB WD MyBook Essential that I purchased from my local retailer was badly built: the drive was not lined up with the backplate, so as a result you couldn't plug anything into it, nor could you adjust the openings and fix the problem. My older MyBook was alarmingly easy to open up, but this model's body does not appear to be capable of being opened without possibly breaking it. When I peered down into the casing with a flashlight I saw that the hard drive appeared to have just been dumped in there, with no real frame to hold it very well: it balances on some plastic fitttings that keep it from rattling around inside the casing.

The second 2TB which I exchanged this volume for appeared to have been assembled just fine. The ungainly power brick still caused the unit to light up, and the next step, to plug it into the machine, did nothing. Although the setup poster doesn't actually mention that there's a power button on the back of the drive, this rather obvious solution also did nothing: I can tell the button is supposed to cause the unit to turn on, but nothing changes, no matter how or for how long I press it.

Which leads me to the website. If you really want to see what an awful and poorly built piece of hardware this is, just go looking through the support pages. I found solutions such as, "If the drive is not responding, be sure you installed drivers for your USB card. USB ports will not work without drivers." Or, "When the drive is connected to the computer, the setup software automatically runs to install the drive. If the setup software does not automatically run, open folder X on the drive and run the setup program..." (I'm paraphrasing here). In other words, if you don't see the drive, it's because the software didn't install itself. So open the drive (that you don't see) and run the software (that you can't see).

The manual puts this problem in its troubleshooting section, and the answer is, "go out to our website and look for Problem ID 207." 207 is apparently about how to format a hard drive in Windows XP. It would be helpful if I could find more, but all the search results return is...the User Guide, which references the need to look up Problem ID 207 on the Western Digital Website.

I called tech support. It was two hours before close on a weekday and I spent 40 minutes on hold. The person I finally spoke to had a bad habit of occasionally not telling me he was putting me back on hold, but when I could get his attention, we walked through the steps and the verdict was, "Take the second one back to the store - it's got a fault hard drive." I didn't care much for the tech support, and I'm definitely not pleased to hear two different units have two different sets of physical problems--that's an extraordinarily high defect rate.

I took it back. I also gave up: I think I'm going to just put more internal hard drives in my desktop, turn it into a server, and start backing things up there. And as much as I love Western Digital's products, I don't think they deserve any more of my money, effort, or time.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Avoid the 2TB models, February 14, 2010
By Jason S (USA)
I have had 3 WD external My Book drives for various lengths of time. I did have a 500Mb drive fail (my oldest) but I went ahead and ordered a new 2TB thinking these are still a great product and I like the style. It within the first day of use gave "Windows delayed write" errors, so I RMA'd it and got another. Same thing. I returned that and bought the HP 2TB and have been happy with that for a month now. I'm not sure what's going on with this model but I would recommend avoiding it.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  How to Remove SmartWare utility, December 29, 2009
By SilverDoll7 (NYC,NY)
After reading all the negative reviews that is primarily attributed to WD's Smartware, I've done a little research on how to remove it. It looks like Western Digital has acknowledged everyone's concerns over the Smartware and has responded by giving users the ability to disable the virtual CD here: [...]. Enjoy!

P.S.
I just purchased the item and have yet to install the hard drive. Will need to give a full update later.

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  WD (always heard good things) guess I was wrong, October 17, 2010
By Randealio (San Diego, CA USA)
First of all...this was my first WD purchase. I had always heard wonderful things about WD, so I went ahead and bought one. I was using the 2 TB version of My Book Essential for 31 days...that's right, 31 days before it failed on me...the day after I could actually bring it back to the store for a full refund. I should have known, the power button on the back for some reason never actually worked, I should have brought it back in the first place. Thing is, I was transferring data from a hard drive that was barely working and it took like 2 days for all my data to transfer over to this new one. So I felt like I should just keep it since I had already wasted 2 days transferring over data, and Yes (it took nearly 2 days to transfer just over 1.5 TB of data to this drive - it is miserably slow). Take into consideration the software on this product is completely useless and you can see for yourself that this is one product to steer very clear of. The only reason I'm going to give this thing a 2 STAR rating is because WD's RMA procedure is pretty easy, quick, and efficient to get a replacement hard drive while I pack up and ship out my broken one. I rarely ever comment on a product, but this is the first time I've really regretted purchasing something. Even if my replacement does work, I still have to put up with WD's Smartware (although you can remove the image from the task bar, it is still a huge hassle). Good luck! ;)

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Don't, Don't, Don't buy the WD Essential 2 TB Exernal Drive, August 3, 2010
By Careful Buyer Guy (New Jersey)
I bought this device, but my PC could not recognize it as a drive, despite multiple efforts to connect the USB 2.0 and power source. The drive light turned on, the motor whirred, and the PC sounded a "ping" when I connected the USB cable, but the device did not appear in My Computer, the Device Manager, or the Disk Manager.

Possibly, the "problem" owes to some malware protection built into my PC. From what I read in other reviews, the WD device tries to install some "Smartware," which my PC may be rejecting, or which requires an Internet connection which I turned off. In any case, having read the other reviews, I am a bit glad I did not suffer the Smartware "takeover."

My Vista PC works fine with a 1,5 TB Seagate drive. An earlier 1 TB WD My Book failed after about 10 months' use. That drive had a constant tendency to revert to a dormant mode, which was incompatible with video editing software, which uses a storage drive intermittently, but crashes if the storage drive is not "awake" the instant the editing software needs to create or access a particular TEMP file. I replaced it with a 1.5 Seagate drive, which continues to perform, but is nearly full and needs back-up. I bought the 2 TB WD, thinking Western Digital might have improved its wares, or that I simply had bad luck, but it turns out that the fault is with WD: unreliable product, bad software, non-disclosure (WD should warn users about the Smartware), and a website whose Support section is cluttered with crypto-FAQ that avoid the real FAQ and give wrong answers.

I will return this 2.0 TB WD drive and buy another brand.

WD should:

1) Offer a plug & play external drive compatible with computer OS drivers and does not impose extra products or controls, unless the buyer choses.

2) Make fewer drive models. WD will never fix bugs if, instead of perfecting a given model, it simply introduces new versions every few months. Quality control is obviously a weak point. WD probably sources parts from numerous sources which are insufficiently vetted or tested.

3) Cease selling drives whose failure rate seems to rise geometrically after about one year, then surge to nearly 70% at about the time the "guaranty" expires. Maybe the drives last a long time if used only occasionally to back-up, but they are NOT reliable if one uses one intensively, as in the case of video editing. However, why should anyone hazard long term backup on a drive that seems to burn out after perhaps 1 thousand hours' use?

Warning: in case it is not obvious, a warranty that offers to replace a drive that fails is scant protection. The real loss is not the drive but the data and other files on the drive. Data recovery from a failed drive costs 10X the value of the drive, and sometimes does not work. If one drive fails, you don't want to risk putting new data on a replacement drive, which then fails too.

1 of 3 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Excellent value, February 14, 2010
By William J. Johnston (White Lake, MI, US)
The drive is very quiet and fast enough for normal storage needs. A snap to install (just plug and play). Excellent price for this device.

1 of 3 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Good Product, November 4, 2009
By reluctivity (Gilbert, AZ)
Really nice backup drive. The WD backup software that comes with the drive and the backup software with my Nortons 360 both work well with this Drive. The 2.0TB leave me plenty of room to do multi versions backups.

1 of 3 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Great product, worth the money, November 3, 2010
By Kyle Gibson
The Good:
-Not as big as you think. It is about 1.3 times as tall as a WD Passport drive and is only 3.5 times wider.
-HUGE capacity
-I got it for $110 at Best Buy, not at dentalBookshop
-Semi-Quiet, not too loud but you can hear it
-It moves files SUPER fast. It takes me 13 minutes to move 22Gb of video.
-The Virtual CD program, WD Smartware, CAN BE DISABLED with a few minutes of updating the software

The Bad:
-My digital capacity gauge stopped working after I plugged it into another computer, but the drive still works perfectly fine
-Not the most stable hard drive casing. I just propped it against my screen and the wall, so it won't fall over if I hit my desk, but otherwise it would.

I am a WD customer for life, after owning only 2 of their drives. This drive is the best 2TB hard drive out there, taking into account the price and the reliability.
If you need to auto-backup your computer, I guess you could use their Smartware software, but it's not for me.
BUY THIS DRIVE, it's worth it. You'll probably never fill it up, it's does NOT break easily if you're careful with it, and it's cheap.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  buy if want to loose ur data, March 7, 2012
By bassant
i bought this one , put all my data on it , suddenly it stopped working FOR NO REASON
i got it replaced from WD , replaced my data which took me forever, and it just stopped working again for no reason

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Not made to last....none of them..., February 28, 2012
By CookedXenon
While it worked, it was a great drive, you can format it to remove the smartware, there is a built in PCP board that encrypts the data however. So if the enclosure malfunctions, you can't recover your data, even if you pull the sata hard drive out and try to put it in another enclosure or put it into your computer as an internal hard drive. After a little under two years, the USB became loose, stopped responding and broke. Don't believe me, check out western digital's forums. See the sheer amount of people who have had trouble with their units. They are all their looking for help and responses. The responses paint a bleak picture, nothing you can do, you lost your data, send it to a professional for repair. Everything I'm saying is not the words of some guy who has a grudge, personally, I think almost all the backup storage drives are poor and honestly should not be used for important documents and you should not expect them to last. Remember when you get this, you'll probably love it, I did. Its not that, it works great in the beginning. Its later on, that it dies. I've heard Seagates are no better. So the two biggest companies for backup storage are equally garbage. But don't take my word for it, don't even take the word of anyone here at amazon. Check out the western digital forums, read all the complaints. See that this is a widespread issue and all the WD items have problems. Just see for your yourself. Like most technology, I imagine lighter users will have less problems while heavy users, users who use the drive all the time, will have more problems or have problems quicker. I would definately say I am a heavy user. But beware, its not meant to last. If you must buy it, use it in short bursts and if your data is important, don't leave it on there long or don't ever put it on this drive. Because once the enclosure fails, the data is lost. You may be able to salvage the hard drive, wipe it clean and start over with a new enclosure or as an internal hard drive for your computer. But that is it.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Smartware not so smart, February 26, 2012
By J. Cocuzzo
Beware, the bundled "Smartware" backup software does NOT make a system image. Even if you use it faithfully, you will not be able to recover from a HD failure without re-installing your OS, then all applications, then (finally) use "Smartware" to move your saved data files back to the new HD.

You are far better off with backup software that does both disk image and file based backup. That way if you have an HD failure or some kind of terrible "Windows won't boot" disaster, you can boot from the recovery CD and then do a "bare metal restore" and be back to your last backup.

Windows 7 Backup does this and is free. If you have XP, you can get Norton Save and Restore or Retrospect or something else, but DO NOT rely on Smartware. I think you are more likely to need your backups after a HD failure or major OS problem than to go get some file you accidently deleted.

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  Hardware functions, software is a joke, February 24, 2012
By Vavis
Hardware functions well after a month. Software is a joke on a user. Hopefully hardware lasts for some years, otherwise I will loose all my work. Now I have had that idea of buying one more HD in case..

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3.0 out of 5 stars.  Pretty Shaky Start, But I Think It's OK, February 9, 2012
By Robert Hasegawa (Duvall, WA)
I have been using one of these as a back up for about 9 months now. The WD Smartware is useless. It hangs constantly, and there is always a list of files that it cannot back up for some reason or another. These files are never open and nothing fancy like a system file that might be in use. Just .doc files that I would like to have backed up. You cannot force the software to do it either. The drive itself worked fine for 9 months, then the transfer rate slowed to the point were it would take 90 minutes to back up a 100 MB folder. Tried new cables, different USB port, etc. No luck. At that tansfer rate, it is pretty much useless. On the + side, I made a warranty claim online, and I now have a new drive being delivered. Aside for the $6.00 in shipping that I had to shell out, the warranty replacemet process is extremely smooth. They had a new drive in the mail the same day my old one was received...probibally because they are getting a lot of practice. Interested to see how the replacement works.

Update. I received the replacement from WD. Getting it was a surprisingly simple process. The replacement is slightly different. It only has one small light on the front vs the stack of lights on my old one. This one works great...even the WD Smartware is functioning the way it should. The drive came with an older version of Smartware (1.3.1.6), but I'm not upgrading because at least it's working this time. Time will tell. Bumping my review to 3 for the new drive and great warranty replacement process.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Another good WD Product, November 16, 2010
By TriniBlue
This is the seventh WD product that I have purchased. These include 1x 250GB Passport HD, 1x 320 GB Passport HD, 1X 500GB Passport HD, 1x 1TB Book HD, 2x 2TB Book HD and 2x HDMI Media Players.

About two months ago both WD 2TB Books froze and I cannot recover any data from them. I am very skeptical about WD now as similar experience has occurred to two of my work colleagues.

I have purchased the LaCie 2 x 2TB with the 3.0 USB connection and have not had any issues with them.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  WD My Book Essential 2 TB External Hard Drive, August 21, 2010
By Mike
I recently purchased(8/20/2010)this external hard drive new from Amazon.com. Delivery was quick, but installation was challenging. The installation instructions that come with the unit are very simple (3 steps- connect power, connect USB plug, and picture the WD Smartware is displayed), however, they do not tell you how to take advantage of the WD Smartware software display that is available on the unit. I called WD's Tech Service number, but they only told me how to do manual backups using a copy and paste process from My Computer on Windows Vista. I eventually went on WD's website and read the full manual and especially the detailed installation section.
I highly recommend doing this if you want to use the custom software on the external drive and get all the features you paid for. Once installed, it works as advertised. Great unit for backing up your internal hard drive.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  You can do much better than this, February 1, 2011
By K. Johnson (Los Angeles, CA)
I disabled the software, which is absolutely the winner for worst software ever made. And I'm not exaggerating. It's truly awful and completely unusable, and I can't help but wonder what was Western Digital thinking? Although I have my own system for backups, most users, especially novices, will want to use this as an automated backup drive, and will unknowingly let it install the terrible software. They are not going to want to waste their time trying to figure out how to disable it, then look for alternative software. Western Digital, wake up! The software that you package with this makes it more hassle than it is worth, and with the prices of other, better drives in the same range, I advise people to just buy a different brand.

0 of 1 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Good external drive., January 12, 2011
By Fanny Florez (Los Angeles, CA USA)
This is a good NTFS external hard drive. Just wish it came in Fat32 so I could use on my PS3.

0 of 1 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Does the job, December 1, 2010
By HV
Fully meets my needs, the only reason I gave a 3-star for customer review is since I haven't had to call them (which is a good thing right!?). I use this along with my PS-3 and very satisfied so far

0 of 1 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Don't wastes you time with this garbage, June 7, 2010
By BK (Bay Head, New Jesey)
Lovely hard drive. Crappy software. Tech support is useless and confused. I could not get the backup software to run after several tech support sessions which proved useless. If the tech support is any indication of the drive's quality, it's back to the store to return it. I was told that "sometimes" it installs on my operating system, and sometimes it doesn't. Real precision there. I was told that I could manually drag and drop the files to be backed up. Tech support = useless.

0 of 1 people found the above review helpful.

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2.0 out of 5 stars.  WD 2TB external hard drive, April 3, 2010
By Alexander Paredes
The reason I dislike the hard drive is because of the WD software is unremovable and the hard drive is very slow when starting up with a computer or media player. I would recommend this product if it at least was able to read files faster.

0 of 1 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  WD products are trash...., May 25, 2011
By raptordawg
Bought the My Book Essential 2 TB a few months ago and also bought the My Passport 1 TB. Both products have quit working in less than 5 months. What a waste of money and info. Luckily I had the info backed up on another hard drive or I would be highly furious.

0 of 2 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  Excelent choice, August 24, 2010
By Bernardo
This is a very good portable hard disk, it is worth it a 100% of price, wich is no so expensive by the way

0 of 2 people found the above review helpful.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  me, June 28, 2010
By bubba
works just fine right out of the box. Took a few minutes to set up, but running great. Using about 1tb so far.

0 of 2 people found the above review helpful.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  Great drive, crap software, January 23, 2010
By Hrishi M (Sunnyvale, CA)
[...]

Unlike what others have said, these are plain and simple *executable* files (you don't need to install anything on your windows). you just run them, and they disable the virtual CD (containing Smartware) for you.

(I just got this drive, and thought I'd share this). WD have made a great drive (as usual), but I'm just happy that the dolt that made the decision to force SmartWare down everyones' throats does not work at my company!

The Seagate FreeAgent drives are pretty sleek, but a lot of them have click/reset problems, and Seagate is pretty mum on the issue. I just returned the one I got because it seemed like it was about to fail.

0 of 2 people found the above review helpful.

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3.0 out of 5 stars.  password protected from factory - does not work, December 15, 2010
By Da Da Gary (Hewitt, TX United States)
Don't buy this drive. I purchased it brand new, opened the box, plugged it in, and it asked for the "password" to unlock the drive. I tried everything imaginable that should be a default factory password but nothing worked and the drive "locked" up (although it was already locked). I checked the owners manual and it just mentions setting up the password, but it does not give what the factory password is.
I contacted tech support and they said just erase the drive and start over, which I did, and guess what, it is asking for the password to unlock the drive. No, I'm not talking about an administrator password (I'm much more computer literate than that!), it is asking for the "WD Smartware password." WD support has been no help, so basically I have an expensive paperweight.
I have 2 Lacie external drives both of which work like a charm. I am greatly disappointed in this WD drive and could not recommend it even if it were free.

UPDATE - I was finally able to use the Mac disk utility to reformat and partition the drive and get it working. If you are fairly computer literate you can probably get it going, otherwise skip this drive.
I also noticed that it forces some software on you (you cannot delete it, even with a reformat and partition). I'm not a fan of forced software because of the obvious risks.
Their support finally replied to me (after I had already got it working myself) that it should not have had a password on it, so apparently I received a drive that someone had used and returned.

0 of 3 people found the above review helpful.

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5.0 out of 5 stars.  If you need a backup just buy a western digital, September 22, 2010
By idegramma
i always buy a western digital i have 3 external drives and 2 internal all WD until now was a very good choice

0 of 3 people found the above review helpful.

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4.0 out of 5 stars.  big size, but good price, November 5, 2010
By monica
PLUS: big capacity for a low price.
TROUBLES: size too big, needs to be plugged + usb.

0 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Can't remove smartware, September 23, 2010
By Dave (Boston, MA United States)
They put in an annoying program that I can't get rid of. I can't even hide it. I will need to return it.

0 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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1.0 out of 5 stars.  Buy if you like to waste money, August 10, 2010
By Long Beach Rocker (Long Beach, California)
The thing broke after a month and a half of use. The manufacture did not work out the glitches of this product before they sent it to the public market.

0 of 4 people found the above review helpful.

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