WD My Book 1TB External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 File Backup and Storage

I had trouble and problems getting this drive working. It seemed to install fine, though it took several minutes for Windows to install the correct drivers, but it still didnt show up or appear in My Computer, though it was visible in Add Devices and Disk Management. In trying to troubleshoot it, googling had me at a loss and I started to think it was a bad driver, so I got lost down that rabbit hole for awhile, but I was mistaken. I finally resorted to calling WD Tech Support who were actually quite helpful. They didnt dink around and zeroed in on what is apparently a common problem for Windows 7 : drive letter collision. Im listing it here since I didnt find this solution on my own so maybe it will help someone else. Click Start. Right click Computer in the right column. Click Manage. This should open your Computer Management window. On the left, you should see Storage, and under it: Disk Management. Click this. (If you cant see Disk Management, click the arrow next to Storage to expand it.) After a second it should display at the bottom all your drives, probably Disk O, Disk 1, and CD-ROM 0, or something similar. One of these, probably Disk 1, should say Basic Online, and the drive size: 931.48 GB for the 1TB drive. This is your WD drive. Under the blue bar is should say the size again, NTFS, and Healthy (Primary Partition) Right click on the blue bar for this drive. Click on Change Drive Letter and Paths... In the next window, click the Add button. In the next window, the top radio button for Assign the following drive letter: should be selected. On the right, click the dropdown and select a letter for your drive which you are sure is not in use elsewhere in your system. M is a good bet. Then click OK. Under the blue bar, the drive should now be properly identified as My Book and in My Computer it should appear properly. You should now be good to go.

A little sceptical before ordering this drive with all of the bad reviews. I think that most of them concern the software which I do not use anyway so lets talk about the drive itself. It just works and it is fast. I added the WD USB 3.0 PCIx card in my 4 year old system along with an SSD and this external hard drive and it is like I have a new machine. I am very impressed with the speed and how easy everything was to set up. Basically I installed the software for the PCI card, installed it and then plugged in the drive. It was recognized instantly and worked just fine. I copied the software off of the drive then did the firmware update and then cloned my USB 2.0 drive to this one using Paragon HD suite. No issues what so ever. The software is not as bad as the reviews say. I was able to install just the portion I needed that gave me the ability to turn the sleep state off and now it turns off when the computer powers down. Why just four stars? I have only had it for three days!

First the bad: The automatic backup function is seriously flawed. The default setting is to save files by Category. After the first backup, the software would no longer save new files. For 3 weeks, the software would tell me that all my files were backed up, 100%, all good. But I could see that nothing new had been saved to the My Book. I discovered in the community forum that sometimes the software doesnt recognize MS Office 2010 file extensions (docx, xlsx, etc). I purchased this product in 2013! I couldnt believe this could be true. However, I simply switched the method of back-up to select folder locations on my laptop. The device then properly saved over 30 GB of files which had not been previously saved because of the file type. In addition to Word, Excel, and other Office 2010 files, it appears that FLAC and SHN files were not being backed-up. This was corrected easily enough because I took the time to research it, but an email to WD support only resulted in the standard solutions: make sure no files are open, dont let the computer sleep, etc. I am amazed that a product would be sold in 2013 that does not recognize MS Office 2010 or FLAC files. Even more amazing is that WD hasnt sent a patch to update the software. Having fixed the software issue, the device works great. It doesnt heat up. Its fast. And I havent had any issues with the USB connections that others have mentioned. My problems with the software may not happen every time, but there are enough posts on the community forum to suggest that this wasnt an isolated incident.

This is my second my book. The first one I bought was on Black Friday two years ago. I thought that my first one was going bad so i decided to upgrade the this 2tb which is .5tb more than my first My Book. Turned out that my original my book only needed a new power cord and now it works good as new. These are great external HDs! I am a firm believer in WD products. I also own a WD passport 750gig for on the go and to watch movies on my WD TV live media player. the price i got on My Book was great and well worth it. I have more than enough disk space to fit my entire collection of music, movies, e-books, and files. The My Book is very compatible with windows 7. I just plugged it in and started adding files to the drive. I didnt bother with the software that comes with it. I deleted all that crap because to me its just taking up space. Since the drives will always be in my home or in my possession I am not to worried about making a password to access the files. I think I tried the password thing before and it ended messing things up. Now i just keep it simple because there is less chance for error. overall its an awesome external hard drive in both the 1.5tb and 2.0tb.

Tomorrow the 28th of February 2023 will give this hard drive 10 years and it still works like a charm.

The WD My Book Essential 3.0 1 TB is great for those whove been wondering if they wanted a USB 3.0 drive for their desktop PC. With its superfast performance the drive will significantly alter your expectations for external hard drives. Costing about $88.99 for the 1TB version buying from Amazon.com and about $125.00 for the 2 TB version; the My Book Essential 3.0 is about $50 more expensive than its USB 2.0 counterpart, however, I feel its difference is well worth it. If you have a PC desktop and are looking for a simple external hard drive, look no further than the Western Digital My Book Essential 3.0. I have been using the WD My Book Essential 3.0 1 TB since receiving it on 03/4/11 backing-up all my personal data files approx sixty-five (65) times, they are very large (over 12,000 mp3 & photos alone) without any tribulations. The Western Digital 3.0 ran flawlessly with a noticeable difference in speed compared to my old 2.0 USB external drive. I also have run numerous virus and malware prgrams through the device without any difficulty. I also recognize I used this product approx. sixty-five (65) times backing up my data files without any problems, will it continue to be reliable in the future, time will tell. Update: 12/06/11...Still backing-up all personal data very well without any problems at all!!! Design and Features The WD My Book 3.0 is a no-frills storage device. It has a straightforward design with one tiny white light on its front that serves both as the power and activities indicator and on its back it only has a Mini-USB 3.0 port. The drive is bundled with a Mini-USB 3.0 cable, a power adapter, built-in software and a well-illustrated quick-setup poster. Even without the quick-setup poster, its very easy to set up the WD My Book 3.0. Just connect it to a computer using the included USB cable, plug in the power, and turn it on. After installation, the hard drive is instantaneously available to the computer and is preformatted using NTFS file system. For those who have older desktop PCs with only 2.0 USB ports (2.0 USB ports designated by the color White - 3.0 USB ports designated by the color Blue) you will have to purchase a USB 3.0 PCI Interface Card and install it in your computer before you are capable of utilizing the 3.0 speed.

THIS THING HERE JUST PISSED ME OFF COMPLETELY! I purchased it back in October of 2014 for my Xbox One, because my space was in need of an expansion. I decided to put everything on here and just use it as my default HDD because of the massive storage it contains: compared to the 500 GB Internal Hard Drive that comes with the Xbox One. At first I thought it was NICE! It ran quiet, my games transferred rather quickly and the color scheme matched my Xbox Ones! ;) However, I noticed when I put my system in its Stand By state, it made a weird noise. As if it were constantly restarting -or- repeating a start up/ shut down cycle. For the first week I remember unplugging it when I shut the system off thinking it resolved it. Then as time went on it stayed plugged in. I became accustomed to it. Until today. It started making a LOUD clicking noise. Unusual, because it never made any noises while the Xbox was running AND I could hear it over my gaming headset. I decided to unplug it while I ran my errands. Now it isnt being detected. Guess Im back to my internal HDD in the end....Cant transfer them back to the internal to shorten the time & these games are too big and take far too long to download. For buyers interested in this, or to those of you who already bought this for the same purposes as I: To save you time and money I WOULDNT suggest you use this as your default HDD. Id transfer the games not being used to here and keep the ones in use on the Internal HDD. Best of wishes to you all! Game On! ;)

What can I say about HP and their 2TB 2.0 USB at first I loved it and I have many years of experience with their products. So I jumped the gun and well it was good, however I got a WD 3TB and it blew my mind away. I returned the HP drive which cost more than the WD by a lot. I have not had a problem with this WD unit to date. I have read most of the reviews here both good and bad. I have had the WD since Jan. 2012 and to date has not burped, sizzle, smoke, and the worse sound is a metal clicking sound. Now I say this and if it goes southward I will be very angry. Pound for Pound ease of use, set up and depending on your data you are saving for the initial back-up I would say anything over 100gb is going to take several hours, so dont stop it or use the computer while it is doing this. Also, shut down all applications running before you plug this bad boy in to your USB slot. I only have the 2.0 USB slot, and though it is fast, I have read of people jumping to light speed with the 3.0USB. Finally if you are worried about the price, it really is a no-brainer BUY, BUY, BUY!!!

I have spent all day (literally) trying to get this bad boy to work on my system. As of the end of October many manufacturers have updated their USB 3.0 Drivers. I have intel 3.0 usb hubs on my pc, running in win 7, 64 bit... I followed all of the instructions available to update my equipment (bios included) to be ready to to use this WD drive. I figured all these 1 star reviewers had to have missed something, or not had these new drivers to make this hard drive work. I was wrong. I am a very competent pc guy. I have never run into an issue like this. All the research Ive run across as of Nov. 6th 2012, all the drivers, all the instructions (even checked my bios, made sure my power settings didnt let usb drives sleep)... If YOU have a 64 bit system, vista, 7 and EVEN 8, stay away from this nightmare. Save yourself some time. Go with a usb 2.0 drive. Im printing up my return and sending this back to Amazon. I WISH WISH WISH this would work. Just FYI to tell you what happens.... Plug in the drive. Windows installs the drivers. One driver doesnt install, but its no biggie cause its included on the drive. Install that. The drive SHOULD work now (no NEED to install their software, but Ill get to that in a sec). Once you copy paste something into the drive it starts to do what it should. Then, after about a gig, the drive is no longer recognized by windows. It disappears. Then reappears and asks you if you want to open the drive. Of course, what you are copy/pasting is now incomplete. rinse repeat, same results EVERY TIME. If you are not moving data, you will not get a disconnect. Now, if you install the software that comes with the drive, you will see this connection and disconnect every few seconds. This is because the software will constantly check to see if the drive is there. And since it is doing this connect/disconnect all the time you will get the pop-up window every few seconds asking if you want to open the drive. Very annoying. I usually dont use software like this anyway, but I tried it out as a last resort just in case Im forced to go back to my old WD my book from years ago, a 500gb drive.... I need MORE space, but it still works fine. Which is why I went with WD again with my eyes closed.

I chose this rating because I feel the 3TB ext is doing its job flawlessly. My laptop has a 250GB internal HDD and was 75% filled up with movies. With this bad boy, I was able to transfer all my tv movies and other files to the external. Allowing my laptop to free up space. How often do I use the 3TB ext? At least once a week. I used to transfer tv movies from my laptop to 16GB thumbdrive to watch on my Samsung 40inch 1080p 120hz LED HDTV. Now I can use the 3TB ext. Like: Good price. Transfer rate is fast. Noise level is relatively quiet. Runs smoothly on Windows XP. Dual USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 compatibility. Dislike: Like many other customer reviewers been writing, the 3TB ext isnt sturdy and can easily be tipped over with the slightest touch. I recommend flipping it (or else the stand blocks the cable ports) and placing it on the plastic stand that came with the box. It works perfectly. Recommend to a friend? Yes.