Western Digital My Book™ Essential Edition 2.0 (1000 GB) 1 TB USB Hard Drive

Pros: Noise, design, capacity, value, ease of installation and use
Cons: Somewhat sparse documentation

Quick Summary Good size, quiet, unobtrusive, works as expected. Good value, tons of space. What’s in the Box MyBook, AC adapter, USB cable. Aesthetics The outer shell is a very nice glossy black. The bottom has small ...

Pros: Compact, one terabyte, plug & play, easy to partition, USB cable included
Cons: Formatted FAT32, limited documentation, slower than internal drives

Twenty years ago, a Terabyte of hard drive space would have cost you $1 million - if you could afford a Cray Computer. Today, you can get your own Terabyte (1,000 GB) for under $200.This Western Digital Hard Drive delivers on all fronts. I ...

Pros: Never cheaper per GB, easy to connect, simple to use.
Cons: Not much of a manual, but is USB 'Plug and Play'.

Western Digital has always had a good reputation for excellent design, superb quality control, and solid service and support. The My Book Series of external USB hard drives is no exception.The case is attractive, well designed, and extremely ...

Pros: Simple, reliable, quiet, quick installation, cheap, good electronic specs, and housing design.
Cons: No software included. Formatted as FAT32 for Mac compatibility.

For an executive summary, read only the bolded items. Space on hard drives are quickly consumed as fast as available, and equally fast has fallen the price of more bytes. In 2008, terabyte sized hard drives have become prolific for consumers, ...

Pros: Slick shiny design, Consumer friendly, Compact and portable (1TB platter instead of 2x500GB)
Cons: average data transfer only 1 USB port, average price, software is useless

Design & Portability I had 2 external HD's, which were 250GB and 150GB. It was in two different enclosures, so where ever I went, it was a real hassle carrying two HD's. MyBook is pretty compact with 1TB platter inside, helps slimming the width. ...

Pros: Silent operation, nice status LED
Cons: No chaining of multiple drives

I am a Macintosh guy. My iMac has a 320Gb hard drive (about 100Gb free). With Leopard, I am making use of the Time Machine automatic backup. Time Machine works great but it eats up drive space. I used to use a 250Gb external but it would only hold ...

Pros: Cheap, quiet
Cons: Won't stay connected (interface problems)

This drive constantly "hangs" and needs to be rebooted to reconnect to my PC. I have read similar stories on other review sites...

I have tried all the external interfaces (bought it primarily for the E-sata)... The E-sata interface appears to be the main culprit...

Pros: Great price for a silent drive that's compact and good looking.
Cons: A small amount of time to figure out how to format it to a Mac.

Out of the box, this drive didn't work with my iMac. Thinking of myself as being savvy, I immediately tried to format it unsuccessfully. Yet, after reading the WD support pages, it was up and running in no time.

Like many people, I ran out and bought this the day I installed Leopard. Knowing the drive would be constantly running as my back up drive, I wanted something that wasn't going to be a nuisance. Well, my hopes were actualized. It's REALLY quiet! Granted it is a hard drive, so one will hear some read/write sounds. Other than that, it sits silent. I wonder if it even uses a fan for cooling purposes because I haven't heard it. It's small, compact, aesthetically pleasing and a good price for 1 TB.