Pros: Reasonable price for an external drive. Works flawlessly.
Cons: None
The bottom line: Large drive, good price, works well. What more could you ask?
My computer has an external drive that has been in service now for over 3 years. Knowing how hardware wears, I realized that I am starting to push the limits of this drive. Sure, it could last another few years, but then again, it could go tomorrow. Since it has my iTunes music and my photos I wanted something that was a little more reliable at this point.

I came upon the Western Digital My Book series of external drives. They come in a variety of sizes, from 80 Gb up to 1 Tb (terabyte!). How many of us, in home situations really need a 1Tb drive? That’s a question for a completely separate discussion.

Anyway, the “low-end” versions of the My Book series are what are known as the Essentials. These are strictly drives. With the higher level versions of the My Book drives, they include indicators on the front to let you know how full they are, and come with back up software. Since I run other applications I know the status of my drive and I already have backup software, so I didn’t miss the software.

All of the My Book drives are USB 2.0 ready, so installation was a breeze. All you need to do is plug it in and you are ready to go! That’s how simple it is. Windows XP recognized it immediately and I was ready to go!

The drive comes formatted as at FAT drive. Because of its size, I reformatted it as an NTFS drive. This was done to allow smaller cluster usage on the drive which relates to more efficient file storage. That was a painless activity as well. Because of it's size, it took about 30 minutes to reformat, but once done I didn't have to worry about that again.

This drive supports Windows environments (Windows® 98SE/Me/2000/XP) as well as Mac environments (OS X 10.2.8+).

Physically, the drive is 6.71" H x 2.25" W x 5.55" D. The power cord has one of those block transformers half way down the cable. At least being in the middle, it allows for easy plugging in. (Those power blocks at the end of the cable make it so difficult to plug in multiple devices.) the unit has vents on both sides (when laying down) and is only slightly warm to the touch.

The actual drive is of the 7200RPM variety, allowing for reasonable data access speeds.

One nice feature of this drive is that it knows when your PC is on and off. When you turn off your PC, the drive shuts down as well. Consequently it is not spinning 24/7, but only when you are using your PC. That is a feature that I wish my other external drive had, but it doesn't. If I don't stop it, my other drive is spinning all the time. Not something I prefer.

All of my photos and iTunes music files are now safely held on a new, more efficient drive. Given that the drive utilizes the USB 2.0 interface for connectivity, it is limited to the 480 Mb/second speed of the interface. This speed is more than adequate for photo storage and music storage. I even put some video on the drive and it performs perfectly, with no problems of there not being enough throughput. Videos are smooth like they should be.

Moving photos on to the drive is a breeze. Given that both my camera and iPod also connect to the PC by USB2.0, all of the devices are restricted to the USB interface speed. Because of this, even if I had used an internal drive, the activity of moving photos are music wouldn't be any faster. I say that as if it was slow... it isn't. I just bring this up to point out that at no time am I waiting for the drive.... it's working as fast as it can for an external drive.

I am very pleased with the performance of this external drive. It is quiet. It doesn't get hot. It shuts itself down when not in use. I highly recommend it it you are looking for a large external drive. It certainly does it's job well.

You can occasionally find this drive on sale for under $200. If you can, grab it! It’s worth it!