MyBook Essential 500 GB SUCKS!

What an awful hard drive is the MyBook Essential 500 GB external hard drive!  A co-worker and I each bought Western Digital external drives recently and both of us agree the software that WD tries to install every time we plug in our drives is a crapware virus.  Worse yet, WD tech support says there is no way to get rid of it because it’s built in to the drive electronics!

I went to buy a new drive yesterday and the only brand I avoided was Western Digital.  I will NEVER buy a Western Digital again because of the crapware they strong arm you to install on your computer.  This is a shame because Western Digital used to sell good product.

I just wish I had checked the web before I bought the MyBook Essential 500 GB hard drive.  I recommend you avoid this drive like the plague.

Sincerely,

Chris Fuller

Let me know what you find out.  I have another backup program and want to use it but like you say when I plug in my drive it asks to load WD software.  I found a way to mount the drive but it will be a pain to do each time I have to do a backup.  Say no when it asks to load the software.  Then you can go in thru explore and open the vcd portion and unlock the drive then it shows up.

Pretty bad when you cant do anything because the software to check to see if you are doing anything to backup takes up all your computing power.

I agree. I have a 500GB hard drive too and  it just doesn’t show up on My Computer. Although it shows on the device manager without any letter assigned on it.

Going to return it soon

Wish_ I would have read your post before buying the same model, what a disappointment. Even worse is the service or lack of you get from the people at WD. I was probably disconnected 5 times while their “techs” try and transfer calls._

 

Anyway I will avoid WD forever and will make sure people I care about are aware of this company and their poor service.

My son bought me  My Book 500gb and it lasted two months. First it slowed my computer down to a crawl then was not recognized intermittently followed by files corrupted and then drive not formatted.  It was replaced by the retailer, guess what second one lasted six months. . My son bought himself one at the same time and has had exactly the same result. After two drives he has now bought another brand. I run XP he runs Vista. My first formatted as directed on WD website NTFS his FAT  as delivered. No similarities other than WD. I will never touch WD again . Support non existent.

My external drive lasted over 2 years before any problems. I only use WD regarding hard drives because to “me” they are the best. They specialize in hard drives, but this external drive is not being friendly.

I’m not going to iomega, because a friend of mine bought one of their 1tb external hard drives and after 5 days it stopped working. The customer support is the worst imaginable either you pay upfront for support, or they direct you to their forums for help. He put 300 gigs (movies and music) of information on his hard drive and now it’s gone. Mine hangs in the balance between usable, and unusable.