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Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAF0020HBK-NESN | 
| Brand: Western Digital Category: CE
List Price: $160.99 Buy New: $159.00 as of 9/7/2010 07:49 EDT details You Save: $1.99 (1%)
Rating: 68 reviews
Format: CD Color: Black Media: Electronics Autographed: No Memorabilia: No Number Of Items: 1 Operating System: Windows XP Professional Edition CPU Manufacturer: Intel CPU Speed: 2.10 CPU Type: PowerPC G4 Processors: 1 System Memory: 2000 Hard Drive Size: 2 Size: 2 TB Shipping Weight (lbs): 3 Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 6.9 x 7.9 Warranty: 2 years warranty
MPN: WDBAAF0020HBK-NESN Model: WDBAAF0020HBK-NESN UPC: 718037751290 EAN: 0718037751269 ASIN: B002JN554C
Shipping: Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Automatic, continuous backup | | • | Visual drive control center | | • | Password protection and 256-bit encryption | | • | Illuminated capacity gauge | | • | USB 2.0 interface |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description Smart backup and storage.The world's best-selling external hard drive now features a new, smart, visual backup solution that protects your data automatically. 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. 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 - See your life safe in one place. See your backup as it happens - Seeing is believing. Visual backup displays your content in categories and shows the progress of your backup. 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. 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 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
Amazon.com Product Description
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. | 
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| Features at a glance - Automatic, continous backup
- Illuminated capacity gauge
- Password protection and hardware encryption
- WD SmartWare software
- 2-years limited warranty
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| 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...
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 68
You Can Disable SmartWare!!! November 7, 2009 JonKron (Hopeful, USA) 16 out of 20 found this review helpful
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:
[...]
It's a backup drive, for gosh sakes... April 29, 2010 R. Fisk (Lewisburg, WV United States) 7 out of 8 found this review helpful
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.....
problems resolved January 7, 2010 Marco De Vivo (Miami, Florida United States) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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!.
Works great with my MacBook Pro. Glad I didn't buy into all of the negative hype here May 20, 2010 peppersdad (Los Angeles) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
READ THE LATEST REVIEWS FIRST Absolutely no problem; so far so good August 26, 2010 Michael D. Swaine (Washington DC) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 68
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