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Western Digital My Book Elite 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

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Western Digital My Book Elite 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

(65 customer reviews)

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DHWDBAAH0015HCH

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Features

Automatic, continuous backup
Visual backup control center
Personalized drive label with contents, status and security
Password protection and 256-bit encryption

Description

Bring style and security together with WD’s best-selling My Book Elite USB external drive.Smart display – Create your own personalized drive label to remind you of what’s stored on each drive. The display also includes available capacity and security status. You can even view the label when the drive is unplugged. Smaller, sleeker, more streamlined design – WD has made these award-winning drives even smaller, sleeker, and more elegant. As always, this book-like shape takes up less space on your desk and allows two or more My Book drives to nestle neatly together like volumes on a shelf.Drive lock – Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and military-grade 256-bit hardware-based encryption.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 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 that uses recycled materials and minimizes 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.

Product Details

Product Length:	5.3 inches
Product Width:	1.9 inches
Product Height:	6.5 inches
Product Weight:	2.96 pounds
Package Length:	8.0 inches
Package Width:	6.9 inches
Package Height:	5.4 inches
Package Weight:	3.2 pounds
Average Customer Rating:	based on 65 reviews

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: 3.0

( 65 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 found the following review helpful:

Great backup drive Jan 19, 2010 By Richard C. Drew "Anaal Nathra/Uthe vas Bethod/Doch yel Dienve"
This drive is primarily for backups - it has a simple, almost one-click backup program (WD-Smartware) and a really unique "E-Label" that uses the same technology as the Amazon Kindle. Note: The power does NOT have to be on, and the unit does NOT need to be plugged in for the label to be visible! It's a really handy feature - I have a LOT of externals, and it's much nicer and more permanent than post-it notes! You only have 12 characters, but with some creativity you can say a lot.

It also automatically displays free space with text and a capacity bar.

Backup software:

- Automatically backs up files when changed or added
- Simple interface
- Uses 112,500 K of system memory on my computer while backup is running, and 18%-45% of the CPU

Ideally a complete/initial backup should be run when the PC is not in use. This is true of ANY backup software. When it spikes the CPU at 45%, it slows things down considerably. Again, only a consideration while doing a large backup.

It's an external drive, not brain science or rocket surgery.

It's also VERY quiet and runs reasonably cool - after constant writing for 5 hours it's only slightly warm to the touch.

What I don't like:

The ONLY way to label the drive is to install the backup software. This is the main reason I did not give the drive 5 stars. WD makes it a pain to use the coolest feature of the drive.

Initial install is not intuitive. You'll see two new devices: the drive and a virtual CD drive. The virtual drive contains the software. An update allows you hide the virtual drive, BUT this also eliminates the ability to wun the software. Oh my XP system it autoinstalled. On my Windows 7 the install did not run. Running the installer manually generated an error. I downloaded the update and ran that - the update is actually a complete install, and that ran just fine in Windows 7. But for the non-technical this could be a pain. Newer models should have the updates software so this should not be an issue in early 2010.

If you only plan on using this as an external drive, none of this is a big deal - but you're probably looking at this because of the E-Label. My bet is that WD will make a small app available to edit the E-Label.

It's one of those really cool tech toys no geek should be without.

34 of 37 found the following review helpful:

Nice package, but unacceptably bad performance Mar 14, 2010 By M. Fairleigh "M. Fairleigh"
Let me say first that I've been in IT for 25 years. Western Digital is the only brand of hard drive I've ever bought, and have never had one fail or have any problem of any kind; I'll continue to buy their bare hard drives until they give me a reason to change. However - the software (SmartWare) that comes with this drive is just plain JUNK. I've had this for one day and updated the device firmware and SmartWare to the latest versions with no improvement. Here are my problems:

1. It's unacceptably inflexible with regards to configuration in terms of controlling what gets backed up, what doesn't, etc. It's view to your data isn't by folder, it's by file type. So for example, you don't back up everything in My Documents; you back up all of your "Music." I want more precise control than that.

2. Performance is horrible. To be fair, this was running on an 8-year old Dell Dimension 8200. But - it's still a 2.0GHz Pentium with maxed-out memory running XP Pro, with USB 2.0 ports and current 7200 RPM drives with at least 8MB cache. Every other application on the machine still runs extremely well (hence the reason the machine continues to serve as our primary desktop). With SmartWare, I expected an initial period of a few hours of intense processing to get the baseline backup done, and then only brief bursts of activity as files get added and changed. What actually happened was the initial backup took around 12 hours (with CPU utilization at or near 100% on that one process), and then when it reported the backup was complete, SmartWare continued to consume around 50% of the CPU. At that point, launching Firefox, which normally takes a few seconds, took about 30 seconds to come up. Forget playing even a modest game. To make matters worse, each time a user logs back on to the machine, SmartWare starts all over with its "analysis" of how much "music," "movies," "documents," etc., are on the system - so it's as if it starts over with each user log on.

I've already started the process to return this. It will be replaced by something I already know works: an Acomdata Samba enclosure, a Western Digital black SATA drive, and SyncBack Pro software.

Sorry, WD, after many years of complete satisfaction, you dropped the ball on this one.

32 of 37 found the following review helpful:

Depends on how you set it up. Dec 25, 2009 By C. Bayne "katluvr_1"
I just want this drive to store things, like movies and pictures. I don't really want it for backing things up automatically. Because of this, I didn't play around with the settings for backing up files. I also read the reviews about the software and didn't want to deal with any problems.

So minus a star for the back up software. It's useless to me the way it is, and apparently it's aggravating for those who have tried it.

I've been moving things over from other drives to free up room and get things sorted out, and the speed is OK. This is a terrabyte drive, so it takes a LONG time to fill up. USB2 is great, but we're still talking about a terrabye drive. It took one hour to move over a 44.7 gb file and 10 minutes to move a 7 gb file.

I love the electronic label that stays put even when you turn off the power. I wonder if that display is like the e-Ink the Kindle uses. Hmm. I love the fact that the display tells you how much room you have left. Sure I can look on My Computer, but this is faster.

One thing that didn't impress me was the case - the holes for the power and the USB port don't exactly fit over the internal holes. So I had to wiggle the power cord and USB cord in order to get them plugged in. That doesn't speak a lot for the workmanship of the drive. Minus a star for that and for having to worry about how long this drive will last. I mean, if they can't even get the holes to line up, what about the delicate electronic stuff inside?

So this gets 3 stars. I don't use or like the back up software & the condition of the case makes me worry about the condition of the insides. I do like the display and all the room you get in a TB drive. I like the look of the drive. The speed isn't mind blowingly fast, but it's no worse than other TB drives I have. (I have another WD My Book and a LaCie.) I tell my computer what I want to move over, and then I keep it powered on. I wasn't using it overnight anyway.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:

Fantastically Unremakable. Jan 17, 2010 By R.S. Eisenberg "I'm not bad, I 'm just drawn that way"
For a very long time I have been needing to centralize a complete backup solution and as the price fell to within hailing distance of $100, I jumped in. I have always gravitated towards WD drives for some reason, after installing and using dozens I have never had a failure, unlike both the Seagates and Maxtors and others I have tried. I know this is basically a Ford/Chevy sort of loyalty, but what can I say?

I will say I couldn't be happier with my choice, at least not until the 2TB drive is available at the same price. I simply wanted a drive to hold real-time backups of all my stuff. I have about 700GB over 3 drives, so it is a good first step at a centralized and secure location. The WD is compact and nearly silent, the power supply is diminutive and transportable.

The front panel display is kinda neat- so-called "electronic paper" a la Kindle that displays the used space in a graph, the free space as a number and the drive name, unpowered and even unplugged. I can see carrying the "book" metaphor out a bit and having an archive of three or four of these on a shelf, it will be a great way to keep track of what's stored aboard without sharpies or stickies.

I unboxed the drive and plugged it in. XP Pro read all the drive info and it was ready to go in only a minute or so, it was exactly and finally what "plug `n play" was supposed to be all about. Precisely as it should be, I remember the days of having to wrestle an external drive to the ground to be able to use it. This was nice.

The software, after asking politely, checked for updates and installed itself. I had read enough negative comments about the WD backup utility I was prepared to expect the worst but since I asked for minimal install it was running in a few minutes and ready to go. I chose not to use the backup software for now, as I travel and would like to have access to my files without a restore involving an install on a remote machine. I will probably check it out later just to see how it works, the WD SmartWare control panel looks simple and efficient, and at very least is a nice little utility that displays all drive content and type

Moving all my files by hand the first time was a little tedious my method may seem crude, but it is also a good way to review and clean up some of the accumulated stuff I have been hauling around all these years. I remember running a normal compressed backup and seeing stuff I forgot was there go flying by, and then by the time the backup was done I had to go look for it and well; you know. I then defer to SyncToy to do the updates, so far it's been working pretty well.

Doing it this way I know in the event of a failure I will have immediate access to important files. I likewise keep a current clone of the system drive in the event of a primary failure, and it is possibly the only method in which I have complete confidence. I have done enough system restores and used enough automated backup software to appreciate it does not always perform as advertised in a crisis.

I was very impressed with the copy speed, this is my first machine that uses SATA drives so it's not unexpected- but the transfer rate, even on an external USB2 to me, seems faster than across two IDE drives on a bus.

An additional plus is the packaging; keeping in a movement to reduce plastic abuse and lower consumer frustration, the drive was in an easy to open cardboard box- but oddly enough, while WD drives usually came protected at each end with eggcrate cardboard, the Book was supported in plastic!

One minor grumble is the power switch, I have not yet discovered a consistency in its operation, sometimes it just shuts the drive off with a push, sometimes it delivers a "drive in use..." error message, sometimes the LED will blink rapidly- I have used other WD ext drives and I know there's a pattern, just haven't found it- or found it in the manual yet. On the other hand, the SmartWare tray icon powers it off just fine.

So far it seems an extremely unremarkable product, and that is exactly what I want from a secure storage device.

18 of 22 found the following review helpful:

My Itunes Library Hard Drive (Apple Computer) Oct 16, 2009 By Anthony D. Hunt
I purchased the 1TB Book Elite for use as my primary external hard drive to store my Itunes media library. Hooked it up yesterday and reformatted to MAC OS Extended (Journaled). Then I changed my Itunes library location setting to the new hard drive and used Organize Library in Itunes to move all my medial to the new location. I have about 400GB, so it took a couple hours. Checked it out this morning - everything is working great. The "always on" changeable label is a neat feature. Cosmetically the hard drive is sharp. The drive is also much quieter that an older 1TB Maxtor hard drive I purchased about a year ago. I will not use the back up software that came with the drive (will continue to use Time Machine). No issues or problems - easy setup . I'll provide an update in a couple week.

See all 65 customer reviews on Amazon.com