Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars 
Fast, portable, attractive., February 8, 2011
By Hypatia "janagrc"
I use this drive as my time-machine back ups and to store larger media files I don't want to keep on my 500GB MacBook Pro drive. The initial transfer of the 500GB backup only took a few hours. The drive is light and portable, and the design is attractive.

4.0 out of 5 stars 
PREMIER, February 6, 2011
By POINTMAN
THIS EASY TO USE PORTABLE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE PROVIDES CONVENIENCE AND SPEED TO BACK UPS AND QUICK RECALL OF SAVE FILES. IDEAL.

4.0 out of 5 stars
Portable hd, February 6, 2011
By Van1976
Good choice. My second one. the first one fell on the floor and stopped working and I coudn`t recover the date in it. This is the only downside.

5.0 out of 5 stars 
Super fast!, February 5, 2011
By J. Bjarni Magnusson "tech and book lover" (Reykjavik, Iceland)
Loving the USB 3.0. about 3-5 times faster than USB 2.0 on my computer. very very nice!
other than that the product is solid and working as it should :)

3.0 out of 5 stars 
USB 3.0 operation is limited to very few controllers, February 4, 2011
By Ian Figueras (Chandler, AZ United States)
The drive is great as a backup - no problems there. However, what ticked me off is the USB 3.0 support. The packaging screams at you "NOW with USB 3.0!" and goes further to show you amazing comparisons with USB 2.0 speeds. I have a USB 3.0 PCIe card but when ever I try to plug in my WD Essential ES, the password feature activates even though I have no password on the drive. It works like a champ on USB 2.0

When I contacted WD Support, I was directed to a little advertised web page which spells out the severely limited USB interfaces that will actually work with this disk. Had I known this up front, I probably would have gone with a cheaper USB 2.0 only variant and saved the additional $30. Nowhere on the packaging does it say ANYTHING about the USB 3.0 limitations which, in my book, is misleading and underhanded advertising.

[...]

5.0 out of 5 stars 
this is awesome..., February 4, 2011
By Partha
I could only admire this thing perform after I recieved it. Superb performance and looks. will fit in ur shirt pocket. I will definitely recommend this to everyone in need of a 1TB ext. hard drive. Do not go for any other brand. This is the best.

5.0 out of 5 stars 
A Superb Harddrive, February 4, 2011
By K. Ye
A 1 terabyte harddrive in this size is amazing and it doesn't require an outside power source. Unfortunately since I have a Mac, I cannot attest to how fast USB 3.0 transfer speeds are but at least you are set for the future when you eventually upgrade. The harddrive is initially formatted in NTSC so if you're on a Mac, you'll need to either reformat to FAT32 or download a third party software to let a Mac write on NTSC. Don't bother with the built in WD software if you're on a Mac. Time machine does a better job and is far less buggy. Overall, a quality product that's well worth the price.

5.0 out of 5 stars 
Satisfaction Garunteeeeeeed., February 3, 2011
By Hee Sung Shin "Paul"
This is EXACTLY what I expected it to be.
-3.0 IS noticeably faster.
-Easy too use. Just like a usb exept its waaaaaaaaaaay more spacious

The only con is that it attracts scratches very well.

5.0 out of 5 stars 
Perfect backup solution, February 3, 2011
By Tex
With this USB powered hard drive I just leave it pluged in and let the included software do automatic backups

5.0 out of 5 stars 
Excellent Portable Hard Drive, February 2, 2011
By Sagar
I have owned this hard drive for 3 months now and it is working like a charm. It's so small & portable that I forget I'm carrying it around. It works across operating systems with no problems whatsoever. The software makes backing up extremely easy, you just need to plug the drive in and it does the job for you. But I wish there was an option to select specific folders when you need to pick & choose stuff. Hope WD will add this functionality through a software upgrade. Also it is prone to scratching, so I always carry it around in a pouch. I'm also getting consistently good speeds with USB 3.0. Overall a very good effort from Western Digital.