| Western Digital Elements 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive | 
 enlarge | Brand: Western Digital
Category: CE
Buy New: £53.94
New (8) from £53.94
Avg. Customer Rating:  99 reviews
Sales Rank: 181
Media: Electronics
Fragile: No
Batteries Included: No
Hard Drive Size: 500
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.7
MPN: WDE1U5000U
Model: WDE1U5000U
UPC: 718037119588
EAN: 5051749307931
ASIN: B000OS54TA
Release Date: March 25, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Product Description
The Elements external hard drive is the perfect storage solution, designed for file sharing and archiving. Thank to its built-in 500 GB memory capacity, the Elements external hard drive can store audio, video and photo files in a flash. Its USB 2.0 connection offers a high data transfer rate and is entirely Plug & Play. The Elements external hard drive is the perfect high-performance storage unit for all of your data.
Box Content
- External 3.5" USB 2.0 hard drive
- 6 foot (1.8m) USB 2.0 certified interface cable
- AC adapter with power cord
- Quick Install Guide
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| Customer Reviews: Read 94 more reviews...
 Doesn't stay the course November 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bought this device just over 6 months ago and it worked brilliantly, data transferred quickily and easily and then one day I booted up my pc and discovered this drive was not showing, went through all the logical procedures, checked the cables were properly connected and checked the fuse... I even tried connecting it to a different computer but still nothing!
Fortunately Western Digital accepted that it was still under warranty and have agreed to check it and if necessary replace it, but with a warning that if they do replace it they will not recover any data.
They do however recommend a few companies for data recovery and I sent the drive to one of them, they reported that the drive had suffered extreme electrical damage, presumably due to the fact that the only way to power down this drive is to disconnect it from the mains, but the data was recoverable for minimum cost that was roughly 5 times the cost of the drive.
I have now sent the drive back to Western Digital for a replacement under the terms of the warranty and I guess that i'll just have to pray that the replacement performs better, not holding my breath though!
 ok so far October 28, 2008
Only used it for the first time yesterday and it has done a few odd things. It appears to have crashed while transferring data a couple of times. It seems to have also removed some of the icons from my ibook g4, though the data is still there and not that difficult to put them back.
On the positive side, it is small and light and has certainly transferred the data from my mac which was one of my concerns. I haven't needed any extra cables for this.
I wanted to get one that definitely worked with my mac and the price was a factor as well so given this, not a bad buy, though if I had a pc and a bigger budget, I prob wouldn't choose again.
I am a little concerned given some of the initial hitches and other people's reviews that it may not last that long, but fingers crossed.
 Can't really fault 25p a gig October 24, 2008
Just plugged it in, you don't have to do ANYTHING. Straight away an icon pops up and literally 10 seconds later you can just be pulling files across.
I bought it because I was completely wiping my comp (had a particularly nasty virus) and starting again. Copied my entire music collection onto it in one go (20 odd gig), as well as loads of video files and other general stuff. Nothing went wrong, it all copied, wiped comp, rebooted, dragged everything back across, done. Conclusion: happy, fast, virus-free comp on which I now write. Simple.
Only thing I could possibly criticise it on would be the time it takes for large quantities of information to move onto it (not so much off it). The 20 gig of music took a long time (like 2-3 hours), but then I know that's a huge amount of info, and it's only a USB powered drive, so fair enough. You only have to do it once. But if you were going to do a lot of shifting stuff back and forth with your drive (like 8+ gig), then I'd maybe get a bigger, powered drive.
Now it's just sitting there as a useful backup system, and for absorbing files I don't often use, so don't need on the comp. Just generally useful to have around. Stupidly huge amount of space for me. You'd have to have a lot of video to use the space really. But hey, I'm future-proofed.
Peace and Love xx
 Surprisingly tiny and good quality. October 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Runs straight out of the box no problems with windows xp. I'snt really 160 Binary gigabytes it's 160 Decimal Gigabytes.
This is a bit of a marketing rubbish it means that your computer will detect it as 149.05 Gigabytes. which is still pretty awesome for the price.
Died in a few months. October 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Had this product for 8 or so months. Worked well though a little noisy. One day all of sudden - dead.
Tried to power up again but after promising noises soon ground to a halt. I now have a Black La Cie which I only switch on every couple of weeks to keep the heat down - so far so good. Seems to me a lot of these external drives have problems right across the board if you read other reviews. Don't make the mistake I made of storing certain files only on backup alone. When they're gone they're gone.
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