Pros: Cheap. Extremely quiet - I literally put my ear to it while transferring huge files and heard nothing. Fast - People have complained but I have had no problem with speed, very quick.

Cons: No on/off switch. It turns off with computer and can be 'safely removed' from within computer but id prefer an on/off switch.

Other Thoughts: No fan. Though it doesnt seem to get hot. I transferred 700GB and it was barely even warm.

Pros: It's a great drive. I use it for occasional MP3/video backups and have had no problems so far. It's got a sleek design and makes no noise (and very little heat).

Cons: None.

Pros: Competitively priced, well known brand name, Customer support spoke good English.

Cons: Drive arrived DOA from Newegg. Contacted WD support and the sent me a new USB cable to try. After waiting a few days to receive the USB cable I had same results. Put in RMA request online to WD. A few more days passed and I received the advance replacement drive. The product was obviously used, smudges and scratches on the drive (I was kinda aggravated since I had not even had mine a week). Then to my astonishment the USB and power ports on the back of the drive were pushed up into the case, the internal drive housing had been dmged. I couldn't even plug the drive in without taking it apart, which I did just to confirm that my original one was indeed DOA. Contacted customer support again via phone (30 mins bouncing around and listening to recordings)... they wanted me to ship the RMA drive back to them. I told them to forget it I was sending the original DOA back to Newegg and going with a different HD manufacturer.

Pros: Relatively inexpensive for brand-name drives at the time, but not the cheapest; slick case; uses mini-USB cables, which I have a ton of.

Cons: Drive died 4 months after I bought it. Never dropped, stepped on, drenched in Coke or used as a doorstop. I treated this drive well and it still croaked. It's possible I got a lemon or that I just got unlucky, but these days drives should last much longer than this. While it lived, transfer rates were lower than I would have expected from a 7200RPM USB drive.

Pros: Great price!

Cons: Died 12 days into ownership... I had to pay to ship it back to WD even though it was a defective produce. They replaced it with a 2.0TB MyBook Essential that's been reliable for the past 8 months. Ok CS from WD (minus having to pay shipping,) just a bad product. YMMV.

Pros: It works great - not a blip on several WD Elements we own (unlike similar Seagate models we ended up returning).

Cons: Shop for price

Pros: Huge storage space, holds everything and anything i need stored.

Cons: Not quite 1.5 TB, actually about 1.36 TB but whatever.

Other Thoughts: No on/off button. Just comes on when plugged into a socket and a computer. Not bad just I just hadn't seen that before.

Pros: High capacity with a relativity low price. No bloatware. Plug and play!

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: Used to store my a lot of large video files. Plays DV files flawlessly.

Pros: Makes for a very large and shiny paperweight. Hell, if you take the drive out I'm sure it would make a nice box, too.

Cons: Died after about 5 days. After arguing with a WD Customer Service supervisor I was authorized to pop open the enclosure and try to recover data on my own. After that I continued with their own RMA procedure and the sent me a new 1.5tb My Book with a neat little space meter on the enclosure. The replacement drive has been working for about a month and a half now.

Other Thoughts: The drive was DOA, and that's something that you just can't avoid. This is the first time that I've had a WD product DOA. 3 out of the 4 WD service reps were helpful and respectful. WD support overall isn't that bad. If you need a large drive but nothing fancy or complicated then look into this one, seems like it would be a great drive.

Pros: I was in favor of Seagate a few years back, but after I read reviews of Seagate HDs getting hot quickly, I switched over to this beauty. It's sleek, easy to use, and durable for moving it around. Great size and transfer speeds too!

Cons: No Cons from my perspective, see other thoughts.

Other Thoughts: My only initial issue was it needed a somewhat bulky power adapter to plug in to operate it, but I realized I mainly use it to backup of files at home/apartment anyways. However, if you were to use it at a coffee shop, it might get cumbersome with the extra power needed to plug in. Then again, I would rather have a HD to depend on my laptop for the limited power I have running everything else.

Pros: It does a good job as a storage medium no complaints.

Cons: Here's my one gripe for some reason when attempting to watch video from it the image staggers occasionally. I also own the 1 TB WD elements external and it seems to perform the same tasks faster and video streams from it much better.
Just my two cents.

Pros: One-minutre-quick set-up out of the box. Painless. Great capacity for the price.

Cons: NTFS formatting has it at 1.36 GB, but that happens.

Other Thoughts: I've seen others with Elements externals and have been very happy. Not as fast as my eSATA enclosure that gave out, but gets the job done.

Pros: Great external! Can't beat the price for the space you get. I've ran one almost constantly for 8 months with no problems. I just bought a second one for more backup space.

Cons: As slow as any USB external but you have to expect that. More than fast enough for what you need.

Pros: This thing is built solid! It it quiet, and has given me no problems yet. I upgraded from 2 500gb external WDs. Very happy, I think I will use the 500gb as a copy backup of my 1.5tb.

Cons: Worth mentioning, when I plug this into my macbook pro, it takes literally 2-4 minutes for the drive to be recognized. With windows the problem isn't as bad.

Other Thoughts: If your smaller 500gb drives are getting full, consider adopting this drive as your total storage device.

Pros: Great cost per gigabyte, quiet, no obnoxious power or activity light, simple design, performs well

Cons: nodda

Other Thoughts: It does what it is supposed to at a great price without any flare.

Pros: I have gotten three of these in the past 3 months.......They do what they are supposed to do and were a great deal when on sale.

Cons: None

Pros: Faster, quiter, cooler, but don't know how long it will be last.

Cons: no yet.

Pros: Great price for 1.5TB. Good form factor. Quiet. Sturdy and hassle-free AC adapter won't break and is easy to connect. Comes with a good USB cable.

Cons: LED blinking when the drive is connected but the computer is off is annoying and unnecessary, especially in a dark room.

Other Thoughts: Be aware that this drive doesn't have eSATA (I guess that's obvious from the description.) I use this drive as a backup for my laptop which doesn't have eSATA or USB 3.0 so it suits my needs nicely.

Pros: Very easy to install, just plugged it in and it worked. Good size for the price.

Cons: Only one I can think of is, there is no indicator that it is on, no LED or switch, etc. I knew that buying it from the pictures though, so not really a complaint.

Pros: Plug it in & it goes! No software required, which I like.

Cons: None

Pros: Easy to setup, dedicated power cable, feels substantial.

Cons: Not the fastest transfer rates in the world.

Other Thoughts: If you just need a large backup drive or even a secondary drive that you use for infrequently-accessed files, this drive is ballin'. It's not something you're going to be carrying around with you a whole lot, especially if you're always on the go and using a laptop, but it's excellent for file backup and even large transfers between computers when a fast network connection is not available. I have no complaints here.

Pros: It was Dirt cheap for the space 89.99 was totally worth it and also from a name brand is a huge +

Cons: The only CON and thats why i gave it 4* is as we all know its NEVER really 1.5TB, its actually 1.36Tb but who cares still amazing.

Other Thoughts: plug and play on XP,VISTA and Win 7. LOVE IT! Transfered 400gb to it in about 42min.

Pros: Much faster than I was expecting. Used it to save images of numerous family laptops. Took about an hour each. Maybe image files save faster. Plug and play on Vista Basic, Vista Home Premium and XP Home.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Worth it to know I won't have to "Restore Windows from recovery disk" again. Watch prices which change frequently.

Pros: - Faster that I was expecting. (Other reviews mentioned max speeds of 15 mb/s - I've been getting nearly double that)

- Cool to the touch, even when transferring it only gets a little warm, pull up a fan next to it if you're worried.

- Good build quality, feels fairly sturdy.

- And it looks nice, sides are rounded and glossy, top and base are a more matte texture. With a nice inset Western Digital logo on the top. All the plugs are in the back and out of the way. Indicator light is a cool white color.

Cons: None

Pros: Fast transfer speeds, great reliability, looks great, small form factor, easy to stack.

Cons: None

Pros: A nice large backup device for pictures, video or other large files. I only use this for backing up and/or archiving files so I’m not sure how it would perform if used as a second storage device for daily working files. It’s nice and portable too and is silent and runs very cool. Another great product from WD!

Cons: None so far

Pros: huge space for price only

Cons: unacceptable slow slow .....wd use old slow drive to sell it like a new retail drive by added a external case but just unacceptable slow and it will hang when try to play video file from this drive .stay away if u don't have time to wait

Other Thoughts: never bought a drive this slow even my 15yrs old hd still faster than this cannot believe wd come out a drive this slow

Pros: Stays cool during transfer. Got a good deal between sale price and coupon code ($90ea). Picked up 2 at that price.

Cons: Not as fast as another external (usb) drive I own.

Other Thoughts: I bought this solely to backup my video archive. I've been converting all my DVDs to avi files and storing them on an Iomega 1tb drive. When I watch anything directly off the Iomega, it's smooth as silk. If I watch it directly off this WD drive, it "catches" occasionally. Not enough to make it unwatchable, but definitely enough to be able to tell the difference between the two. Since this is just a backup in case the Iomega crashes, it's not a big deal; however, I'm wishing now that I had only purchased one of these WD drive and spent the rest of my money on another Iomega drive instead.

Pros: LED is not too bright, and it's on the back.
Small power brick.
Quiet.
It sleeps when my computer sleeps, and apparently powers down when my computer powers down (even though my computer still provides power over USB when it's off - that trips up other drives).

Cons: Runs hot - the plastic case does not transfer heat well at all. I reformatted the drive, and it started having "controller errors" after a few hours (yes, it takes that long to format). I aimed a fan at it, and then it ran fine.
Slow - max transfer rate seems to be about 15 MB/sec.

Other Thoughts: I use it with Rebit software for real-time backup. I had to aim a fan at it until the initial full backup completed, but after that it has run cool on its own.
I got my drive on an incredible sale at Newegg, but when it arrived, I saw that it came from the RMA warehouse. The drive looked like it had been returned. And UPS sent the thing on a 2-week odyssey around the country before it finally got to me, so who knows how much jostling it received. So I put it through a 5-day burn-in, writing every sector of the drive multiple times (with a fan blowing on the case the whole time). It passed, so I guess it's ok.

Pros: This external great! I've transferred around 300GB of data to it without a problem. Its both fast and reliable.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: Best I could find for the price range. (at the time)

Pros: Very stable with no problems to date. Quiet! Reasonably quick (it's USB 2) - transfers faster than I thought it would. Makes a GREAT backup device!

Cons: It'd be nice if it had a hardware or software on/off switch. I don't leave mine running all the time, and I have to just yank the power connector out of my UPS.

Other Thoughts: Great drive for music & video storage, as well as multi-gigabyte partition/drive images.

Pros: Others said well enough

Cons: Some

Other Thoughts: I open the ext box, there was refurb hdd inside, to me. Saw solder joint, pen marking for electronics components (I am 8 yrs work on it). Wish to type more with my iPad

Pros: This hard drive is really great! I've transferred over 500GB of data to it very successfully and without a problem. It has yet to freeze on me while transferring. All my music is stored in the hard drive and my media player instantly finds it when the hard drive is connected.

Cons: None so far!!

Other Thoughts: Definite buy.

Pros: Fine design, easy setup, and hasn't let me down yet!

Cons: None thus far.

Other Thoughts: This isn't a portable hard drive, but it doesn't stop it from getting the job done.

Pros: Was on sale. It worked great for a week and was only a partial failure???

Cons: Used to backup my computer before i reformatted system. Usb controller failed after one week. Windows giving error defective usb device. Luckily it was just a case failure and the drive itself was still good. To safe my data the case is now in the trash and the drive is in my NAS enclosure. So just a partial waste i guess. To bad WD wouldn't send a new controller card for the case.

Other Thoughts: WD support was helpful til its limitations.

Pros: Large capacity.
Goes into sleep mode when computer/Xbox is off.
Price.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: Reformatted to FAT32 & using on my Jtag'd Xbox360. So far it's working great and has plenty of room for all my content.

Pros: Great price for the space (it cost me $95 on sale)
Doesn't get hot
Sleek and compact
No annoying device software
Good to go for Vista and 7 (I think)
Write speed is pretty good (not super fast but not really slow)

Cons: Doesn't seem to have a vent or a fan
File system format causes the drive to be 1.36TB instead of 1.5TB

Other Thoughts: I have this thing plugged in almost 24/7 for almost a month and there are no problems whatsoever.
There is a small white LED on the back to show that it is plugged in and on.
It goes into standby after a while of inactivity and when you access it during standby it has to wake up. It doesn't take a long time however, just a little bit longer than if it was active.
The connector is on the hard drive side is a mini-USB.
If I have this plugged in my computer when I turn it on, it hangs on the start screen and can freeze. I guess that is because it is trying to boot from the drive.

Pros: 1.5TB, great price, another solid product from WD

Cons: The transfer speeds just never seem to reach what I would expect them too. Several other users who have reviewed this drive have stated the same.

Other Thoughts: Looking forward to SSDrives coming down in price

Pros: Its quiet, simple and cool to the touch. Just transferred 350 gigs of mp4 and avi movie files for my PS3. It does come formatted NTFS. Sucks. Tried all kinds of programs....swissknife, WDformatter because PS3 only recognizes FAT32....not NTFS. What I learned is that you only need to unformat this drive from NTFS by deleting the partition. It is native FAT32 from factory but changed to NTFS by WD for newer computers and whatnot. So....Do not try to REFORMAT this drive to fat32....merely delete the partition(NTFS)which takes seconds by the way, and it will be PS3 ready....no formatting to do. Use a formatting program like swissknife to do it.

Cons: Non....nice product. Easy to use.(thanks internet forums)

Other Thoughts: It does come formatted NTFS. Sucks for PS3 users. Tried all kinds of programs....swissknife, WDformatter because PS3 only recognizes FAT32....not NTFS. What I learned is that you only need to unformat this drive from NTFS by deleting the partition. It is native FAT32 from factory but changed to NTFS by WD for newer computers and whatnot. So....Do not try to REFORMAT this drive to fat32....merely delete the partition(NTFS)which takes seconds by the way, and it will be PS3 ready....no formatting to do. Use a formatting program like swissknife to do it. It took me 5 seconds to delete the NTFS partition (whole drive) and I was left with FAT32 baby....sweet.

Pros: Runs quiet, quickly, large capacity, cheap, external power works well with older systems... except if it fails what good is all that

Cons: a bit bulky, but only real problem is that it just stopped working after 6 months, of wich it had barely been used, only an occasional backup (unfortunately of my laptop drive which failed...)

Other Thoughts: I wish there was a consensus on a good hard drive. I'd pay a premium for that.

Pros: Simple design makes this drive just blend into the background. For the price holds a lot of data, approx. 1.36 TB or 1,500,000,000,000 bytes.

Copied over 70 GB in the last 4 days and working like a charm with no problems. Using Windows 7 Professional has average transfer speed of 30-40 MB/s which is decent but this drive is not for speed now is it. The USB cable that comes with the drive has solid construction.

Cons: None that I can think of...

Other Thoughts: It was slightly smaller than I expected but that's ok. It has no holes for cooling but even after 10 hours of copying files was only slightly warm.

Pros: Awesome. Can't beat it for the price!

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Very Very quiet, Can barely tell if it's on or not. Also seems very well built.

Pros: This drive is quick and reliable

Cons: NOne

Other Thoughts: IN Response to the review about why cant they make a external drive run at 10,000 rpm... Buy an External Enclosure and put a VelociRaptor in it!!! then vola you have a 10,000 rpm external drive!!!

Pros: This is a great stable drive! I've transferred 464 gigs on it first day and hasn't given me any trouble. been using it for hours and it doesn't get too hot either. slightly warm but far from hot.

Cons: 5200 rpm kinda slows the transfer rate but then again slow and steady wins the race. only usb 2.0. and only reads 1.3 tb. but still that's more than what i need.

Other Thoughts: despite the speed, it's perk is that it is more reliable. I've been steaming music and hd videos off it just fine. backed up a lot of files and i doubt I'm the drive will bring any problems anytime soon. I would recommend this to anyone.

Pros: This is the 2nd one I've purchased at $99 for each. I record a lot of family video in 1080p and it reads/writes great! For a USB external drive, for it's capacity and price...it's great and reliable. Transfer speeds are good enough for HD content and reliable. I do a lot of video editing so it's kept on all the time and so far it runs cooler than my other WD 1TB external HDD.

Cons: The software that comes with this thing sucks. I hate it when the manufactures use the space (THAT I PURCHASED..) to put useless software on it and it can't even be erased because it's allocated as a virtual drive. The software tells me everything that Windows 7 already tells me...what a waste. AND...it automatically installs too..why??

Other Thoughts: It's fast, but just not as fast as RAID or the WD Raptors running 10,000 RPM...when will they make external drives run at 10,000 RPM without it burning or smoking????

Pros: Easy Set up, works great.

Cons: none for price point.

Other Thoughts: I partitioned the drive with a 300 GB Fat32 and left the rest to offer my customer ease of transferring files between two file systems. Very happy and would recommend.

Pros: Quite and stays cool. Using hardrive for backup using Windows 7 built-in backup.

Cons: No firewire.

Pros: I have heard nothing but good things about this.... watched a lot of videos and read a lot of articles before buying. I know I'll be happy with this product.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: I am starting to gather parts for a new build so this cooler will be sitting in its box for a couple months until I am ready for it.

Pros: Nice black case. Worked right out of the box on my Win 7 x64 rig. Quiet .... can't hear it at all.

Cons: None that I can think of.

Other Thoughts: Like others have said its 1.36TB. It is USB 2.0 and 5400rpm so it isn't fast. BUT, it should last for a long, long time. I have a lot of computer games, pictures, videos, etc., etc., that I need backed up. This HDD provides plenty of room I need for now. Also, if there is a fire or something it will take my all of a second and a half to unplug it and take it with me.

Pros: Massive amount of storage space (1.36 TB formatted)
Smaller physical size than my old WD Elements 1TB External
Completely silent

Cons: Speed - wish it was eSATA
Uses micro USB cable on the drive's end rather than standard

Other Thoughts: What's not to like? This drive has a ton of space with a small physical profile. I wish WD warrantied their external drives a bit longer but other than that, no complaints.

Newegg came through for me again with super fast order processing and shipping!

Pros: Great drive. Very solid. Excellent for backing up any files you need. Would recommend.

Cons: Requires external power source.

Pros: Both Teras in my PC were close to 90% full, I needed to place the files in an external. This IS very well built. Easy to use, no detected software. Works excellent for storage!

Cons: I am used to 7200rpm results, so for me its slow, but what can you ask for 5400rpm. But slow and steady keeps the external cool and decreases chance of damage.

Pros: It was a great deal for the price that i got it at. Even though it doesn't seem to really have any ventilation it still works great and i have mine plugged in 24/7.

Cons: its only 1.3 TB and not 1.5 TB but hey what can you do.

Pros: Large capacity for storing all that "important data" - thus freeing up your computers main drive. External means all that data can be stored in a secure location... safe, fire proof box or off site.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: External / Portable

Cons: Not Passport Size

Other Thoughts: Very Nice Product. I have heard Rumors that external hard drives have chances of data loss. I do not think data loss will occur with this hard drive. Very Satisfied with this product.

Pros: solid drive just like the first 1GEN model... which I have had for over a year now.

Cons: had to reformat to FAT32 as it is preformated NTFS... pain since had to use command promt in Win 7 to format such a large HD but no hick-ups.

Other Thoughts: Hooked up to PS3 with all my movie back-ups... lets me have an instant library that streams via the PS3's videoplayer to my TV.

Pros: The low data transfer speeds some experience with this drive are caused by a new format being introduced by Western Digital. Go here to find out how to get good transfer speeds: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/

If you want to understand what Advanced Format is, read this helpful article at well known and highly respected Anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888/1

Cons: Good drive but requires tweaking with Western Digital Advanced Format Utility.

Pros: Massive storage space for a low price. Transfer speeds are on par with what you'd expect from a USB HDD. I get between 25-75MB/s transfer rate. Powersaving features, and it does not take very long to resume power from idle mode. So far this drive does everything that it's supposed to do, nothing less!

Cons: Only a 1 year warranty from the manufacturer. 3 years would have been given me more piece of mind, so I purchased the extended plan with newegg.

Other Thoughts: Drive came preformatted as FAT32, and then I formatted to NTFS without any problem. I have not tried defragmenting this drive yet as I do not rely on it for time sensitive apps, only use it for backups of the other primary drives in my home pc.

Pros: Decent sized drive, plenty of room for whatever data you're saving. Easy to use, basically plug and play.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Would prefer that it wouldn't need to take a wall socket to power up, but for a drive this size at that price, beggers can't be choosers.

Pros: A lot of room for backups and file transfer.

Cons: Looks fragile and must be handled very cautiously. The disk has no mechanical protection. I adivise against using it permanently. There is big chance to eventually drop it.

Pros: Nice case and it runs cool.

Cons: I bought this drive for multimedia storage and given performance specs figured this drive would stream video OK. I was wrong. Connected to a known good USB 2.0 connection, I was routinely faced with 1 GB file transfer times exceeding an hour. WD has always given me great performance in the past, but this one sure does not live up to their reputation.

Other Thoughts: I suppose I'll be buying another drive before long.

Pros: This is my third external the other two are Seagate. But Seagate's dependability is questionable lately so i went with Western Digital this time. This external is very quiet and has worked flawlessly for over a month now. I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and file transfer is very quick, streaming video from this drive is excellent too. I like how it sits flat and is almost impossible to tip over. Seagates are notorious for immediate failure after tipping over..trust me:-(
The activity light is white and faces the rear of the enclosure which i would've preferred it facing forward but not a big deal. I'm very happy so far with this WD drive. Thanks again Newegg.

Cons: Goes into a standby mode after awhile and sometimes times a few extra seconds to wake up.

Pros: No bells, whistles or goofy software--its just a drive that works like it should.

Cons: None.

Pros: Nice USB 2.0 drive...NEWEGG delivered promptly and price was right.

Cons: Not impressed with legal information in 12 or more languages.

Other Thoughts: Moved 835 Gb flawlessly. It took 7 hours. I use Teracopy (free) and it has a verify option where it checks checksums from the source against destination (this drive) and out of the box copy and verify was flawless...
Only thing that could be better is for a manufacturer to offer a mirrored USB external drive or drives...
hint hint

Pros: Drive runs amazing cool. Easily 'disappears' on my desk not drawing attention to itself. Great price. Plug it in and it works.

Cons: Not the fastest USB drive - but acceptable. Best use is bulk storage. Light is on the back (this might be good or bad depending on your point of view)

Other Thoughts: At this price, if you later take it apart and put the SATA drive into your PC it is still a good value.

Pros: This hard drive is simple and efficient. It comes with no preloaded software and works well right out of the box. It's extremely quiet, never heats up, and has no bright annoying blinking lights, just a dim activity light on the back. It also looks very sleek and modern in my opinon. I think this is one of the most solidly designed and built HDs I have seen from WD.

Cons: Sadly, the drive only supports USB connectivity; fire wire or eSATA would have been nice, but the USB on this drive is still very fast. Sometimes it chokes up just a a little when I open some larger folders.

Other Thoughts: Overall, I highly recommend this hard drive for anyone who is looking for a large amount of simple, efficient, and stable disk space.

Pros: -Cheap
-Large
-Easy to use

Cons: -only USB 2.0

Other Thoughts: Although it only offers one interface this is still a great device. Using as a storage device on file server/media center.

Pros: I love it! It's got a nice design to it and it's actually pretty fast. Took me around 5 hours to transfer 278GB of data.
Thanks newegg for the fast shipment and great service, I look forward to buying more products from you in the future.

Cons: Absolutely none, zip, zero, nada :)

Other Thoughts: Highly recommend this to anyone that wants massive storage at a very low price.

Pros: Quick shipping

Cons: DOA

Other Thoughts: RMA issued. Sent back. Will see how quickly this thing turns around. The 3 eggs is not so much a reflection on Newegg as they are only the shippers but it also takes into account that WD sold a defective product. It happens.

Pros: Lots of Space, Looks nice, no software required, no software baggage.

Cons: not 1.5TB but 1.3TB which is still alot

Other Thoughts: I use it with my Western Digital Media Player, and it works great, stays cool compared to an older Element Hard drive i have, and I've had that one for a year and still works good. Never hand any problems with Western Digital
Transferring can be a little slow, but more data takes more time.
I just plug in the power socket, than plug in the USP to my Comp, start transferring, unplug it, than plug it up to my Media Player which is hooked up to my TV and it works great, i;v had it running for hours with no problems.

Pros: I've had it for two months, and it appears to still be operating. It's been plugged in constantly to the power, and off-and-on on the USB connector. I used it briefly to backup a RAID array so I could expand it and restore the data, and it worked well enough for that.

Cons: It's pretty slow. Takes several seconds to mount under linux (I've never seen that before), but it always succeeds. Backing up the RAID array took all night and most of the morning over gigabit ethernet via rsync.

The position of the activity indicator LED makes it difficult to tell if it's doing anything unless you have it in front of you with the connectors facing you - not the most aesthetically pleasing way to keep it around.

Pros: This is the perfect external hard drive for storing your files, very small and sexy looking. It doesn't have any of those bright annoying LED lights and is preformatted NTFS file system so you can store 4GB files or larger right away without having to format it. I bought a WD My Book 500GB a few years ago and I like this one much better. It is smaller, better looking, and doesn't have that ring of LED lights on the front. The Western Digital Elements External hard drive series are really nice.

I also like how Western Digital didn't put all kinds of junk software on this. When you plug it in the first time, there are no pops up or any other junk that wants you to install software.

Cons: Nothing bad so far, I have transferred over 200GB from other hard drives to this one and it works fine. No errors or glitches or anything. It is whisper quiet and writes data at the normal USB 2.0 speeds.

Other Thoughts: I'm going to fill this thing up with all the movies I've collected over the years then plug it into my WD TV Live player to play them back whenever I want.

I hope Western Digital makes a USB 3.0 version of this drive and keeps it exactly the way it is. If they can make a USB 3.0 WD Elements 2TB and price it $160 or below, I'll pick another one up, but that is probably going to be awhile before USB 3.0 external hard drives come down in price.

Pros: Sleek black design, more than reasonable size. Unbelievably priced considering the amount of storage space. Speed is good.

Although it is a small USB into the drive, it seems very sturdy.

The lack of an on/off switch or button seems to be solved by the drive automatically turning off whenever it is unplugged, which is very convenient.

There is an indicator light on the back near the cords that is small and not too bright.

The fact that is preformatted for NTFS is also quite convenient.

Cons: As mentioned in other reviews, the usable size is 1.36TB, which, if there really is 1.5TB on the drive, makes it seem that a lot of space is unusable. (Still a good dollar to GB ratio.)

Other Thoughts: If I encounter any problems later on, I'll update my review.

Pros: Whisper quiet...had to put my ear against it to see if it was still on. Right out of the box, recognized by Vista and up and ready to go. Started out transferring some music files...went very fast and without drive noise. I went to WD's website and after taking a short survey of my specs, found out I didn't need to do the Alignment that some reviews have talked about. Good for me! Like my title says, so far so good.

Cons: The shipping box had been manhandled by our friendly Post Office but the WD box inside remained unharmed. The day I got it I noticed it was for sale for $10 cheaper than the day I ordered it...boo hoo. Technically though, no cons so far on the hard drive.

Other Thoughts: I did a lot of research and finally settled on the WD Elements 1.5 TB as it seemd to have the biggest percentage of good reviews to bad...seemed like all drives had their share of bad reviews. Glad I made this choice so far.

Pros: Reasonably quiet.
Sturdy, clean, and compact case design (there is only one tiny light on the back).

Cons: Warranty length is only 1 year.

Other Thoughts: This disk is working quietly and faithfully as a TimeMachine backup destination for our family.

Pros: Looks nice and is relatively quiet.

Cons: Doesn't have a power button and is VERY slow. I usually get around 5-10 Mb/s, and then after a short while, it drops down to UNDER 1 Mb/s. I've never used an external HD that transfers so slow.

Other Thoughts: I would suggest buying a different WD external HD.

Pros: This is a quiet, low profile drive with space to burn. I got it working and formatted really quick on Mac OS X. No annoying LED on the front. Love it.

Cons: none.

Other Thoughts: Glossy sides and matte-top makes for some good contrast.

Pros: My have been working nicely 24-7 for the last two months, this is the primary hdd for a headless linux server "sheevaplug".

Cons: Nothing so far.

Other Thoughts: No other external hard drive beat this one in price per GB. Based solely in reviews seem like this is much better than the seag***.

Pros: 1. Looks solid and all pro.
2. Very quiet.

Cons: 1. A mini USB2 connector is used at the hard drive end. I think this is too flimsy and might break or disconnect if you move the drive (see # 2)

2. Placement of device-on indicator LED on the back right next to the USB and the power supply in plugs means to see this indicator LED you will have to see these cables too. Else, you will have to move the drive to see the light in which case the flimsy mini-USB connector used may get bent or unplugged (not nice during a write) (See # 1)

2. Device was purchased to serve as a secondary back up external hard disk. It just died - i.e.: doesn't light up, or lights up but is not recognized by Windows Explorer and the Device Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Storage / Disk Management tool - a few days after I received it. I connected the device on three other desktops and laptops to no avail. I still don't understand why. Luckily my primary backup still works.

Other Thoughts: I am puzzled by this failure. Since many of the reviews seen here are very positive, I am keeping an open mind and have obtained an RMA-Exchange.

Pros: Aestically pleasing, construction feels sturdy.

Cons: taking the case apart appears to be a challenge

Other Thoughts: Just hope the *power inverter* lasts longer than my other WD, hard drive still worked so I just franensteined my own power supply.

Solid option, would purchase more if I needed them

Pros: Drive works great. Thank

Cons: Nunya

Pros: Easy hook up and set up. Plug in the cables and start your system. This version has white LED activity light on back by the cable connections. Recognized right away and worked right away.

Others complained about speed, but I was copying my music files to the drive and playing music from the drive at the same time.... worked great. Highly recommend!!

Cons: None right now.... maybe that it is ONLY 1.5 Terabytes !! LOL

Other Thoughts: Great Newegg service... Easy to watch and track package

Pros: Newegg shipped hard drive fast and safely packaged as always. Vista laptop recognized it instantly. Actual usable space is 1.36 TB. I look forward to using more.

Cons: Not really a con since I don't use it and it can be downloaded elsewhere, but did not come with the usual WD Backup software or digital manuals. I don't use them so no mark down from me, but they can be downloaded from WD's site.

Other Thoughts: Big storage + low price=Great Value.

Pros: HUGE!! Can't be stressed enough. I can finally breath again. Ran the alignment utility for 36 hours and drive barely got warm to the touch. Piece of advice, align the drive BEFORE dumping data onto it! ;-) Drive properly spins down when inactive. Trade-off is the few seconds to spin up when accessed . . . no biggie.

Elegant looking case. Collects fingerprints, but then why are you touching it?

Tiny white activity light in back near plugs. Just enough to let you know it's runnin'.

Cons: Mine contained the ERAS 4k sector 64MB cache drive. Sweet cache, best when aligned. Initially displayed "errors" in XP, so I repartitioned. Big mistake. This drive is the new "Advanced Format" that apparently will be the new trend. The drive must be "aligned" with WD's utility. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/ Interesting concept behind it. Misaligned drive write rate: ~5 MBps. Correctly aligned drive write rate 30+ MBps (on old home server).

This is not an issue for Vista for Win 7, which correctly aligns the drive.

No on/off switch, but since it spins down so effectively it would be essentially unnecessary.

Other Thoughts: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/

Make sure it's aligned for best performance!!

Pros: Awesome Big Storage at a Super Price

Cons: USB only no eSATA so transfer speed lacking.

Other Thoughts: While the Speeds to transfer are slow, for the size the price is right. I Would recommend this external hard drive to another buyer

Pros: Big Storage and low price.
Works great quickly.
Fast transfer rate.
I love it.

Cons: Nothing to write here. Western Digital is the best name in drives.

Pros: well it works, its quieter then my computer, no annoying lights, and it turns off when the computer turns off.

Cons: its usb, so its only as fast as that not really a complaint though, its not their fault, if you want a faster drive buy a esata.

Pros: -Ready right out of the box
-works fine on any OS(I have win 7 64bit
-solid design
-nice aesthetic look and not big or bulky
-easily portable and can travel with it

Cons: -Has a little less space, about 1.4 TB free, not 1.5TB. Not really a con since that is expected.
-Other then that, this is a great product.

Other Thoughts: -Other then that, this is a great product.

Pros: This HD is awesome. I get around 58MB/s write speed with this drive. This product was processed and shipped to my house really quick. Its a basic looking drive, but I like the simplicity of it.

Cons: I did have to go out and down load HD drivers from Nvidia to get this drive to recognize, so if this drive doesn't get recognized on your Comp try and update your Mobo. I wouldn't say that the drive issue is WD's fault at all.

Other Thoughts: This is the best 1.5TB External HD you can buy, its high quality and low price. Most other drives you will pay more for the drive + shipping cost and it isnt rated as high. WD makes the best HD's, i have a 5 yr old HD from them that still runs like a champ

Pros: 1.5 GB,for under 100 when i bought this
hard drive inside is green drive which is ok ,problem lies in enclosure
read and write speed is very slow,felt really frustrated,then i took the drastic step,took the hard drive out of enclosure
and attached it to my computer as second hd using sata cable
now no problem
considering what i paid for it,it is still steal if u want to use hard drive as internal.in other word enclosure is piece of garbabge

Cons: enclosure has problem

Other Thoughts: if your hard drive slow take out hard drive and put it in another enclosure

Pros: "Stupid easy" plug-n-play. Plug cord into PC...plug cord into power socket...hard drive is immediately available. Could not be easier. Silent, or at least I can't hear it over my PC fans anyway. Doesn't get warm at all. Now it's okay been a day and one backup cycle for me so far, I must admit; but I could not be happier at this point.

Cons: No eSATA I suppose, but that's not really needed if you're using this for weekly backups like I am.

Other Thoughts: I don't get why people think the lack of a power button is bad...your internal drives don't have them, is that bad too? I'm never going to turn it off anyway, so who cares? If you're worried about power, it's a Green drive inside, right? It's already power efficient...

Pros: plugged it it and it worked, pretty fast transfers.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Running Windows 7 64bit

Pros: The Western Digital 1.5 TB Elements USB external drive is the hardware that would satisfy users that just desire a simple way to store a large amount of files. The HD scope of supply simply consists of three items: The drive, the USB cable, and the power supply. Three simple steps are required to get the HD on line: 1) Connect the power cable to the drive & outlet, 2) Connect the USB cable to the drive, 3) Connect the other end of the USB cable to the computer.

In my case, the drive was recognized by the operating system (Windows XP Home SP3) and was ready to use immediately after that. The capacity of the drive is mathematically true as indicated by the size displayed in the properties window. The connectors appear to be well constructed and snagged well into the drive as well as into the computer USB port.

The drive is very quite and after two hours of running time, while storing an image of the computer's hard drive, was bearly warm.

Cons: It has been mentioned in previous reviews that the drive's casing is glossy and this appers to be somewhat a negative charateristic of the drive. The only portions of the casing that are glossy are the sides. Thus, the appearance of the casing does not appear to be an issue.

The drive does not have a power switch, but the power plug is very accessible and, if required, the drive could be unplug with really no effort.

Other Thoughts: The order was process by NewEgg in a very professional manner, and a string of well coordinated e-mails followed the order up to the time when the drive was received.

Pros: - Massive 1.5TB drive
- One of the best price/TB to date
- Good speed (for a USB2.0 drive)

Cons: - Bulky adapter
- Spool up time from standby

Other Thoughts: I ordered mine and received it in two weeks, and I've already moved basically everything from my 2.5year old 500GB Buffalo (which was also pretty good). I've pretty much run my files directly from it and I've had it on ever since I took out of the box. I've noticed that if I haven't accessed for a few minutes it goes into standby, and it does take a few seconds before it picks up again. It's not really bad since it is for power-saving purposes, but it is quite noticeable at times. One would also notice that most OSes report it as 1.36TB, this is normal as they actually report in tebibytes TiB (2^40 or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes) rather than terabytes TB (10^12 or 1,000,000,000,000), so 1.5TB would come out as 1.36TiB. So it's not really something to complain about :-) I'll probably do an update if anything else comes up.

Pros: Great Price

Cons: A little slow

Pros: Sleek, Space Odyssey-looking black box. So far, does everything it's supposed to do - STORE FILES! Also liked that it was pre-formatted for NTFS. Apparently this isn't always the case on other external drives.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: As my first Newegg purchase, this item shipped FAST! I love the website too. Makes me wonder why others are so complicated in comparison.

Pros: Sleek and compact. Very Modern looking and easily stackable

Cons: Not adequately ventilated, stays very warm. Also prone to HDD failure. I have had my data corrupted twice and the system prompts me that the HDD needs to be formatted prior to use.

Other Thoughts: BACK UP YOUR DATA! Use this at your own risk, it works great up until the HDD fails from overheating.

Pros: * Looks great - clean black finish and small white activity LED.
* Very very quiet, hardly any spinup or activity noise at all.
* Good performance for a USB drive, around 30MB/s in my informal testing.

Cons: * Sides are glossy and attract fingerprints.
* Included usb cable is only about 3ft long
* No power button. (I personally don't mind this, but it's worth mentioning.)

Other Thoughts: Newegg shipped quickly and well-packed as always. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a cheap way to get more storage.

Pros: This is the perfect external HD. Works as if an internal. Best for the money.

Cons: None!

Pros: Attractive (IMHO) appearance; very low cost / megabyte of storage; as much speed as the USB 2.0 spec. allows (480 Mbs); no installation effort required beyond plugging in the PSU and USB cables supplied; formatted instantly via XP X64's NTFS quick-format command prompt (a more cautious approach using the basic NTFS format command will take a very long time to complete); in actual use neither this drive nor the other 1.5 TB WD drive I have encountered any problem in storing or retrieving/playing 1.5 TB of video files; even after hours of recording or playback, the housing is barely warm to the touch; the drive is extremely quiet.

Cons: Clearly the drive's top data rate is slow compared with SATA-II drives, but that is inevitable given the USB 2.0 interface. I didn't benchmark its seek rates, but I suspect these also are relatively slow: this is not a problem when writing or reading long sequential-access files. I would however recommend defragmenting the drive regularly - this can be a relatively slow process if done infrequently.

Other Thoughts: This is the WDBAAU00-NESN 15HBK model. not the WDE1UBK1500N MODEL. Both are 1.5TB capacity, USB 2.0 interface, but the latter has rubbery plastic caps permanently covering the housing ends, a few small holes for vents and a blue power / activity light and a ribbed housing whereas the former has no end caps, no vents, a white power/activity light, smooth glossy black sides and a textured-effect top for the housing. I have both drives - there is no difference in capacity and no obvious difference in performance.