Western Digital My Book Essential

Device encrypted – If the exterior is faulty you cannot plug it into anything else as it is encrypted and nothing can pick it up. And the Western Digital customer support is woeful, not answering email and their customer service line makes you wait for 10 minutes minimum only to have their representative more often then not, hang up on you. Now we are unable to recover important work documents and worse, we cannot retrieve the photos of my little daughter's first year. When it worked it was fine Terrible customer service

Bad – I got this hard drive on a bargain and I backed up all my files there. In the rear of the unit where you plug the USB cable, that little usb port is only connected to the PCB board inside the enclosure by a few soldered pins, which are very sensitive and very fragile. If you move the HDD around while connected, the cable will bend and break those pins resulting in the breakage of the whole connector! (which means you cant connect the unit anymore). I only had the unit for 3 months and to be honest I did not move it that hard. SO the deal is, it can be fixed by warranty, however you loose all your data! If you open the enclosure, and take the HDD out to retrieve your data, you loose your warranty! (Under WD guidelines, warranty will be voided if the enclosure is opened). I had very important files in that HDD so I decided to remove it from the enclosure however I could not retreive my files because the drive was formatted in a special format and can be recognised only with the enclosure on. I was furious and I complained to WD, who thankfully send me a replacement HDD, however I lost all my data forever. - The cheapest 1.5TB external storage solution (picked it up for $149 at officeworks)

- Looks great and easy to use

- 3 years warranty which is useless for the problem Described below! - USB connection at the back of the unit, is soldered in a small PCB board, and any movement whatsoever while the Drive is plugged in, will make the usb port bend and eventually break. It happened to me and I lost all my files!!

- Cheap enclosure design will break easily

- DO NOT RELY ON THIS DRIVE FOR A SECURE BACKUP!