First, the packaging. Western Digital (WD) does an impressive job of securely packaging this hard drive with a minimal amount of waste. There's no unnecessary plastic or cardboard.
This 2 TB drive has to be plugged into the wall socket as well as powered with a USB cable. One of my major complaints about electronics products are the ridiculously short power cables. This My Book Essential External Hard Drive has an impressively long power cable - which is a plus for any experienced tech user. WD figures the customer is smart enough not to accidentally strangle themselves with a long power cord. So many products I buy have a cord that is so short as to make the item almost unusable. 5 stars to WD for trusting the intelligence of the buyers of their products.
Here are the results I obtained after testing out this drive:
The drive did not have to be formatted before I used it. It worked with my Windows XP-based computer right out of the box.
It took approximately 70 minutes to copy 35 GB of data from my old external drive to this one. This is impressively fast. The manufacturer claims it should take seven minutes and 42 seconds to copy 2000 standard MP3 songs onto the hard drive. These times are using the standard USB 2.0 technology. The drive is also designed to accommodate USB 3.0.
I didn't check out or try to install the backup software or the other extras that came with the product - these installation files are located already copied onto the drive. Another 5 stars to WD for not forcing this software onto the computer user with an automatic installation setup. My impression is that WD trusts the intelligence of the consumer to make their own decisions about how to best use the product. A toll-free international help line is available for anyone who does need some assistance with the installation of the hard drive.
The outside of the package mentions that the data on this drive is capable of being secured with a password and also comes with a 2-year limited warranty. There's almost no product literature included inside the package - only a small fold-out booklet which refers the customer to the company's website for a user manual.
A drive with this many features should probably come with more basic literature inside the box - such as, there is a physical cable lock port option - you can secure this drive with some kind of an external lock (the locking device isn't included with the drive) and there are no other clues inside or outside the package to explain this security option.
So this drive was easy to install right out of the box and it worked without any difficulties or technical headaches. I would definitely recommend this product.
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