Western Digital WDG1U3200 My Book Essential Edition 320GB External Hard Drive

Installation:  Couldn’t be easier. With the included USB cable, it’s as simple as connecting it to an open USB 2.0 port on your computer, and plugging it in. The drive automatically starts and stops based on your computer being on or off, so you never have to worry about on/off switches on the drive itself. A handy green circular LED on the front tells you whether the drive is powered on, and will flash during heavy disk activity.

Form Factor: In the style of a book on your bookshelf, the Western Digital My Book drives are easily stacked or placed side by side on your computer desk, or even on a shelf. The top of the device looks like a cheese-grater, with numerous slit-like openings to allow for excellent air flow and heat dissipation. Rubber feet keep the "book" secure on your desk.

Performance: If you aren’t planning to frequently connect and disconnect the device from your computer, in Windows XP, check the device configuration for the drive and be sure the performance (write caching) option is set. You’ll enjoy the improved performance you get from the drive. Just like many hard drives, this one powers down after lack of use, but spins up quickly when you access it again.

Included Software: On the drive you will find some Google.com tools (Picasa, Desktop, Toolbar), which you can install or ignore. Most people have this software anyway, so I personally ignored it. The drive also contains the Western Digital backup software, which you might want to copy over to an internal drive and keep, before formatting this one, and I do recommend that. The drive comes pre-formatted as FAT32, but I prefer to have NTFS, so a quick format was the way to go.

Other Options: Western Digital also offers a Premium Edition of this product, that includes some additional features, namely a FireWire port, and an additional green circle on the front that meters drive capacity. Frankly, I don’t need to know the drive capacity visually, and USB 2.0 is fast enough for my needs. The price difference is not huge, so make that determination for yourself.

Summary: This is a quiet, fast, and attractive looking drive, that will add significant offline storage to any computer or laptop system. Western Digital is known for superior technology, and it’s the only kind of drive that I buy for my computers.

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Vista usage: work out fine in Vista.