Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive (Midnight Black)
by Western Digital
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive (Midnight Black)
Customer Review: WD has still not fixed the issues in all these reviews!
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive was ordered for me by my department to use at work, so unfortunately I didn't get to do my research beforehand and read about this drive's issues and customer complaints. I'm writing this review for a brand new drive (received July 15) to hopefully clear up some misunderstandings that seem to still exist on this and other sites; since WD did make some changes since the drive was first released, some people seem to be claiming everything is "fixed", or if people would just format their drives there would be no problems. But I can tell you we will not be ordering any more of these, and we're going with the Seagate Expansion Portable 2.5" USB drives to replace the one I got, and for future orders. I personally will not buy another WD product; I think they were deceptive in implying that they were listening to their customers by making changes, and not much changed at all. Here's what I discovered after several hours and four system restores.
First, the good. It is a beautiful drive, has a nice piano black gloss plastic finish, is compact and lightweight. It only needs one cable for power + data (micro-USB, as others have indicated, which I personally view as a con). It is priced at the same level, or slightly lower than, competitor drives with the same form factor and capacity.
Now, the bad. There are enough Amazon reviews that talk about the micro-USB cable, so I won't go on and on about it here, but do realize it is very short (about 0.5 m). I didn't have any issues with loose connectors--it felt really solid and took quite a bit of force to unplug from the back of the drive. But it is a lot easier to find mini-USB cables of useful length instead of micro-USB, especially since I already have a bunch of mini-USB cables from previous USB drives and for recharging and connecting PS3 controllers.
The worst part of the drive is what is installed on it, or more accurately in it, as much of it cannot be removed. Here's the breakdown of my experience.
- When I got it, I sort of got the heads up that it came with a bunch of stuff that would try to install on the PC when you plug in the drive (we don't have admin rights on the PCs at work) so take it home first and wipe it. No problem, I thought, I'll just remove all the partitions in Linux and reformat. GPartEd showed one ntfs partition; I deleted it and created a new blank one, and rebooted into Windows 7 (all on my home PC).
- Once Windows came up, I plugged in the drive, and it tried loading four drivers: the generic USB mass storage driver, a WD device driver, the "WD SES Device USB Device" (a WD proprietary, non-standard SCSI enclosure services driver), and the WD virtual CD driver that everyone is complaining about. Searching around for this on the WD forums, I read that a WD employee stated the virtual CD software is loaded onto non-volatile memory in the HDD electronics (it said "flash" but I am not sure if this is additional NAND flash in the drive or just part of the firmware), which is why it survives formatting and partition deletion/removal. So this software installed, but the SES driver did not (apparently it was looking for it on the HDD itself). I could copy files back and forth without installing that driver, but the red X in the system tray would not go away, and there was a definite lag in file transfers (more on that later). This drive should only require the standard mass storage driver; that is not the case. Finally, I couldn't have all those drivers on my home PC just for a removable hard drive, and there was no way I could do so at work... system restore number 1.
- If you follow WD's instructions to update the drive's firmware and install the updated WD SmartWare software, it will let you disable (not remove) the virtual CD "feature" of the drive. The obvious irony is that you have to install their software in order to remove it (thereby destroying the village in order to save it?). Did this, removed everything... and system restore number 2.
- Back off to Linux to wipe the drive again, and into Windows 7 to plug it in. (I should mention I never got any of the "helpful drive features" in Ubuntu.) This time, it only installs the mass storage driver and WD device driver, and again tries to install the SES driver and fails. This is not going to work at work--I can't install drivers on that PC. It's becoming clear to me at this point that this drive isn't going to work out, but I thought I'd try a couple more things to help others avoid some of the pitfalls of this drive. I searched the SES driver and found people were either complaining that that function of the drive could not be removed OR disabled, or people were just installing the SES drivers in Windows manually. Again, can't do this at work. Once again, folks, deleting/reformatting/partitioning the drive DOES NOT HELP. This is in the drive's firmware and/or flash and can't be removed. The proof is that a simple toggle re-enables the virtual CD and loads all that software on your system again. Probably not good from a security/privacy standpoint either... who knows what else they put in there. As I wanted to undo this latest attempt by Windows to install device drivers... system restore number 3.
- The last thing I wanted to do was try it in a PS3 (after formatting as fat32), as I read that the drivers interfered with it being recognized as a mass storage device by a non-PC. I found this not to be the case, at least with the virtual CD "feature" disabled. The PS3 recognized the drive without issues. It might be a nice drive for that use case, but I'm sure the Seagate works just as well for this, without all the problems when plugging back into a PC. This drive really is a sleek, nice piece of hardware... completely broken by "functionality" that can't be removed. Just look at the WD-provided product information above all the reviews--they are clearly touting all the useful features and functionality of the drive backup, encryption, etc. without revealing what is actually inside the device. The good thing is that all of this functionality is built into Windows already (Windows 7 Enterprise/Ultimate even have removable drive encryption, or add it yourself for free with truecrypt). You don't need any of the software that comes with the drive. I can understand they're trying to differentiate their product, but to make it literally impossible to remove it is a terrible mistake. Many people buying these devices probably have a fair amount of technical competence, word will get around eventually, and IT shops (at least) will stop buying these altogether.
- I plugged it back into the PC, and since the drive was still formatted fat32 I wanted to see if the transfer rate improved. Nope, it still hung periodically. I especially noticed this with large files (approx. 2GB). It would sit there and wait about 10-15 seconds, then the file transfer would commence (yes, I have other USB drives that don't do this, so it's not my system). The actual transfer rate seemed OK once it started, but the delays made the transfer take almost twice as long as it should have (smaller files had smaller delays, but they added up to a longer total delay over the course of the file transfer). This was the same I observed with the drive formatted as ntfs when originally tried. Maybe if you manually install the SES drivers, this improves. But I got tired of doing system restores and only wanted to do one more to get back to a known clean configuration (ergo system restore number 4).
- I did take it to work and plug it into my PC running Windows XP pro, and I got the exclamation mark with the SES driver. Of course, I couldn't install it on that PC, although the drive seemed to work with the lag issues discussed above.
In summary, nothing has been done to improve this drive since all these reviews have been written, except now it uses a tighter-fitting micro-USB interface (not sure if this is the cable itself or part of the drive), and they have released updated software that can disable the virtual CD device. They have not made it possible to remove the virtual CD, or remove or disable the SES "functionality". I only hope they will learn from all the returns they are sure to receive, and to not do this in future products, because the drive case and form factor are both really nice.
Customer Review: WD tried & failed to fix 2 serious issues. Reduced from 5 to 2 stars.
Summary: 2 Stars
Feb 2010 update (original review follows)...
After months of negotiating with Western Digital and trying to work through two serious design flaws with this drive, and after experiencing a horribly botched attempt to correct the problem (I still don't have a working drive...Even new shipments in Feb 2010 have the same problem!!), I am reducing the user rating from 5 to 2 stars. It is truly a pitty, because if it weren't for these two KILLER problems, this would be one superb product with a terrific hardware platform.
As author of the leading review and most recommended user tip, I really struggled with this rating. I don't relish in damaging WDs reputation - even in my little corner of influence. But recently, WD has made the problems worse by sending their loyal customers on a wild goose chase. I can no longer recommend the My Passport Essential SE drives. This is the 2nd time that I have changed the rating for this product line. I have also changed the title of the original review --
Original Title: "WD has fixed BOTH issues that raised such ire"
New Title: "WD tried & failed to fix 2 serious issues. Reduced from 5 to 2 stars"
For complete details about WD attempts to correct the nightmare of this model, see my response to Cuppa on page 2 (Feb 16, 2010). Here is my original review, which although critical of initial marketing decisions had awarded the prouct 5 stars...
What were the product managers at Western Digital thinking?! How could any vendor get it SO-O-O very wrong in this enlightened consumer era?...
1. Bloatware / Crapware -FIXED (but see Feb 15 update)
WD tried to UN-commoditize their new My Passport SE drives by forcing a software application (and an annoying chain of Windows events) on anyone who connects the new SE series of high-capacity external drives (750GB and 1TB editions of their popular 2.5" external drives). Let's face it! WD is a high-end manufacturer. Their product needn't be distinguished by forced aps that treat customers like sheep (and like idiots!). The My Passport SE series is sufficiently distinguished by style, hardware encryption, value, and durability. No need to fill it with crapware.
Anyway, I have given WD full credit (restoring 5 stars), for their November decision to fully back down by offering a utility to hide the extra partition and restore standardized operation. The other peeve of early reviewers had to do with the cable. Some reviewers claimed that WD had switched to a proprietary scheme. Not so! But they did make the move to a Micro-USB interface instead of the earlier Mini-USB. It was inevitable. The switch has already swept through the phone industry (Nokia, Motorola, LG, Novatel... The list goes on). Power supply makers are all redoing their wares with this new smaller connector. Many power suppliers simply have a standard PC-USB connector on the housing. Simply attach whatever pig-tail cable suits your hardware.
2. USB Cable -FIXED (but see Feb 15 update)
Western Digital had packaged a faulty USB cable with October shipments of the My Passport SE series drives. I know that they are sill in stock at retailers because I received the faulty cable in December. Other buyers at my company recieved them in Jan-Feb 2010. The flakey cables are shipped with drive Part# beginning WDBAB... To distinguish the newer cable, look for the photos and explanation from other reviewers. WD will replace the early USB cable upon request. Unfortunately, it may take a few phone calls. The support staff have a memo about the problem, but they may not know how to locate it. I wonder if WD is proactively reaching out to registered owners (?!).
For both issues #1 and #2, the bottom line is that WD listens to customers and to these reviews. For a brand new product, I am cutting them some slack. I consider both problems to be reasonably and promptly addressed.
3. Features
Sans the bloatware (some people like it and some do not), the drive has one very cool feature: 128 bit hardware encryption. Don't even think about not using it. Your data is yours alone. Keep it that way. Just be sure that you escrow the key and give it to someone you love. Otherwise, someday your data will be unrecoverable forever under several very likely scenarios.
4. Cost
Amazon and B&H Video are price leaders on this model. They beat other reputable retailers by $20~25. As of Febuary 2010 - depending upon daily fluctuation & temporary promotions - the 1TB model sells for $179-195, or just That's 18c per GB. Larger format 3.5" external drives are faster and about half the cost per GB. But they are larger than a paper back book and require external power.
5. Regarding other recent Geek questions:
a) The drive is 5400 RPM and easily powered by a single USB connector. It does not require a 2-headed cable for USB hubs within spec.
b) Drive makers introduce ever higher capacity external drives before they offer similar models as an upgrade/replacements component to your notebook PC. Therefore, some individuals will purchase the latest external drive with an intention to REMOVE it from the drive housing (and the USB interface), and then drop it into their laptop PC. But...
But unlike other models, this drive cannot be used to replace the internal drive within a notebook PC -- not even if you have the full 12mm height. Unlike other WD My Passport drives, the drive unit within the external housing does *NOT* have a standard SATA interface! This time, WD created a proprietary internal spec to squeeze the drive into an even smaller external form.
Ellery's Byline:
I frequently clarify selected tech reviews & forums. You may write to me: Ellery (at) starbus (dot) com
Customer Review: An easy way to carry around an extra TB or two of storage...
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a long term WD-Passport user and looked at these drives with a bit of trepidation given the reviews that I've seen here and elsewhere. However, I carry around a few 512GB drives and one of them was getting a bit low on space, so I thought it time to upgrade.
I like the new WD drives because they are smaller and sleeker than the older WD Passport drives. Well, I should be a bit careful with my words. Compared to my old 512GB WD Passport, thew new drive is slightly wider and thicker, but about a half inch shorter. It is also about 1 ounce heavier (7.2 oz vs 6.2 oz on my old drive).
I had no problems plugging in the drive and just installing the driver without having to install their "SmartWare" software (an oxymoron if I ever saw one...) by just selecting the device in the hardware management, selecting update driver, and browsing to the "Extras\WD SES Device Driver" on the CD image that was mounted when I plugged in the drive.
Later, I installed the software just to see how it worked and was not impressed. However, I'm a long term computer hack that doesn't want hand-holding software. I could see how this software could be useful for the standard off-the-shelf windows configuration that most average users have on their system.
So I uninstalled the software and use my own copy/backup routines.
Some have complained about the lost space due to the software being stored/managed in a protected partition that you can't delete on the drive. I'm not so concerned about losing a few hundred megabits on a terabyte drive and it isn't uncommon for manufacturers to have protected partitions for software restoration/debugging (Dell has a small protected partition on most, if not all, of the systems they sell to be used for diagnostics should there be a problem. Yeah, with Dell, if you know what you're doing you can go erase that partition (which I used to do in my younger days when every byte of disk space mattered, but no longer feel that the return is worth the cost/effort).
Some have also complained about the connector. It has changed from a standard mini-USB to a micro-USB. It is still a standard connector, just a smaller one that most small electronics are moving to (and the phone industry appears to be moving to standardize upon. My other micro-USB connectors that I have for several other devices with the same connector all work fine with this drive.
I don't know if my experience is that different from others because WD has fixed their issues in later releases of the drive, or they have more clearly explained the resolutions for issues that they've been experiencing or if I'm just less concerned about the little stuff that doesn't have an impact on how I will use the drive.
All in all, I'm happy with the device and don't have a problem recommending them.
BTW - WD has several cases out there for this drive. I've purchased both Western Digital Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Portable Drives WDBABJ0000NBK-NRSN - Black and Western Digital Soft Carrying Case for My Passport Portable Hard Drives WDBABK0000NSL-WASN (Silver). I find I prefer the soft case because it is sized a bit better for this drive and is smaller than the hard case. However, if you're going to bang the drive around a lot, you might consider the hard case as I think it would provide a bit better protection (I'm not too hard on my drives, though I carry them around everywhere and I travel a lot).
Customer Review: Western Digital (sucks) SmartWare
Summary: 1 Stars
After purchasing this drive, you will find a nice little surprise... it's advertised as a feature but if you want to delete it... think again...
Who's brilliant idea was it to suck up 663.3MB with this software. You can't even delete it. They said they listen to their users and responded. Providing software to hide the volume is a half-assed response on partially deaf ears (must have gone deaf about the part where users are asking how to DELETE their software). They only heard what they wanted to hear. You are still missing over half a gigabyte (512MB = .5GB). Unusable, and do they think their solution is the best one and/or it is something ALL users want.
This "SmartWare" is Western Digital's way to inflict their backup and security solution onto unsuspecting consumers. You know about it because it is prominently advertised as a great new feature but you are in for a rude awakening if you have no need for it and want to delete it and claim back precious disk space. The software appears on your desktop as a separate volume. Don't want to use it or see it, let's just eject it... whoops, it's back, you cannot eject it even after the main volume is ejected, WTF is that about.
To get "around" this, you have to run two separate apps that you download from their site. One is to update the drive's firmware first and the second app allows you to hide and unhide the volume. Backup and security software is supposed to run silently in the background. It needs to stay out of your way not jump in your face, are you listening Western Digital. This is what happens when proprietary gear heads get locked together in a dark room. A monkey with a Ouija board could have seen the backlash with a bonehead decision like this. If there wasn't a backlash why would they provide software to hide the volume.
Funny how the marketing group decided to exclude this little tidbit of information from consumers. Sales figure would be much lower if they prominently marketed this feature. "By the way, we have included WD SmartWare, an ingenious method to force our way on you because 1) You cannot remove this software, 2) You can only hide it so the usable space itself is still 663.3MB less than advertised, 3) The SmartWare mounts on your desktop as a Virtual Drive and you cannot eject, if you try it will simply remount itself and annoy, irritate and bug the crap out of you".
The SmartWare volume itself says it is 237.5MB but Get Info reports 663.3MB is used, the rest is used for the SmartWare version for Windows and other overhead. That's right, you get two copies, what a bonus!! what a waste of disk space!!.
Another irritating thing is the plug that connects to the drive, it's proprietary, you cannot use a standard micro or mini USB plug, it also does not stay securely connected. Turning the device over disconnects the drive and then you have to fiddle with it to reconnect. Why would you do this, you are asked to verify the serial number of your device before you try to hide the SmartWare volume. This is dangerous, if you have a backup running and you move the device because it is in the way on your desk, it may disconnect.
Remember, this is a portable device, designed to be moved around (i.e.., taken with you if needed) so it will not always be returned to the same place on your desk. Another FAIL for Western Digital. Quality Control and Quality Assurance took a back seat here.
All of management needs to go, with thinking like this running through the top, you know you are in trouble. I'm going to vote with my wallet, Western Digital just lost a customer.
Customer Review: Low-power, low-heat, a bit of vibration though ...
Summary: 5 Stars
UPDATE (2010-Mar-11): I now added another 1TB unit. Same outstanding quality, including cable. No issues with software. The read-only, "flash" based virtual CD drive is there. I ignore the additional sr2 (sr0=dvd, sr1=1st WD, sr2=2nd WD) in Linux. In Windows, I assigned it another drive letter, which I reassigned in Disk Manager like anything else. Don't know what the big deal is, honestly. I'm increasing the stars to 5 now, because the first has been extremely reliable, and the new unit even has virtually no vibration at full seek (much better than any other 2.5" USB drive).
UPDATE (2010-Mar-03): I've now had this drive since they came out in the fall, and have made some 300-400 connections/disconnections. Micro-B is 10x better than Mini-B. I've even accidentally had it "dangling" from the cable, the "teeth" holds the drive solid, the connector doesn't bend, despite being thinner than Mini-B. Honestly, Micro-B is much better than Mini-B. The drive continues to be reliable, working in XP, Vista and Linux, with all sorts of filesystems. As far as "Safely Remove" .. *PEOPLE* ... do *NOT* leave Explorer open on the drive! That's your problem!
1) The cable is standard USB Micro-B ([...]). Micro-B has many advantages over the prior Mini-B, and the standard B has never been an option for 2.5" (or Blackberry or countless other, small devices).
2) It's the 3 x 333GB/platter, 2.5"x12mm design, for 999.5GB (930GiB). Suprisingly it's low-power and low-heat compared to my Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB and earlier Western Digital drives. However, I'm noting far more vibration. It's literally barely larger than the 2.5"x12mm inside, not as "long" as other 2.5" external drives, although clearly the extra 2.5mm of the drive makes it another 5mm (half cm) high overall.
3) Western Digital isn't the first vendor to include utilities in NAND EEPROM on a device. I have flash drives that do this as well. The diagnostics and support utilities are included in a device that looks like read-only optical drive #4 in the OS (e.g., CD-ROM #3 in Windows, with #0 being first, sr3 in Linux, sr0 being first). Frankly, I don't mind it. If you don't like it, use Windows' Disk Manager to change the drive letter. E.g., I use T: for the disk, W: for the utility image. My _only_ issue was that Western Digital did _not_ get their driver signed by Microsoft -- that's a _major_ oversight (so 3 stars).
4) No issues with Linux whatsoever (5 stars). In fact I only use the first 128GiB (137GB) for FAT32, cylinders 1-8192 (255/63 heads/sectors), which works with anything that supports FAT32 and even old 28-bit ATA (with the 8192cyl/128GiB/137GB limitation). The rest of the disk I use for UDF (which most Windows versions can at least read, and NT6 aka Vista/2008/7 can write as well) and Ext3 (Linux).
5) I don't recommend NTFS as it was never designed to be exchanged between systems, and you can only safely do such between Windows Server Domain Controllers of the same domain (long story) -- and Windows doesn't have a "read-only" mount option like Linux (let alone the Linux NTFS3g driver is safer than writing to NTFS from a Windows system that didn't create it). This option continues to be overlooked by Microsoft, while they are finishing off the new FAT standard. They should just support UDF better, and at least do a decent job with UDF 2.5 support in NT6 aka Vista/2008/7.