Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive (Midnight Black)
by Western Digital
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Our Price: $246.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $129.99 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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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: Western Digital, My Passport Essential SE, A Review
Summary: 4 Stars
A full review (with photos) is posted here: [...]
Introduction
We all probably have at least 2 or 3 of these floating around in our bags or homes. Portable USB drives are very useful but have been plagued by several issues. In the past they've been expensive, slow, low capacity, and not as "plug n' play" as they should be. The entire purpose of these drives is to store and transfer data with portable machines, so compatibility is mandatory.
The My Passport Essential SE helps all of these issues with its maximum 1tb capacity, improved USB interfaces for more reliable compatibility between machines, faster USB2 and USB3 interfaces, and with a $109 price on Amazon a very decent price for 1tb of portable storage.
Features
USB3
Now that they're offering USB3 models it makes absolutely no sense to save the $5 and get a USB2 model. You might not have USB3 ports today, but your next machine will surely have USB3 and the speed increase is considerable. Instead of the 15-20mbps of USB2, you can max out these drives with at nearly 50-60mbps with USB3. USB3 devices are backwards compatible with USB2 devices.
Size
These are perhaps a ½" wider and ½" less in length than many of the other like units on the market. The weight is small, the high impact plastic case promises extreme toughness, and there is even a small blue activity light. Small rubber feet keep the unit from sliding around on your desk.
WD SmartWare
This included software lets you manage your 1tb of space with several useful features from fully automatic backup to error checking. You don't need to use the software, but it's nice that it's included.
Password Protection
These drives can password encrypt your data on the fly. Pretty nice, but don't lose your password!
Performance
This is where it really matters. First, I can tell you that this drive automatically and easily connected, on the first try, to over 8 different machines I tried it with. This is the only USB powered drive I've tried with this level of compatibility.
Data transfer speeds depend on what type of data you're transferring, but speeds in excess of 55-60mbps are possible with the USB3 model. A huge improvement over USB2 models.
Power is supplied via the single USB cable/port used for data and works fine.
Summary
This is the easy part of this review. There isn't anything not to like about this drive. It's small, it's tough, it's fast, and it's lightweight. Best of all it's 100% compatible with everything I've connected it to. And it's cheap. What else could you ask for?
A three year warranty? Okay, it's yours. It comes with three year warranty and they have service centers in most major countries including Thailand. On several occasions WD USA has allowed me to transfer my warranty to Thailand and I've received full coverage.
Wonderful devices!
Customer Review: Terrible!!! - I used to trust WD...
Summary: 1 Stars
Many drives come with bloatware (software you did not want or ask for). But you can always in the past reformat or delete the software that you did not want or ask for. NOT ANYMORE! I did keep this drive in the end, but read on why I have no desire to recommend it...
1. The usb cable is a motorola "micro usb" style, and negates the possibility of having the cable if you need it quickly.
2. In order to explain the items to follow, I must point out that this drive is USB only- EVEN IF YOU OPEN IT UP > The hard drive has NO SATA or OTHER INTERFACE.. RIGHT ON THE BACKPLANE OF THE HARD DRIVE IS A USB PORT and nothing else. There is no possibility of doing a SATA connection for quick loading, backups, or anything of the sort.
3. The device wants a DRIVER installed, each and everytime it is connected. (works without them however.)
4. It appears as TWO USB devices, a CD-ROM and a HDD. (with the firmware upgrade and flash utility available at WD.Support you can make the CDROM portion "go away", but it still asks for DRIVERS!)
5. PC will not boot to this device (as it appears as multi devices- which one would you get if it did?)
6. It has no option for "external power" for those people with "weak usb ports" (I did not have a problem with it, but I know about the MAC's and cheap PC's with this current draw limitation.)
7. THE ONLY THING I COULD USE THIS DEVICE FOR WAS STORING MOVIES, otherwise useless. I only kept it because I did not need to pay 20% restocking fee when I could put it to use even if it sucked so bad I grit my face looking at it. But it will provide entertainment when I travel.
8. I had to order the "SEAGATE FREEAGENT" drive (also 1tb) which IS a REAL HARD DRIVE (SATA) inside a USB ENCLOSURE (2.5 inch) for the SAME PRICE- WHICH I CAN remove and use as other needs dictate in the future. (Yea they are twice height, but still get used in devices other than USB only!) - (This drive is also twice height of normal 2.5 drives, so if you are looking for a BETTER unit- go with SEAGATE.)
9. In the past WD has made a good name for themselves with the PASSPORT drives, and I own at least one of each color, and this is the last one EVER for me- since I know now the company is not on track with people who really need large storage but small devices. Apparantly they listened to a moron engineer who claimed to be able to save them a few dollars in production costs. Now they made one last sale, so that engineer may not have a job in the future- Unless Seagate sent the engineer to WD to destroy them- in which case he is doing an EXCELLENT job!
Good luck if you decide to buy this- It is a pain in the !!!!
Customer Review: Great portable hard drive but with unwanted "features"
Summary: 3 Stars
I've owned about 10 WD Passport drives over the past 5 years, ranging from 100GB to this 1TB one. I basically upgraded for the increased capacity, and I was expecting the same great portable USB hard drive I've come to expect from Western Digital. And that's pretty much what I got.
BUT ... This drive is different from previous Passport drives. First, it doesn't use a standard mini-usb cable, it uses a different type of usb cable/connector I've not seen before. I have about 10 of the standard mini-usb cables, and use them to charge/sync a whole host of devices from my digital camera, mp3 player, Garmin GPS, etc. It's nice to be able to share a cable with multiple devices, and until now I've been able to do that with all my WD Passport drives. Now, however, I have to make sure I always keep the cable that came with the drive, and if I misplace it I can't just interchange it with another cable. In my mind, moving away from the standard mini-usb cable is a HUGE oversight on WD's part! (thus the "1 star" for Connections)
Even more annoying, however, is the "WD SmartWare" software that comes EMBEDDED IN THE FIRMWARE of the hard drive! Yes, that's right, you plug this thing in and in addition to seeing the hard drive in Windows Explorer, it creates a virtual CD drive and then autoplays to start up SmartWare every time you plug in the drive. All I can say is, "WTF Western Digital!" If you are going to include software with your hard drive, at least let me install it if I want it and delete it if I don't -- why are you forcing me to run your software every time I plug in the drive, why are you installing a virtual device on my computer that I don't want, and why did you embed it into the firmware with essentially no (easy) way to remove it?!? Wow, I don't know what you guys are smoking but this is probably the last WD Passport I'm going to buy! (thus the "1 star" on Software)
I've come to just expect a great, reliable, portable USB drive from Western Digital. If that's what you are looking for, go buy an earlier model that uses a standard mini-usb cable and doesn't have the "SmartWare" embedded into it!
BTW, if you are like me and own this drive and are annoyed with the virtual CD it creates and don't want it, go to Device Manager and find the virtual drive (listed with other CD/DVD drives), right click on it and disable it. That will keep it from running whenever you plug it in. However, if you plug it into a new computer, be prepared for it to install the virtual CD and autoplay the Smartware setup wizard all over again. Seriously, WD?!? Seriously?
Customer Review: I feel cheated.
Summary: 1 Stars
I feel cheated.
It's small and nice but that's all. When I buy a external drive with 1 TR capacity I expect to get a external drive 1 TR capacity, but WD is not selling that, we get a drive with a unusable partition filled with a terrible software called SmartWare, manuals and some other stuff, in my case o lost about 650 MB, not much I agree but this is just not honest, there nothing nowhere warning the customer that fact. It is just impossible to get rid of that partition and what is in it, should be my choice to use, save or delete any software, documents etc but I'm been forced to accept a part of the drive I bought been blocked. That is also a "virtual" drive that is mounted and you can't really get rid if it, you can "hide" it but it still there, that's ludicrous.
And the software, the "SmartWare", that's possible one of the worst piece of software ever imposed on customers, check the forum WD community and you will find out how bad that software is and how many people got in to trouble because of it. Once installed it runs as TSR and there is nothing you can do about it, why I can't choose to actually use the software to backup or whatever I choose when I choose? Why it should be always active? In my case, and I was not the only one, my drive got blocked with a "password" impossible to remove, I did erased the drive more them 20 times, the "SmartWare" away to remove the password, it did not worked, I tried to "upgrade" the software just to find out that there is a known bug in the current "upgrade" version 1.3.0.16, from the forum:
There seems to be an issue with the smartware update to 1.3.0.16. Apparently this are the symptoms.
- It does not update (still shows old version)
- It deletes SmartWare from my PC/MAC (leaving a lonely empty smartware folder)
- It makes your VCD disappear
I got my old version, that came with the drive, removed, the new one not installed and the drive blocked. I contacted the support and after four days I got an answer with extensive instructions on how to get my drive unblocked. I took me more than four hours to finally get the drive unblocked and working, I guess I had luck many users on the forum with other problems did not.
If you have one of these and can't or don't want to return to the store my advise is: don't install or use SmartWare.
Customer Review: Smallest available portable 1TB storage with technological dead end
Summary: 2 Stars
Suffice it to say:
(+) small size
(-) USB interface directly integrated on hard drive's circuit board (I've uploaded two images for illustration)
(-) virtual CD crap ware, which (still!) can be just disabled but not removed
This drive could be an outstanding product but Western Digital messed it up on the home stretch. As of now this is the only 2.5" 1TB hard drive available. It uses the same 320GB platters than the Scorpio Blue WD6400BEVT 640GB but needs three of them to reach it's nominal capacity of 1TB. The price for the additional platter is a height of 12.5 mm, which makes it unusable for the majority of current notebooks. Of course this disadvantage is irrelevant for an external drive and the My Passport Essential 1TB is in fact the smallest portable 1TB storage solution available and my reason for up ranking it to two stars (otherwise it would be only one). The small size however is paid with a high prize: the drive's enclosure is just a tightly fitting plastic sleeve with no drive electronic at all. One usually would expect it to include the SATA to USB converter but this is not the case. Instead said converter is directly integrated in to the drive's circuit board, including the Micro-USB connector (see my images above). As a consequence this drive will always be limited to the USB 2.0 speed of approx 30 Mb/sec and cannot be moved to an USB 3.0 enclosure or SATA connector of any kind. This is of course a huge loss of potential since the SATA performance of this drive should be close to the above mentioned Scorpio Blue WD6400BEVT 640GB, which reaches write/read transfer rates of approx. 90 Mb/sec.
Another flaw is the virtual CD firmware, which reserves a small portion of storage for an extra hidden partition to emulate a virtual CD drive with WD drivers and software. Even after more than three months WD didn't manage to provide a software update, which can permanently delete this crap. The current WD Smartware version only allows to disable it. So the protected partition is still unavailable for storage and in addition every time the drive get's connected to a new Windows PC the user is molested by an unknown hardware installation and driver search dialog for the VCD part (to be fair I have to mention that the latter happens only one time after the driver installation has been manually aborted).