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: Software stored in Firmware and Proprietary USB Cable & Connector
Summary: 1 Stars
I pre-ordered this drive months before it was available because I thought it would be just like the traditional WD My Passport drives that I have recommended to so many people. I use these drives on my Mac systems and I now no longer recommend the WD My Passport series to anyone. Instead, I strongly recommend against them. First, I generally do not like the software that is included with external hard drives. Whenever I buy a new drive I immediately format it to get rid of any of the extra software. When I first plugged this drive in, I discovered an additional volume was loaded that contains the software. I thought maybe this was like some other drives I had used that want you to format the rest of the drive to match your system or something like that. I tried formatting and whatever method I could think of to get rid of that extra volume. A quick search revealed that this volume is built into the firmware and is always there whether you like it or not. I DO NOT like being forced to have an extra volume around. This software problem was bad but on top of that, WD had to use a tiny little USB connector that I have never seen before which is totally incompatible with all of my mini USB cables. To make it even worse, this connector is so loose and flimsy that if I move the cable the slightest bit, it falls out. This is not acceptable for a portable hard drive. Western Digital is going the wrong way! Avoid their external portable drives like the plague!! Please bring back the older style drives that used normal mini USB cables and did not have any software that you cannot get rid of!!Customer Review: Great drive for the price
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this to use with my Mac with Time Machine. It comes with a built-in firmware enabled partition, in addition to the main partition you'll use for your data, that contains Windows backup software. Seeing how I use a Mac and Time Machine, I don't need nor want this software.
Western Digital provides software to disable it on Windows boxes but not on Macs. Here is how to disable it on a Mac. Note that you can't technically delete it, you can only disable it.
1. connect the drive so both the data partition and the cd partition show up.
2. eject the data partition by dragging it to the Trash or by control-clicking on it and selecting eject
3. do not unplug the drive, leave the faux cd partition on the Desktop
4. open up /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and run this command. make sure you're logged into your Mac as a user with Admin privileges. copy and paste the below line in its entirety into the Terminal window, then press Return:
sudo sh -c "echo UUID=`diskutil info /Volumes/WD\ SmartWare/ | grep 'UUID' | awk '{print $NF}'` none hfs rw,noauto 0 0 >> /etc/fstab"
enter your password when prompted.
4. close out of Terminal and unplug the drive
now when you plug the drive back in, this faux cd partition won't mount. it still is there technically on the drive but your Mac will no longer mount it. there is no real harm in not following these steps but some people don't like having to look at the "WD SmartWare" icon on their desktop.
alternapop.com
Customer Review: Good drive with a few annoying issues
Summary: 3 Stars
General comments:
First of all, this drive is really small, a little bit heavier, thicker and wider than the previous generation Passport but much much shorter. It has almost a square shape.
Upon pluggin in, you will have 930 GB free space, which is not that bad.
The driver is made of shiny plastic which is very finger print prone.
The cable use the new micro-usb standard, so all of your previous Passport USB cable will not work.
Annoying problems:
A virtual CD contains all the software for the drive will automatically load every time you plugin the drive. This virtual CD is not removable, even if you format or re-partition the drive. Western Digital might release a new firmware in the future to allow you to remove it, but nothing is certain yet. As of now, you will have to turn off Auto-Load in the computer to stop receiving annoy pop-ups if you decide not to install the software. As for the software itself, if you chose to install, is very good. The interface is very simple to easy to use.
Also another annoying problem that I have with this drive is that I cannot safely remove it.
And if I unplug it without using safely remove, the next time the drive is plug in, Windows doesn't recognize it, only the virtual CD is shown. This can only be fixed by going to Windows Task Manager and stop all the running processes that start with "WD...".
Summary:
Overall, pretty good drive, small size, large capacity with a few annoying problems.
Customer Review: A really big hard drive
Summary: 3 Stars
I purchased this drive because I have a huge photo and music library. I also thought that this drive could be a swap for an internal laptop drive.
First the pros. It is one terabyte and fairly fast. I wish it was available with firewire as it seems to top out at about 12Mb/sec on transfers
The cons. It has a different USB connector than the mini usb connector with earlier WD portable 2.5 inch drives. Now, that means I need yet another cable that to use this drive.
It comes with a non erasable partition that functions as a virtual CD with software for both Mac and PC for backup and security. I guess that enough people complained about this "feature" that WD published a firmware update and a program that will dismount this virtual CD. I haven't tried it.
The hard drive is 12.5 mm form factor, which would work in my laptop. However, there is a custom controller board with ONLY a usb interface. This is not a SATA drive. So, unlike prior generations of the WD portable hard drives which were laptop drives with a usb bridge board, there is no way to use this drive in a laptop. You ( I ) will have to shell out the extra 50 dollars for a 1tb laptop drive with the correct interface.
I was able to wipe and reformat the drive and it does boot Snow Leopard for my laptop. I was able to back up my laptop, and all my music and photos and still have about 550 Gb left over. I know that it will be more expensive, but I will get the firewire 800 version of this drive, if it ever comes out.
Customer Review: Bundled Software Unremoveable!
Summary: 3 Stars
Ok so here's the deal. WD used to sell ordinary hard drives. Good prices. Decent reliability. Just hard drives like everyone else. I own two of the earlier generation 500GB drives and I love them. That was then.
Now they think they're "adding value" by including software on the drive for backup and whatnot.
Fine.
On the 1TB drive, my Mac says over 660 MB is being used for this.
You can not erase this data. It appears as a "virtual" CD on the Mac Desktop.
The hardware inside the drive protects this virtual CD from being altered in any way.
You can run Disk Utility all you want. It won't remove it.
WD says it's being "green" by including this on the HD and not a CD.
Fine. Admirable.
After a lot of customer uproar, they released a utility to HIDE the partition.
But you don't get your space back.
This partition by the way can "update itself" over the internet.
Scared yet?
Right now, if you want to get ALL the storage space you paid for, you need to void your warranty, open the case, connect the bare drive to a computer's serial port and use an advanced utility to reformat the drive.
[...]
You'll see a lot of anger on the WD community forums. Just be aware of this. You may not care. I do. Many do.
I remember LaCie, Iomega, and even the old SyQuest including their own software on new storage media. But you could erase it and get right back to your work. This is ridiculous.