Customer Reviews

My Passport Essential WDMES5000 - Hard drive - 500 GB - external - Hi-Speed USB - cool silver

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm running a MacBook with Leopard (I bought the computer in Dec 2007) and this My Passport played nice. It is honestly plug-and-go, especially with Apple's Time Machine software. Take this HD out of the box, plug it in the Mac and it will take care of the rest. It could not be easier to back up your computer.

USB cable is a bit short, if I'm looking for things to gripe about, but if you have a spare firewire/USB cable you'll be fine.

I've never had a USB drive fail. Not only did this one fail, it did so in six months.

In my case, it was the controller that went bad. I broke the case and plugged the internal drive into a BLAC-X USB adapter and the drive itself worked fine. But so much for my portable (and pretty) drive now.

Other problems with this drive include it going to sleep and then never waking up. I would have to unplug the drive and plug it back in. It got to the point where I would have to do this 2 and 3 times, and finally today it no longer responded at all. I tried to connect it to another machine and it still failed, so it's not just my machine.

Based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend this drive.

I have used it for 6 months now and it has worked flawlessly as Time Machine backup drive. I wish the speed was a little faster, to some extent, hampered by the speed of USB 2 standard. It takes more than an hour to back up 320 Gb MacBook hard drive. I used it first in my MacBook and now it does not work with my Windows XP computers and I see that it is formatted as Mac OS Extended (case Sensitive, Journaled). I am not sure whether it came like that or Mac OS changed the formatting without me being aware.

Prior to this, I had used Western Digital WDXMS1200TN Passport 120 GB USB 2.0 2.5-Inch Portable Hard Drive for 3 years, again, without any problems with Windows XP and Mac OS. But I used that one with Windows XP first and then it needed to be reformatted as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled) to work with Mac as Time Machine. The drive still works well after three years, but I had to reformat for the second time as MS DOS (Fat 32) to be able to use with both Mac OS & Windows XP as just an external hard drive, not Time Machine backup drive. WD Sync software for Windows XP backup that it came pre-installed with was painfully slow and imperfect and basically useless.

In the past I have used a Fantom hard drive that died in a few months and two Lacie hard drives, which still work but are noisy.

This Passport drive is very sleek, light, small, portable, quiet, USB powered, reliable and works well with both Windows and Mac OS with proper formatting. If you want to use with both, format as MS DOS (Fat 32); for Mac OS Time Machine format as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled); and for Windows use only format as NTFS.

Bought this little portable hard drive to store my photos and empty my cards while traveling. also to be able to carry my collection with me. Just plug it in and start using it. Easy! Fast! Compact!

I am using this to back up my iTunes library. No problems with it so far. I have always had good luck with WD products.

The shape and style are great, very easy to handle and storage almost anywhere, but the best is the elegant design with an excellent size, you can just put in your jacket's pocket to travel with it like a little PDA. I think the color is very elegant and easy to clean just with a little tissue, without the problem of leaving marks like the old versions.

In the matter of performance, it's ok, the little USB light show's you when the hard drive is working, and also when you can detach it from the computer in the safe mode (so that is very useful, cause sometimes after you detach de driver in the computer, the hard drive still working for a few seconds or maybe more time, so that's very annoying in the older versions of this product line).

The speed is the same, I mean its good, but the capacity I think it's not enough for these days, unfortunately this is the larger capacity (500G) in this product line, so I'm little disappointed in that fact, But besides that everything its perfect.

I haven't been able to use the product, because it requires a USB 2.0 Power Booster Cable to be powered by my G4 laptop.

It would have been nice to know this BEFORE purchasing, so I could have added the cable to my purchase... I also learned later that Western Digital has specific externals for Macs.

Once I get connected I'll let you know how it works, but for now I'm really frustrated!

I own several W D Drives and not one of them has let me down yet

Works great, my only problem is that my older computer doesnt always recognize that large of a mass storage device. At times I have to turn off my Hp all in one printer in order to use the drive. I have the same problem with my 16g mem stick also , so its probably just my old computer causing the issue not the drive.

When I bought the WD My Passport Essential Hard drive, I intended it to be my back up device. This compact hard drive is to go with my MacBook Pro that I carry and works well with the Time Machine. All that my laptop needed to have was a USB port and I was able to plug this hard drive to it and played immediately. About the 128-bit encryption I have a doubt... I know it provides 128-bit encryption only for Windows users. So what about Mac users? Transferring music and video files takes a long time. It's probably because of the USB interface. If a Firewire option had been included it could have made the file transfer rate fast.