Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Passport Studio 500 GB FireWire 800/400 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive (Silver)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

PROS:
This has spacious 500GB drive. Very quiet. Small size. I really like the LED that indicates operation and rough capacity taken. The FW 800 is much faster then USB, that was my reason to get this drive.

CONS:
the provided cables are too short for me, so i had to use longer 3rd party FW 800 cable. The case is plastic. i would like aluminum.

I'm a digital artist responsible for photography, high definition motion graphics and overall general graphic design, print and web. I got my passport for Christmas this year and I couldn't be happier.

Firstly, My main machine is a MacBook Pro laptop. My work computer is a Mac Pro and 99% of the computers I work on in my industry are Macs. So this review is from a Mac Users perspective. Windows users beware (apparently this drive will require a reformat.)

I had read a bunch of reviews talking about the difficulty of the short thick fw800 cable and I have got to say they're unfounded. Sure it's thick, no lie there. But it's completely manageable. The package also comes with a USB cable and a FW400 cable for ultimate compatibility (which is Ideal for a freelancer who is constantly working on many types of machines.) And the best of all IT DOESN'T REQUIRE A POWER SUPPLY!!!

For what it's worth i found the drive to be physically appealing and very small & light weight. Compared to a GTECH 500GB GDrive. It comes with a pretty slick carrying bag (to hold the extra cables as well as the drive.)

The drive comes with about 280~ mb of drivers and Documentation in every possible language on it (install-delete imo) After that i did some basic workhorse transfers on them. I moved my entire 36 gig Aperture Library and my 45 gig iTunes library on the drive and it was finished by the time i went in to check on the progress the first time. I was planning on checking on it at least 3 or 4 times. That was a nice surprise.

All in all this drive deserves 5 Stars easily. What this drive doesn't deliver in affordability It easily makes it up in literally every other aspect of it. (I wouldn't knock off a star off any other FAT formatted external for having to reformat it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so i don't think the previous 4 star rating was deserved.)

Now, because i hate reading reviews that are all praises and no criticism and as much as i hate to try and find anything wrong with this product I guess i would say they default "turbo" icon after installed those drivers is pretty ugly and something i changes immediately.

The Western Digital My Passport Studio is a wonderful update to one of the best portable external hard drives on the market. The elegant design has been improved with a "soft-touch" finish that makes it easy to hold and won't collect fingerprints. Mac users will benefit from the HFS+ formatting, and PCs can use this drive as well with a little extra work. The solid performance is complemented by a convenient capacity gauge and the ability to use USB, FireWire 400, or FireWire 800 ... assuming your computer has one of the ports in question.

As a mobile storage solution, the Western Digital My Passport series continues to prove that it is simply one of the best.

Pros:

* Attractive enclosure ... and no more fingerprints!
* Nice sliding port protector and capacity gauge/activity indicators
* Perfectly portable
* Simple to set up and use
* Solid performance

Cons:

* The My Passport "Studio" edition is a little expensive than the regular My Passport drives with the same capacity
* HFS+ formatting means Windows users will need to reformat the drive or use special drivers

I was very happy with this drive, until after less than three months of light use, the Firewire port died. I tried both the 800/400 and 800/800 cables, on two different Macs, and neither machine mounts the drive. (Disk Utility doesn't see it, either.) When I plug in the drive with either cable, one light is illuminated, the platter spins briefly and then stops, and the single light is extinguished.

The USB port is still functional; and I can use that to connect to my desktop PC (which has no Firewire port) and my MacBook Pro, both of which support USB 2.0. But I'm forced back on the agonizingly slow USB 1 connection on my older PowerMac G4.

The main reason I selected this drive over other portables was for Firewire. And I'm not the only one who has reported sudden Firewire failures. So if you're considering the Studio version of this drive because it supports both USB and Firewire, look elsewhere.

I recently purchased this Passport Studio ("Passport III") in the 320 GB size and had trouble with it freezing during heavy write activity over Firewire 800. I tested it extensively and found it always froze before being able to fill the drive when using FW800, but did not freeze when reading or using USB for read or write. I'm reasonably convinced it is a firmware bug, but suspect the firmware is not upgradeable. The freezing occurred with 10.5, 10.6, my 2008 iMac and 2003 PowerBook, with and without the WD drivers. The computer hangs until you disconnect the frozen drive (and 10.6 kernel panicked on me once when I did that).

I engaged in a lengthy exchange with WD tech support over this issue which was generally unsatisfactory until the end, when they offered to replace the drive with a new-generation drive (the one with an LCD screen), which I thoroughly tested and found it does not freeze. WD denied any known problem with the drive and did not offer any explanation for the problem, just encouraging me to return it. I had to push the support people before they offered the replacement, and it took a month after initial contact to resolve it, but they did come through in the end and have retained me as a customer as a result.

I suspect that not all versions of this drive have the problem, because certainly some people have not experienced it, but I was not able to find definitive information online about the issue. This is one reason I'm documenting my experience here. My drive was the WD3200MT (the P/N printed on the drive), with firmware 0x817 (use System Profiler to check this). Note that there are two part numbers listed in the WD outlet store right now, WDMS3200TN and WDMT3200TN, at different prices -- does the MS version fix the problem perhaps? The MS original price is listed as $119, the MT $149, suggesting the MT is older.

On the topic of overheating, I concluded that the problem I was having was not thermal, based on monitoring the temperature of the case and noting that the freezing did not correlate with the amount of time it had been writing or the temperature (which didn't vary as much as expected). However, with the replacement, newer-generation drive, in most of my tests after it'd been writing for an hour or so the data rate dropped in half, and I am convinced that this is a thermal-protection feature. It effectively reduces the data rates you can use to fill the entire disk, but when I improved cooling around the drive by propping it up and then inserted some short pauses in my test to "rest" the drive periodically (30 sec after each 10 GiB of writing) I was able to write continuously until the 500 GB was full without the data rate cutting. This was an acceptable decimation of the write time, adding 25 minutes to a 2.5 hour test. This is still much faster than USB, which is the whole point! I measured 36-55 MiB/sec sustained write (inner to outer tracks), 37-68 MiB/sec read (not adjusted for rests). Compare to USB 2.0 that does not exceed 30 MiB/sec.

If it had worked properly, I would have rated the drive highly -- I even prefer the design to the newer generation. However, since mine did not work, I had to rate it poorly. The whole point of paying extra for FW800 is that it be able to use that for heavy activity, and with my problem the drive was unusable with FW800. Thankfully the replacement (newer-generation drive, model WDBAAE50000ASL) is solid.

I bought this drive to be an away-from-home backup of my MacBook Pro. After receiving it, I created two partitions - the first was a bootable clone of my Mac's internal drive (to be used in case of a failure of the Mac drive) and the second for immediate backup of documents, photos, data from the Mac and a G-Drive mini.

The Passport Studio boots just fine from its USB connection. But it does NOT boot via firewire UNLESS the unit is disconnected prior to starting the computer, connecting it only after the computer is turned on, prior to pressing the "Option" key. Once booted, operating the computer from the Passport is fast and flawless. It would be nice if it boots normally from firewire - I would have given it 5 stars. Hopefully, I will never need it to do so, but at least I can trick it into doing so if I had to.

This little drive absolutely smokes previous WD external hard drives I have used. It's very fast, even with USB connection, let alone Fire Wire. I did have to re-format it for my PC, since it comes formatted for Mac.
After running an HD Tune Pro "error scan" on it though, it shows to have one bad or damaged block (at about 64000 MB position right out of the box. This hopefully isn't large enough to affect its performance, but I wish it wasn't there. It seems to work perfectly otherwise. I can sure use the storage space since I shoot a lot of digital images in RAW format with my Canon 40D digital SLR. I would highly recommend this little jewel to anyone looking for a small, portable, yet large (memory space) external HD.

I have used this drive with USB for almost a year and think it is generally terrific. However, with Firewire it worked only once or twice and now does not work at all - both the 400 and 800 ports. I have tried it on 5 Macs (including 2 at the Apple Genius Bar) using both Leopard and Snow Leopard and it won't connect with Firewire. WD replaced the drive and I got the same result - would not mount on any computer with any FW port. WD replaced the drive a second time, and I got the same result. It's just plain unreliable for FW.

I bought this drive to replace my aging LaCie Rugged 160GB drive. I'm thrilled at this product. The Firewire 800 performance is blazing fast at times (over 66MB/sec reads and 50MB/sec writes!). I like that it's smaller than the LaCie Rugged, but the plastic shell obviously isn't as durable as the Rugged rubber bumper. So be sure to use the provided cloth bag. Another thing I like is that when you need to use USB, it's powered by one single USB cable! No more weird dual USB/DC cables to lose! It comes with a short USB cable, Firewire 800/800 cable and a Firewire 800/400 cable.

A couple notes, Mac OS X Leopard reports this drive as 465GB, Snow Leopard reports is as 500GB because of the new way 10.6 calculates disc space. Both are accurate. Also, this drive comes formatted as HFS+ Journaled, BUT uses the older "Apple Partition Map". That means it's only *bootable* on PowerPC Macs (you can still use it as storage on any Mac or PC). You will need to repartition the drive to "GUID mapping" using 10.5/10.6's Disk Utility. GUID drives are usable on any Mac, but can boot Intel Macs (over Firewire, and yes, even USB if memory serves).

Very fast. Very quiet. Can't complain about anything really.

I have purchased two WD Passports for personal use and have used several WD drives at work. This "Studio" (Firewire 800) version is a piece of junk. Western Digital does not know how to build a reliable Firewire device! My USB Passport has worked flawlessly, and in fairness, this drive is virtually identical when used with USB only. So the issue is solely with the FW interface. The drive will either unmount, crash, or lock up my computer anytime I attempt to transfer a large file (over FW 800). So don't waste your money on the extra interface and just get the standard Passport. Also the "Turbo" is a load of crap. (Also of note: We've used the FW MyBooks at work and they constantly unmount themselves too. Our Lacie Rugged portables and the G-Tech drives have been much more reliable under HEAVY use.)