Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDME5000TN
List Price: $149.99
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Technical Details
* Box Contents - My Passport Essential 500GB Portable USB Hard Drive, USB 2.0 cable, Quick Install guide
* Installation is a snap because you don't really install this drive; you just plug it in and it's ready to use. There is no CD to install; the included software loads from the drive the first time you plug it in
* Powered by the USB bus. No separate power supply is needed
* This ultra-portable drive fits easily in your pocket or purse, weighs only a few ounces, and holds tons of valuable data
The Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB Portable Drive adds a larger capacity to a brand of hard-drive I have come to rely on. For the longest time, I have used these WD passport drives for my portable backups. Finally a 500 GB model is here. The Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB was the largest capacity you could get for a while.
WD has been increasing variety by adding a variety of colors including black, red, yellow, white and blue. But other than that these drives are basically all the same. Considering how I've been buying different brands lately to get larger storage, I was happy to get my hands on this drive.
PROS:
Largest current capacity available in this line of products
Turns on and off with your computer or via system tray
Nice looks, though it does collect finger prints
USB powered, no A/C required
Works well on Windows Vista, XP and Mac OS X
Easy plug-and-play installation
Nice portable form factor that easily connects via USB
Integrates nicely with my growing stable of WD MyBook drives
Included software may be useful for some novices
Easy to set up disk encryption for security and privacy
CONS
- Slow file transfer speeds for larger backups
- Included software not useful for power users
- Shiny body attracts scratch, fingerprints and dust
- No case included
FEATURES
I have owned a bunch of these drives and used them with no problems on computers running Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X. The drive has a nice shiny exterior. The case can scratch in transit and the surface also attracts fingerprints and dust. But the look is still nice and you can easily purchase a case or holder for the drive if it bothers you. Most versions don't ship with the included case, but you can pick it up the CaseLogic Small External Hard Drive Case for $10 to $15.
Transfer speeds are still limited by the 480 Mps connection speed of USB 2.0, but performs somewhat slower than this when performing large backups. The USB2.0 speed rating can not really be achieved in production and you will get a fraction of that. But it's a trade-off that's worth it since it's USB-powered.
The software utilities included with this device will be most useful for beginners. I tested the backup software in particular but found it to be slow and impractical. I mean REALLY slow. It works, but cutting and pasting is better. Take my advice: don't use these utilities and just do cut and paste backups and saves to this drive.
I've had good luck with the passport line of drives. They seem to have lower failure rates than many MyBook drives, though I only had one issue with one of those. But these guys have held up fine.
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