Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB FireWire 800/400 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive

Be an own the most sleek, stylish and high performance Portable External Hard Drive at now with My Passport Studio on new smart design from WD the world leading of Portable External Hard Drive.The Western Digital My Passport Studio comes with innovation features andformatted for Mac and compatible with Apple Time Machine, this drive is plug-and-play ready for Mac computer users. WD SmartWarefeature lets your life safe in one place on visual backup software which enables automatic, continuous backup with visual display and FireWire 800/400 that mean you can save and access data at top speeds with the high-performance FireWire 800 interface and USB 2.0 interfaces for maximum flexibility.WD My Passport Studio 640 GBalso provides Smart Display to create your own personalized drive label to remind you what’s stored on each drive and your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and 256-bit hardware-based encryption.It available 320GB, 640 GB and 500GB

Some of Customer Reviews Western Digital My Passport Studio 640GB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive;

Nice, simple backup drive that does its job., March 23, 2010

By D. Solberg (Minneapolis, MN USA)

I’m pretty impressed with this 500 GB drive The outside is a silver-coated plastic with white sides and nice smooth edges: simple and attractive. On the bottom left side is a very small LED to let you know the drive is working. The connectivity is mini USB 2.0 and Firewire 800; they include three white cables: a 16-inch USB cable, a 16-inch Firewire 800 cable, and a 5-inch Firewire 800 to 400 cable. The top of the drive has an e-ink type display. The software allows you to set a name for the drive on the top row, while the bottom row contains a graphical and text indication of remaining space on the drive.

Note: I’m reviewing the software for the Mac (I have OS X 10.6.2 installed). When you connect the drive, it loads the drive itself and a simulated CD. The simulated CD contains the software, which you will need to install on your computer to access any features beyond simple use of the drive. On the right side of the menu bar, you also get a little icon menu with features like mounting and unmounting the volumes and checking the temperature.

Normally, I don’t like this sort of software because it’s bloated and hard to use. I could tell this software was developed first for a PC then ported to the Mac, yet this software was actually pretty simple to use. It displays a list of your computer’s files in categories, then you can directly back them up or recover them. You can also: 1. Set the simulated CD to stop appearing; 2. Set the display name that appears on the external drive display; 3. Check the drive temperature and SMART status; and 4. Monkey around with a bunch of other settings. It does install a startup application for the menu bar icon, but it seems to be a well-behaved application that doesn’t use any CPU when the drive isn’t connected. There’s also an uninstaller if you decide you don’t need the software.

One negative: There was a firmware update that I downloaded. When I tried to apply it, the software couldn’t find the drive. I tried using both USB and Firewire cables, and I tried using different ports, but it never found the drive. I’m not sure if this is a necessary update, but it’s something to be aware of.

Feature Rich, with a good warranty and only minor minor cons, March 22, 2010

By M. Leingang

You will have to decide if the premium pricing of this 500GB model is worth it. The premium price gets additional features and a longer warranty. I believe the premium price is worth the extra warranty alone. I have had other portable hard drives fail.

As the details state on Amazon the drive does come formatted as HFS+ for the Mac user. If you are a windows user you will need to activate the drive and format it after you have plugged it into the USB port.

The design is nice and sleek with silver on the top and bottom and white around the side. It comes with a Firewire 800 cable,firewire 800 to 400 connector and the Usb mini-b connector. The cables are fairly short but are usable.

I did my testing on a Windows Vista Computer. When you first plug in the hard drive a virtual CD drive is created that points to a small partition on the hard drive, which contains the WD SmartWare software. Yes some people will not like the fact that a small partition is being used to run the Virtual CD. This does not bother me so I have not docked any stars for this

If you are using windows computer the drive will not be recognized until it is activated and formated. With the WD SmartWare software your able to change the e-label on the hard drive, setup the backup schedule, update your software, run diagnostics, and set the password for the hardware based encryption. The hardware based encryption is biggest selling point to me. It uses 256 bit encryption, which is not competely unbreakable but would be very difficult to perform a brute force attack against. So if you lose your hard dirve you can feel safe about the data that is on it is well protected. I do recommend when setting the password that you use mix-case, numbers, and specials characters. Make sure you do not forget the password because you will lose your data on the drive.

Performance of the drive is what one would expect when using the USB cable. Nothing stellar but more than useable. It took around two hours to perform my first backup of about 80GB of data. Thw WD SmareWare software scans your computer and seperates the different file types into groups (Music, Pictures, Videos, etc) It displays the total space each file type is using on your computer drive. As you backup your data a progress indicator is displayed. You can also setup the back for versioning of files. The default is set for 5 versions. In addition, the space available on the hard drive is displayed on the e-label. The e-label on the hard drive is definitely a big selling point. You get to provide your own label. It only allowed me to enter 4 characters not sure if it designed this way but it displayed videos 09 when taking it out of the box. It also displays how much space is left and whether you have the locked the hard drive with the hardware encryption.

The hard drive has a 3 year warranty, which is not as good as some Seagates that have a 5 year warranty but is better than many of the cheaper 500gb hard drives that have only 1 year warranty.

At this time I cannot comment on the reliability because I have not owned it long enough but I can comment on a past experience.

My first experience with a portable western digital hard drive was the 120GB passport model. I still have it but hardly use it anymore. I also had to RMA it after about 3 months light use because the drive failed. I do not trust my data on the 120GB and had switched to Seagate.

Pros
Sleek Design
E-Label Indicator
Hardware Encryption
File Versioning in the backup
3 Year Warranty

Cons
Premium Price (You get what you pay for though)
Cables a little on the short side.

I gave it 5 stars because I believe WD has really nailed it with this drive. As long as the drive is reliable they have definitely have hit a home run here. I will update my review in the future if the reliablilty changes

I would definitely recommend this drive to my friends and family.

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