Western Digital My Passport Essential Review

In the post before this one I had some trouble with a Freecom XXS USB drive. I had no way of fixing it, so it went back to the store (and basically back to Freecom). But since that drive is used for offsite backups I needed a replacement unit, because the return of the old drive could take several weeks.

This time the Western Digital My Passport Essentials 500GB (2.5" USB powered) disk was chosen. A nice small device with lot's of storage capacity.

Western Digital Proprietary Connector on the LeftUpon opening the box I noticed immediately that there's something 'wrong' with this drive. The cable / USB connector is proprietary. The connector is some sort of ultra-mini-USB format. No need to say that of all the USB cables I collected over the years will ever fit. So I need to be extremely careful with the one I got with the drive.

Since I lose stuff (hell, everyone does), you could expect a blog post of me swearing 'bloody hell' (and stuff) when I have lost the cable.... but I won't, just read the rest of this review.

Anyway, after connect examining the box I found out that the drive comes with 256bit AES encryption. First thought was: 'Windows Only', but they surprised me....

Attaching the drive to my iMac an additional drive (CD) was mounted (apart from the drive itself). In it was the Mac OSX software from Western Digital for managing your backups (SmartWare) and for encrypting your precious data based on a password.

After that, the disappointment set in (again). The backup software is for complete dummies only. There's no way of backing anything up that's not inside your profile folder. So everything stored on my Drobo isn't selectable, and therefore not backupable (is that a good word??). So off goes the Western Digital backup software, and on goes the ChronoSync backup software.

And another big disadvantage.... The connector on the drive is so very sensitive (basically because of the ultra small connector), that picking up the drive (or even staring at it intensively) results in a disconnect from the computer. No need to say that that's a big issue when you're backing up to it.

This last part is the reason that the drive is going back tomorrow when the store opens. I'm gonna get my money back, and no more Western Digital crap for me.

UPDATE: I wasn't the only one with these problems. I hope WD sorts things out, because the normally produce decent stuff.

Update on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 15:02 by Willem

Got an Iomega Prestige Portable Hard Drive (500GB). This one has a full mini-USB connector. This one doesn't have any usefull software bundled. You can download some stuff from their website (according to the box), but I haven't found it yet. Not that I'm missing it, since I use ChronoSync for my backup Solution .