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Features
Automatic, continuous backup
Visual backup control center
Password protection and 256-bit encryption
USB 2.0 interface
Several colors to choose from including Black, Pacific Blue, Real Red, Cool Silver
Description
The world’s most popular portable drive is now smaller than ever. And it’s smarter than ever with WD SmartWare data management and backup software that backs up your data automatically and continuously, shows your backup as it happens, and restores lost files effortlessly. Password protection and military-grade, 256-bit hardware-based encryption lets you secure your data. One of the five beautiful colors is just what you need to make you look smart (and very stylish). WD’s smallest portable drive ever - WD is an expert in portable storage, so they designed a smaller, high-quality integrated USB hard drive inside a stylish package. With a variety of fun colors, there’s sure to be one to suit your style. WD SmartWare - control center for your drive that gives you the power to: Protect your data automatically - Relax. Your data is secure. Automatic, continuous backup will instantly make a second copy whenever you add or change a file. See your backup as it happens - Seeing is believing. Visual backup displays your content categories and shows the progress of your backup. Bring back lost files effortlessly - Retrieve your valuable data to its original location whether you’ve lost all your data or just overwritten an important file. Take control - Customize your backup, set drive security, run diagnostics, and more from the WD SmartWare control center. Drive lock - Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and military-grade 256-bit hardware-based encryption. Ready to plug-and-play with Windows PCs - if you’re a Mac user, check out our Mac version of this product. USB 2.0 powered - Powered directly from the USB port on your PC. No separate power supply is needed*. * An optional cable is available for the few computers that limit power from the USB port. Planet friendly - We designed a small box that uses recycled material and minimizes waste. We encourage you to recycle it.
Average Customer Review: Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
drive is fine, features are almost all obsolete already Sep 07, 2010 As a drive this is a fine device. It's small for an external drive (just a little bigger than a US passport honestly, and about a cm thick). It doesn't require an external power adapter, and it functions over USB. (It would be nice if it did firewire too, but it doesn't).
As for the software it comes with, with the release of windows 7 it's already obsolete. Windows 7 includes an easy backup program as well as bitlocker, which will encrypt a drive for you. (I should also mention that the installation program that comes with the drive doesn't work with Windows 7 either). So really whether or not you buy this drive should depend on what OS you're using, what you plan to use, and what features you need. If you don't need the software features separately, then just go for a bare bones drive from another company that doesn't charge for the features you don't need. If you do want these features (the backup and encryption that is), then go for it.
Pretty and functional, but encumbered with too many nonstandard/proprietary features Sep 07, 2010 The existing reviews of this slim, pretty drive already convey a well-rounded picture of its strengths and failings. In a nutshell, to repeat them: on the bright side, it's a relatively fairly priced 500gb drive in an attractive, slender, quiet, well-designed enclosure, and it's conveniently USB-powered for portable use. On the down side, it's burdened with a lot of lousy, proprietary software that is unnecessarily extremely hard to remove. To have WD's simplistic one-click-zero-options backup software, and the manual in PDF form, stuck on the drive forever is an unforgivably customer-last move on a drive manufacturer's part, as is the drive's refusal to identify its underlying hardware -- you'd literally have to crack the plastic case open to see what was inside, much less get SMART information for your drive-monitoring software. Also, the drive itself does not have a standard USB connector, but some odd micro-USB thing, meaning you'll have to take the included (stupidly short) cable everywhere. Since there's no cable storage on the drive, this really compromises the neat portability of the thing (and woe betide you if you forget it or want to use a longer one).
Basically, this is a nice small backup drive compromised by a passel of poorly thought out misfeatures -- it's perfectly usable if you have no other options, but there are many better choices. I'd recommend buying the similar offerings from Toshiba or Iomega instead, since those will just work, like a hard drive should, without forcing buyers to jump through hoops to remove ridiculous proprietary junkware.
I wanted it as the equivalent of a 500 GB USB thumb drive, and it works fine... Sep 06, 2010 Through Amazon Vine, I got a Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAA5000ABK-NESN (Midnight Black) for review. Although one of the selling points is the automatic backup software that comes with the unit, I have no use for that. What I wanted this for was 500 GB of portable hard drive goodness. And overall, I think that's what I have.
When I first plugged it in, I found it wasn't the "plug and play" that they advertised. The automated driver setup fails, and you have to go into the drive to find and run the full driver setup to get everything set to perform. The next thing I did was delete the over 600 MB of backup software that comes with the unit, as I wanted nothing to do with it. I was able to get it quickly set up under both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 that I run.
The other reviews on Amazon seem to have a number of complaints about loose USB connections, but that's not the case here. Everything is secure and well-fitted. It also doesn't bother me that it uses a micro-USB plug, as it's likely I'll just leave the plug attached to the hard drive when I travel with it. It's not like I have a dozen of these I'm switching back and forth between.
I believe your satisfaction with this unit will depend on what you wanted it for. If you want a backup unit that does all sorts of things automagically for you, it appears that you might be disappointed. The software hasn't gotten rave reviews. But if you're viewing this as the equivalent of a 500 GB USB thumb drive, it rocks. Just minor points off for having to install drivers instead of it just working "out of the box."
Disclosure:
Obtained From: Amazon Vine Review Program
Payment: Free
Terrible product Sep 03, 2010 Like an idiot, I actually own 2 of these things, I purchased one when my old school 160G WD hard drive went out and I almost lost all my pictures, music and movies. To give it credit, that one had lasted me about 4 years. Then I get the passport, what a piece of junk. The sync software might be a good idea if I only had one computer. But I have a laptop and a PC and it just does not jive between the two. So I uninstalled that function.
Now if I try to access it through 'my computer' it just says 'access denied.' I've checked multiple sources on the web, I've tried changes my security settings, nothing. Then I bought another one, just so I could try and rescue my data, it worked for about 2 days, then it started doing the same thing.
Great drive, software didn't work Sep 02, 2010 I like WD's external drives as well as their internals. This one is great -- for a disk. It's small (just a bit bigger than the palm of my hand), has a micro USB plug and is fast as you would expect. The only problem I ran into, which was pretty major, was that the software did not install on my W7 x64 machine. I got an error no matter if I ran the exe or the msi -- something about a missing file in Program Files. So unfortunately I could not review the software for this product, which seems to be the major difference between this drive and WD's other externals (aside from the slight shrinkage).
Unlike most of the other externals I've worked with, this one does not have all of its drivers built into windows or available in windows update. The drive will install fine as a storage device, but there's an SES driver that you must load manually. It wasn't a problem because the driver is included on the drive so you just have to go into Device Manager and update the driver for the outstanding issue. There's also an msi package to install the driver if you don't feel comfortable working with Device Manager.
Looking up exactly what SES is, it's clear that other users did not bother to check the drive for the SES drivers or possibly did not know how to install them. There are many complaints about the missing drivers.
There's actually no documentation with the product that indicates exactly what SES is. The best I came up with is SCSI enclosure services, but that doesn't exactly make any sense ([...]) with regard to a standalone external drive. Searching Western Digital's site on the issue is a frustrating experience to say the least. The included manual only talks about installing the SES driver to prevent the hardware popup in the case when you don't install the SmartWare software. So perhaps it's related to SmartWare, which makes it worthless to me at this point since SmartWare failed to install.
This seems to be a typical external otherwise. It's USB 2.0, but I plugged it into my USB 3.0 port. I was able to get 35 MB/sec write speeds at first, but they dropped down to 25 after a little bit. Read speeds were around 25 as well. This is just 5 MB/sec above the limit of USB 2.0, so the drive is not particularly speedy.
The micro USB cable included is pretty short. I wish it were about 6 inches longer.
The drive includes a 2 year warranty, which is standard for externals.
It is very unfortunate I was not able to test out the software since that seems to be a major selling point with this product. My star rating certainly reflects the software's failure to install.
However, I did read up a bit on the new software. Some users report that the software is annoying, invasive and crash prone (possibly an older version). Other users report that you can't even remove the software from the drive as it is a permanent partition. I have verified that that second claim is not the case. There is only a single partition, and clearing up the 600 MB of files (mostly docs in every language) gives you 465GB, which is what you would expect after formatting a 500GB drive.
I would like to see a simple backup solution. I am not too happy with the Windows 7 backup utilities, but I use them anyway because they work. Again, it is unfortunate I could not test WD's new SmartWare software. Perhaps I will find a new version on their web site in the near future. But that doesn't get them past the fact that the packaged software is broken.
Price-wise, you might be able to find a larger drive for the same price with similar features.
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based on 259 reviews
drive is fine, features are almost all obsolete already Sep 07, 2010
Pretty and functional, but encumbered with too many nonstandard/proprietary features Sep 07, 2010
Terrible product Sep 03, 2010
