WD My Passport Essential SE 750 GB USB 3.0/2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive (Black)

I installed this drive about 1 month ago using USB-2.0. It has worked flawlessly and provides slightly above average speed for a USB-2.0 external drive (it is noticeably slower than eSata or Firewire external drives). I was out of back-panel USB ports so I decided to upgrade to the USB-3.0 using a Buffalo Superspeed USB-3.0 on an empty PCI-express 2.0 slot. The card is "rated" at up to 5Gbps, but no one will actually see that in the real world. I was curious to see what my real world performance boost would be. I don't find much practical value in speedtest bench marks that move small chunks of data and test all sections of the drive. They don't give meaningful indication of what happens with large video files. (After all isn't the reason you buy a Terabyte drive to store large video files?). I measured USB-2.0 and USB-3.0 speeds using two sample video files. One sample was 1.0 GB and one was 2.0 GB. Here are my results using the supplied cable: USB-2.0: 1.0 GB file = 184 Mbps (42 seconds) USB-2.0: 2.0 GB file = 176 Mbps (90 seconds) USB-3.0: 1.0 GB file = 176 Mbps (44 seconds) USB-3.0: 2.0 GB file = 160 Mbps (100 seconds) I should note that I don't have a old, slow PC. It is a 2010 HP Win7 64bit with Core2 Quad 3.0 GHz (Yorkfield). I moved my files from an internal Barracuda drive connected with SATA that is significantly faster than any external drive. By comparison the same two files can be moved between two internal drives (SATA) on this machine in 12 and 19 seconds respectively (666 Mbps and 842 Mbps). If moving big files matters to you, you'll probably see no improvement with USB-3.0. If you simply need a good small portable Terabyte drive that easily fits in your pocket, this drive is a good value. The USB 2.0/3.0 doesn't cost you any more and doesn't provide any problem either. However, in the real world (big video files) don't expect break-neck speed or any advantage to adding the USB-3.0 interface. In my case the speed actually dropped slightly! If it had been sold as an USB-2.0 drive, I would give it 5 stars, but it doesn't live up to the hype of "Superspeed USB-3.0" UPDATE: I changed the rating to 5 Stars. I went back and remeasured the large file transfer rates after installing a second USB-3.0 drive that came with a different USB-3.0 driver. Now I am seeing a SUBSTANTIAL increase in speed. 2.0 GB file now can write to this drive in 33 seconds - nearly 500 Mbps or about 62 MB/s. The other USB-3.0 drive (Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 2TB) moved the same file in 22 seconds or 742 Mbps or 92 MB/s. This is almost as fast as an average internal SATA drive! I suspect there must have been a driver problem with my USB-3.0 card that made it revert to USB-2.0 mode.

I bought this Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive (Black) strictly to store and play videos. The first thing I did was to reformat the drive (in its native NTFS format); this immediately deleted the Western Digital software for which I have no need. Then I copied two videos to the drive: one, an HD [720p] video of about 4 GB and another of 600 MB (SD). I played both of them through my new LG HX350T 720p Front Projector - Black and I will soon be playing them in my home theater via my OPPO BDP-93 Universal Network 3D Blu-ray Disc Player and my Panasonic PT-AE4000U 1600 Lumen LCD Home Theater Projector . Via the LG projector, the video looks fantastic as would be expected. Storing music on external hard drives is already a de facto standard. Storing videos in this way is rapidly becoming practical too as hard drives' capacities increase dramatically and their prices fall just as dramatically. If all of my video could be compressed to 4 GB, I could store 250 full-length movies on this drive - which I could carry in my pocket! (I am using an AmazonBasics Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Essential - Black which I highly recommend.) However, most of my movies can be compressed to far smaller files, thus increasing the number of titles this drive will hold. I do not yet have a computer with USB 3.0 ports. Mine has only USB 2.0. But the transfer of the 4 GB file took only about 10 minutes. (Obviously the 600 MB files took much less time.) Once USB 3.0-equipped computers become widely available, that transfer time should drop considerably. All in all, if you are looking for a portable external hard drive on which to store movies, I believe that this is the one you should buy now. Its capacity, its physical size, its price, and its overall quality just can't be beat. I am planning to buy more of these drives. I will want additional ones for films (I own a LOT of films) as well as backups (in other words I want two drives carrying the same data in case one were to break down). Once I have placed all of my films on drives (and that will take many years, mostly due to lethargy on my part), I can get rid of my physical media. Think of the space that can be saved! Storing music, movies, and maybe even books on drives is definitely the wave of the future, at least in my opinion. Thank you for reading this. I hope it has been of some interest to you. ================================================================================================================================== Update: August 5, 2012 A person made a comment (on another review I wrote of a different WD hard drive) which impelled me to revisit this review and tell you that I now DO own a computer with two USB 3.0 ports. Thus I can now take full advantage of these drives' capabilities. Let me tell you: USB 3.0 is FAST. I am noting, in the real world, transfer speeds about four times faster than what I was able to get using these drives with USB 2.0 ports. I transferred 625 GB of data FROM one of these hard drives TO another one via my computer's USB 3.0 ports and the process took slightly under two hours. That translates to about 85 MB/s. I continue to HIGHLY recommend this particular drive and Western Digital external hard drives in general. Lawrence H. Bulk

Well what can I say about a hard drive? The Western Digital "My Passport" hard drive seems to run very well. I ran an HD Tune test to check its speed and it had an average rating of 82 MB per second read speed. As with pretty much all of the Western Digital hard drives this one came with backup software. Frankly, I agree with most of what is said about the Western Digital hard drive backup software that you may have read in other reviews. I don't need it so I don't install it. I recommend this if you don't want to start fighting with that software and trying to figure out why you can no longer get free access to certain files or space. You simply don't install the software when it asks you if you want to do that and you'll be fine. If you're not sure whether or not you want to use it but you don't install right it away, then you don't have to. Just do what I did, create a new folder, place all that information into the new folder, label it as such, and then if you ever decide you want a backup using the Western Digital software for that hard drive, open it and install it. The cord that links the USB 3.0 to the hard drive is only about 16 inches long. When I ordered this hard drive I read that in the reviews so I went ahead and ordered a 6 foot long cord is well. As far as connections are concerned, the connections were tight and didn't come loose, they seemed very good. Incidentally, I also plugged the hard drive into a USB 2.0 connection and tested the read speed. The speed for that drive in a USB 2.0 connection was about 28.2 MB per second. So obviously it's much slower than the 3.0 connection but about the same as any other hard drive in the 2.0 port. As far as looks are concerned, it's a nice polished surface and has a pleasant appearance. It's slightly wider than a pack of cigarettes and a little longer as well. It can easily fit into my top shirt pocket if I wanted to put it there. I do recommend the Western Digital 750 GB external hard drive for anyone who's looking for a fast, yet inexpensive hard drive with a decent capacity.

The hard drive is most convenient to handle and ultra low weight. It is difficult to believe that it carries data of 1 TB size. I have not used the software provided along with the disk. [...] The Hard drive works nicely and copies data much faster than normal USB 2 Hard drive. [ I have one external hard disk of western digital USB 2, which is thrice as bigger and heavier than this ] The biggest advantage of this disk is the size and the capacity. I have the data of my office work for last five years which I can carry in one pocket of my laptop bag. You will find a very small length USB 3 cable [ 18" ], but the same is not so flexible. Sometimes the size and material of the cable creates a problem. My Desktop cabinet height is around 22" and the disk can not touch the table and I have to put the same on the top of the cabinet. Though this is USB 3 disk, it can be connected to USB 2 ports without any problem. Only the data transfer rate is reduced. The major problem faced with this disk is the connectivity. After a time gap of about one hour [ this may vary ] , the disk is disconnected from your PC and I have not found a proper solution for the same. I have to pull the cable out of USB Drive and agin plug in. It starts working again. I always fear whether I would lose the data while the disk gets disconnected and yes, you lose the unsaved data when it is disconnected. I have observed this while editing the video files saved on this hard disk. After installing the software, while updating, it provides you one firmware. I thought that the firmware would probably remove the problem of disconnection.... but the problem still exists. However I have not found any data loss due to the disconnection, which is already saved on hard disk and being used. I have not experienced this problem with the USB 2 hard disk which I am using for more than 3 months. Except this problem, The disk is a very cute piece....

This is a great product, I bought it just before I went to college and it works perfectly. Its so small, light, and portable, I carry it around campus in my pocket, fits better than a full wallet. No problems with software or anything, works with macs and windows. The highest speed I have reached so far with 3.0 is about 65 mb/s but the average is closer to 55 mb/s. For those of you who don't know what that means, it means that on average, you can transfer roughly 10 songs every second. So if you have 100 songs, it will all transfer in just over 10 seconds. It used to take me a minute just to download 50 songs. Some people have been saying the cable is too short but I find it just the right size, not so large that its in the way and annoying and not so small that it becomes inconvenient. Keep in mind, the product is built with portability in mind and so keeping the cable short is a + for me. Overall great product, great price, (I got mine for $90.00) and reliable. If you want to find the best price for this I would recommend using SlickDeals.net, and just search on the top right what product you are looking for, that's what I used anyway. Cons- only thing weird that has happened that I almost forgot about, when I turn my Laptop on with the hard drive plugged in my laptop doesn't start up, but as soon as I disconnect and then turn it on it works fine. I have a dell xps using windows 7.

I bought this because I wanted something gigantic and portable to supplement my new MacBook Pro, which has a 121GB solid state drive--very cool and functional, but maybe not sufficient by itself for the next 3 years. The My Passport is a nice visual match for the MacBook, with more capacity than I'll need. I use it for Time Machine backup, and also have some legacy data--photographs, music, finances &c--just stored as normal files on disk. All the documentation is on the disk itself, so when I first plugged it into my old XP PC, I got the usual misleading message asking if I wanted to give permission to search for a driver on the web. That's completely unnecessary--it just works, and you don't have to do anything. However, I did have to reformat the drive in order to be able to use it on the Mac, since I naively did not realize the file systems are incompatible. It was easy to do. I copied the documentation & drive management software onto all my computers (belt & suspenders), plugged the drive into the Mac's USB port and reformatted it. Didn't take very long. Then I copied the docs and drive management software back onto the drive, and installed the software on the Mac. No problems, although in the end I am using Time Machine for backups instead of Western Digital's software. Then I copied all my legacy data from all my PCs over the wireless network. That took a few hours, and several times the Mac would tell me I didn't have permission to copy one of my files. Typically this would be a pdf or spreadsheet I got from a fellow committee-member at church. I would just make a copy on the PC, and copy the copy. The instructions on the drive say not to move it when it's operating, but I made the decision to use it for Time Machine back ups while in a One-to-One session at the Apple Store. The staffer & I started the process, which takes an hour or so the first time. We did other stuff, and the initial back-up was still going on when session time ended. So I left the drive connected, put the MacBook & drive in my bag, and carefully strolled through the mall to drink coffee and wait for it to finish. No problem. I enjoyed the coffee and worked the email, never have had a problem.

I got 2 of these in 2010, one for use it as data drive for my laptop and the other for backup of the first one. while the second one, which I still using it, will have like 24 hours of use, the first one which I sold these days, has like 20 months of continuous use because I put it in the USB 3.0 port of my Alienware and was the data disk ever, since I have a SSD of just 240gb as the main disk. and I never turn off my laptop because it's always downloading stuffs via torrent when I'm not online. the computing table where the passport and the laptop stands, get some accidental hits sometimes and still never stops to work, not a single bad sector, this little disk is just tough as a rock. the only annoying thing is the sleep function, sometime I run to look for any picture or video and the disk was sleeping, so I must wait few seconds to wake up to get the data, but no more than 3 or 4 seconds of annoyance to get like 2 years of continuous and reliable use, yes please. the speed was another awesome stuff, in fact was him which make me fell in love of USB 3.0, when I copy a dvd iso image of 4.3gb from a pen drive to my main disk, this means an electronic media to another, usb 2.0 the first one, ssd sata 2 the second one. I not get the time but I was in shock when I copy the same file to the passport and took me less than the half of time. I start to copy some nasty large files just fur fun and look really excited the brutal speed of USB 3.0 and this disk in particular. right now I sold it to get the new and larger model of 1.5 tb, and if is so fast and reliable as this one, I will be changing him in like one or one and a half year from now for the 2 tb version, but I'm so happy to change these drives for capacity and not for failures, lack or reliability or speed, or just simply because die. =)))

I picked this up from amazon for 50$ before the great Japan Hard Drive Crisis (when the tsunami hit and the power plant melted down). I don't think I could ever fill up this much space and I take photographs DAILY. I have a 8BG card in my cam and at the end of a month or two I put them on this drive. I am nowhere near full or even 25% for that matter. The main reason I bought this one is because it does NOT need an external power supply. Meaning the USB plug that goes to the computer ALSO gives it the power it needs at the same time! It's just a big as a real passport but about two thick. There's a little white light that lets you know if stuff is being transferred. It also stays on constantly if its plugged in so that can be annoying at night because it's so bright it can light an entire room. But when you have 1TB at your fingertips you tend to sleep like a baby even if the light is on! It's not a SSD like most might think. There are moving parts in this so DO NOT MOVE IT AT ALL WHILE IT IS PLUGGED IN OR YOU RISK LOSING EVERYTHING! Just like your regular computer! No reason to be deterred by that fact unless you plan on using the drive while its on fire doing poi (fire spinning). Just plug it in, set it down flat (or up, but up means it could slip and fall like we were trying to avoid), and do your business. If you unplug the drive before it's done or you don't safely remove hardware from right clicking the icon on your bottom right of your taskbar you could also lose some of your data. You'll know because when you go to open the file it tells you it is no longer there or is corrupted. To fix that with a 99% recovery rating, you should do the following. Plug in the drive and see what drive letter it has assigned to it, Click start on your taskbar and run your command prompt (search for CMD for those less savvy users, in the command prompt type in "CHKDSK ?: /F /R" exactly as I typed without the quotes and with ? being your drive letter. Chkdsk is check disk which can be set to automatically fix (/f) and recover (/r) missing files and sectors on your drive. With all this info you should not ever really have a problem with your drive unless you run a magnet over by it, put it in the microwave, or throw it in the ocean. p.s. - If you think my fix with chkdsk is wrong, do a search and look for yourself. I have Windows 7 starter (ghey) and sometimes it asks me to fix incompatible files or continue without scanning when I plug it in. Click CONTINUE WITHOUT SCANNING or you will be doing a lot of chkdsk like me until I figured out that was the problem. :)

Western Digital makes the best hard drives in my experience. I own two of their internal drives for my PC, and also have subsequently purchased two external passport drives. This TB hard drive is packed into a very small package and is perfect for backing up media or transferring large files around. USB 3.0 connectivity is an awesome bonus for the speed, and it's where the standard will be in a few years I'm certain. I wanted a hard drive that was affordable, had a lot of storage, didn't require a separate plug in for power and was portable. I highly recommend this hard drive or any other western digital product as I've had nothing but great experiences with them.

For anyone who is looking for a good review on this product . I will give you one right now . I haven't had any issues with any of my portable drives I have bought that are the same brand .

This is a great buy for a good price! Most stores sell 1Tb hard drives like this for about $180-$200. It's small and lightweight, easy for travel. It reads fast on my mac, but you will have to find a program that allows you to read and write to hard drives like this since they are typically for Windows systems. I recommend buying a good case for this since it can be prone to breaking if dropped hard or often. I'm prone to dropping things so I have a good case to protect this in order not to lose any of my data.

No problem with it. Shipped in time, nothing missing and just what I needed for, a not expensive and good sober product.

This storage device is great so far. Fits well n your pocket, small physical size with plenty of storage, It is decently fast (only used it with USB 2.0, do not have USB 3.0 port). Total formatted capacity id 931MB. It is quiet and have never had any problems with it so far. I did not use the software which comes with it though. I bough it with a good price though (C$ 129 ), but the saving from the list price is misleading, the average price for the second edition of My Passport is around C$150. I highly recommend this product.