| Reviews : Western Digital My Passport Essential 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAA6400ARD-NESN (Real Red) |
Western Digital My Passport Essential 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAA6400ARD-NESN (Real Red) Product By Western Digital Available From 17 Sellers |
Technical Details
- Automatic, continuous backup
- Password protection and 256-bit encryption
- Visual backup control
- USB 2.0 interface
Product Description
Pack up your office files and take them home, carry thousands of songs or pictures, and synchronize files between home and office and encrypt everything on the drive for added security. These elegant portable drives are simple to use, light and easy to carry, and require no power adapter - they are powered directly through the USB cable.Similar Products
Customer Reviews
By Mac3ddi3 (Granada Hills, CA United States)
I have this product and there seems to be a lot of confusion out there:
Not a proprietary cable - This product uses "micro" USB which IS a standard and you can see early adoption in the cell phone industry. In fact, many new cell phones use this cable to charge and connect to computers. So with WD's adoption, you could essentially use 1 cable for your phone and external drive. Good stuff :)
Smartware - Not my cup of tea, but WD has been pushing out updates to hide and or customize the usage of this software. I think smartware was designed for the general user, but for tech enthusiast, you can turn it off now which is a great thing.
Form factor - this hands down is the smallest/sexiest drive out there. No other manufacturer has a hard drive this small or good looking.
By GC (Maryland)
The proprietary software is terrible and is either difficult or impossible to disable (I've spent 2 hours trying to follow the instructions at the WD support site and am giving up). The upshot is that the hard drive is useless to me. If I hadn't thrown away the packaging, it would go back to Amazon.
I feel cheated and tricked by WD. Couldn't they have allowed the customer the choice of whether to use their software? Couldn't they have made it clear on their packaging that this is a non-standard portable hard drive? Couldn't they have found a straightforward way for users to disable the WD software?
I suspect that the motivation for the creation of this proprietary software is to force customers into becoming repeat buyers: get people accustomed to the software and they'll have to buy the WD hardware. I feel that in trying to gain market position for their drives, they have shown themselves willing to greatly inconvenience those of us who do not wish to use their software.
With all of this said, I suspect that one positive opportunity arises out of my purchasing the WD portable hard drive: I see that there must be handsome profits to be made by shorting WD's stock. (Surely, there must be many others who, like me, will never again buy a WD product.)
By Margot Harrington (Chicago, IL USA)
I'm pretty bummed I didn't read the reviews here, because it probably would have saved me the hassle of having to return the hard drive. It disconnects itself at the slightest touch and to me, that is a failure of a product. From the moment I opened it the cord wouldn't connect securely and I wasn't able to make it through a single back-up before it ejected itself and killed the back-up process. I don't know how anyone would consider this even remotely reliable for saving their important files. Big disappointment Western Digital, according to my friends, you used to be the best. Now you're just a pretty piece of crap. Get some better product designers please.
By S. Lee
I just got this drive and plugged it into my Macbook. The software it came with didn't really bother me, I just chose NOT to use the included software and used Mac's Time Machine software that is on my computer instead. It works like a charm. The only thing is it is VERY slow. It takes forever to download your files onto it. My family also has a Toshiba external hard drive and that is 100% faster than the WD hard drive.
By Doubting Thomas
I've been a long-time user of WD Passport harddrives. I have around 5 myself, and have recommended them to many other people. But no more.
The WD drive I bought last week came with virtual CD driver that automatically loads every time the drive in connected, giving access to WD's backup software. There is no way to stop it running.
I bought a hard disk to store data. I don't want WD's backup software. I don't want virtual CD drive software automatically installed and creating virtual CD drives. I just want to be able to use 100% of the hard drive *I* bought to store *my* data in the way *I* want without WD forcing its software on me.
This will be the last WD hard drive I buy. Thanks WD for ruining what used to be a good product.
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