Western Digital My Passport 2TB Review Discussion

[Jerry Jackson]

When it comes to portable hard drives, the Western Digital "My Passport" series of external hard drives is perhaps the most successful line of portable external hard drives on the market today. The attractive casing, solid build quality, reasonable speed and good product placement in a variety of stores have made this line very popular.

Read the full content of this Article: Western Digital My Passport 2TB Review

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[invisible]

It's a shame that hard drives are still so over-priced. I've heard that WD likes to bundle software into their firmware on external hdds that cannot be removed, and that has raised some privacy concerns with some people, did your review unit come with any that you could see?

[Jerry Jackson]

All of the bundled software on the My Passport drive can be removed by deleting the files on the partition or completely reformatting the drive. It appears there is no problem removing these apps from the 2TB My Passport and there's no indication of a hidden section of the firmware that stores these apps.

[gilipollas]

Does anyone know when 2TB in 2.5"@12.5mm height will be available? I am waiting since a long time...

[sgogeta4]

Probably in a few months, a little after IB laptops start popping up.

[Apollo13]

Perhaps it's better with the newer drives, but the software that shipped with the 2 TB WD drives I bought last fall chews up CPU like no tomorrow, in addition to the self-evident hard drive demands. I don't know exactly why, as the freeware solution I used before didn't. Only out of laziness have I not switched.

At the time, WD didn't have the USB 3.0 controller down very well, either. The connection to my PC, whether my desktop or my laptop, was routinely lost, sometimes after 5 minutes, sometimes after a few hours.

On the plus side, it was not too difficult to extract the drive from the enclosure, and use it as an internal hard drive. I probably ought to do the same and buy a different enclosure for the one that remains external. The one I've used internally has been fine. So, my conclusion is WD knows what it's doing with internal drives, but for external ones, stick with someone else. The cheap enclosure I bought on ZipZoomFly a few years ago is much better, or build your own around a WD drive.

And yeah, that price is pretty high. Granted, that is a decently small drive. But even if these new drives rock, I wouldn't pay $250 versus the $90-plus tax (at Best Buy, of all places) I paid last November, after the floods. Even if you figure in a few more dollars to get a better enclosure for the old ones.