5 Comments

1. MJS

   Posted on July 26, 2010 at 4:48 am

   Review by MJS for Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAE6400ASL-NESN (Silver)
   Rating:
   If you’re a Mac user or, like me, use both Macs and PCs then you know that portable hard drives still come in two flavors – those that are Mac ready and those that are PC ready. If you want a PC ready drive with Firewire capability you’re still out of luck but this Western Digital offering is much closer to plug and play that previous offerings.

   I have two of these drives. The first I use at work with a Mac and the setup was as easy as advertised. Just plug it in and it works. The second I use at home with a PC and that’s a little tricky. I wanted the FireWire option (if the coolest PCs only have so many USB ports) so I was willing to put up with some hassle for the functionality. Here’s what you need to do on a Windows 7 PC:

   Plug in the drive
   
   Click on the start button
   
   Go to Computer and right click
   
   Select Manage (you’ll need admin rights)
   
   On the Computer Management screen select Disk Management (under Storage)
   
   My Studio will be listed as not initialized. It won’t have a drive letter.
   
   Right click on the My Studio disk and select Initialize
   
   Then Right click again and select format. Make sure to format for NTFS.

   Since you’re only partitioning and not really formatting the drive this will only take a minute or two to complete. Then you’re ready to go. That’s a big improvement over other drives such as the otherwise fine Iomega FireWire drive that requires a full formatting.

   The digital read out on the front of the drive lets you label it and see how much space you have left. This is a great feature if you use multiple hard drives like I do. The only downside it that this feature seems to be the reason this My Studio drive is almost twice as thick as WD’s My Passport drive with the same GB size. Both are highly portable but I’m not sure this feature is worth the additional bulk.

   The only bad thing about this drive – and it’s the reason this is a 4 star instead of a 5 – is the horrendous ironically named “WD SmartWare” backup software. The virtual CD can be unmounted now but it is still an unnecessary intrusion. The software itself eats up more RAM than anything else running on my PC. More than Explorer. More than Microsoft Office Suite. All that for limited backup functionality – you can only access backed up files through a full restore. You need to install “SmartWare” to turn off the virtual CD, label the drive and register it even if you don’t want to use the drive for back up. Then it just sits on your computer eating up memory and CPU speed. The only fix is to go to Windows Control Panel and uninstall the software. This is Western Digital’s Achilles Heel and they need to get it fixed.
2. Sanpete

   Posted on July 26, 2010 at 5:31 am

   Review by Sanpete for Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAE6400ASL-NESN (Silver)
   Rating:
   This device is designed for people who want a back-up system that comes ready to use with its own backup and file-keeping software, and even a minimal display. It requires OS 10.4 or higher to run most of those features, without which it’s only an ordinary external hard drive. Most Mac users are running 10.4 or higher, but for the few other troglodytes like me, here’s my experience using it with my older operating system. (I prefer to keep using 10.3.9 because it’s amazingly stable. I use my PowerBook a lot, everyday, but I only restart it on rare occasions, every few months. It never crashes, even with dozens of windows open and many programs running.)

   The drive can also be used on a PC, with the included software, with Windows 7 or later. It comes preformatted for the Mac, so for a PC you’d need to start by reformatting it, which is simple to do.

   If you don’t know what operating system you have on your Mac, you can find out by clicking on the apple in the upper left corner and selecting About This Mac on the menu. If you have 10.4 or higher, you should be able to use the software that comes preloaded on the drive (though people give that software mixed reviews). If you have an earlier version (lower number), there’s no point to installing the included software. Instead you can do one of two things. One, if you only want to back up or store selected files, you can just plug in the drive and drag and drop files onto the external drive icon. Or, two, if you want to back up your entire hard drive, maybe even make a bootable copy, you can download some third-party software to do that.

   If you’re using 10.3.x or earlier, your computer is probably old enough to need one of the adapters included with the drive. Most of the old Macs had FireWire 400, for which an adapter is included. If you don’t have FireWire, you might be able to use the USB adapter, but it will be very slow if you only have USB 1.0. (Not that you’ll have any faster options.)

   I wanted to back up my entire hard drive, so I downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC), the earlier version that works with OS 10.2-10.3. It’s available for free online. It will create a bootable clone of your hard drive, which you can use to start and run your computer if your internal hard drive crashes, or you can also choose to make a nonbootable copy, which is a little faster. The process is automatic once you start it. Using CCC and the FireWire 400 adapter, it took a little over 90 minutes to back up over 70 gigabytes.

   That worked well enough, with a couple minor glitches. CCC stalled when it was almost done, so I quit it, restarted it and copied the last couple folders. (You can tell if the drive has stopped copying files by looking at the status light, which blinks fast when operating.) The other glitch is that the virtual CD that mounts automatically on the desktop with the preloaded software won’t unmount when I drag it to the trash or click eject on a finder window. No big deal. Just make sure the drive isn’t operating and drag its icon to the trash or select eject for it before you disconnect it, and don’t worry about the warning message about the virtual software CD. There are instructions to keep the software from mounting if it bothers you.

   The drive operates noiselessly, with only barely perceptible vibration, getting warm but not hot.

   Western Digital has free email help. I tried it, asking if they had any recommendation for third-party software for my older Mac, and got a response in less than a day (they had no recommendations).

   To recap, this drive is designed for people wanting a prepackaged backup system, everything included, for those with OS 10.4 or later. It will work fine for those with other Mac operating systems too, but without the prepackaged software.
3. M. Leingang

   Posted on July 26, 2010 at 5:49 am

   Review by M. Leingang for Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAE6400ASL-NESN (Silver)
   Rating:
   You will have to decide if the premium pricing of this 500GB model is worth it. The premium price gets additional features and a longer warranty. I believe the premium price is worth the extra warranty alone. I have had other portable hard drives fail.

   As the details state on Amazon the drive does come formatted as HFS+ for the Mac user. If you are a windows user you will need to activate the drive and format it after you have plugged it into the USB port.

   The design is nice and sleek with silver on the top and bottom and white around the side. It comes with a Firewire 800 cable,firewire 800 to 400 connector and the Usb mini-b connector. The cables are fairly short but are usable.

   I did my testing on a Windows Vista Computer. When you first plug in the hard drive a virtual CD drive is created that points to a small partition on the hard drive, which contains the WD SmartWare software. Yes some people will not like the fact that a small partition is being used to run the Virtual CD. This does not bother me so I have not docked any stars for this

   If you are using windows computer the drive will not be recognized until it is activated and formated. With the WD SmartWare software your able to change the e-label on the hard drive, setup the backup schedule, update your software, run diagnostics, and set the password for the hardware based encryption. The hardware based encryption is biggest selling point to me. It uses 256 bit encryption, which is not competely unbreakable but would be very difficult to perform a brute force attack against. So if you lose your hard dirve you can feel safe about the data that is on it is well protected. I do recommend when setting the password that you use mix-case, numbers, and specials characters. Make sure you do not forget the password because you will lose your data on the drive.

   Performance of the drive is what one would expect when using the USB cable. Nothing stellar but more than useable. It took around two hours to perform my first backup of about 80GB of data. Thw WD SmareWare software scans your computer and seperates the different file types into groups (Music, Pictures, Videos, etc) It displays the total space each file type is using on your computer drive. As you backup your data a progress indicator is displayed. You can also setup the back for versioning of files. The default is set for 5 versions. In addition, the space available on the hard drive is displayed on the e-label. The e-label on the hard drive is definitely a big selling point. You get to provide your own label. It only allowed me to enter 4 characters not sure if it designed this way but it displayed videos 09 when taking it out of the box. It also displays how much space is left and whether you have the locked the hard drive with the hardware encryption.

   The hard drive has a 3 year warranty, which is not as good as some Seagates that have a 5 year warranty but is better than many of the cheaper 500gb hard drives that have only 1 year warranty.

   At this time I cannot comment on the reliability because I have not owned it long enough but I can comment on a past experience.

   My first experience with a portable western digital hard drive was the 120GB passport model. I still have it but hardly use it anymore. I also had to RMA it after about 3 months light use because the drive failed. I do not trust my data on the 120GB and had switched to Seagate.

   Pros
   
   Sleek Design
   
   E-Label Indicator
   
   Hardware Encryption
   
   File Versioning in the backup
   
   3 Year Warranty

   Cons
   
   Premium Price (You get what you pay for though)
   
   Cables a little on the short side.

   I gave it 5 stars because I believe WD has really nailed it with this drive. As long as the drive is reliable they have definitely have hit a home run here. I will update my review in the future if the reliablilty changes

   Update 5/16/2010 – Just a quick update. It is continuing to perform without any issues. Granted it does not leave the desk. I use my Seagate 250GB when traveling
   
   I would definitely recommend this drive to my friends and family.
4. Nick H

   Posted on July 26, 2010 at 6:41 am

   Review by Nick H for Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAE6400ASL-NESN (Silver)
   Rating:
   The enclosure is plastic, but it feels pretty solid. It’s much lighter and smaller than a larger 3.5″ portable hard drive and is powered by the firewire or USB cable–so no bulky power adapter is needed. The LCD display might seem superfluous, but it’s kind of handy. I got two of these drives–one for home/personal and one for work (thanks work!). The display makes it easy to differentiate between them. I have some mixed feelings about the built-in software. It comes with some “turbo” drivers for which purpose I don’t understand. The firewire 800 works great and I’m not a fan of installing lots of extra add-ons (so I didn’t). The built-in virtual CD software was a little annoying and took a bit of digging in the docs to figure out how to disable (but it is possible, and without reformatting or any other extreme measures). Works great with Time Machine. A solid little spare drive for Mac users!
5. W. B. Halper

   Posted on July 26, 2010 at 6:53 am

   Review by W. B. Halper for Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAE6400ASL-NESN (Silver)
   Rating:
   Fundamentally, external hard disks all serve pretty much the same function…they store files. And from that perspective, this one works pretty much the same way that the others do. You plug it in and roughly 500Gb of additional storage becomes available.

   So, what makes this different?

   First of all, it’s formatted for the Macintosh OS. You can reformat it for use on Windows, but why buy this drive when you can purchase different versions already formatted for Windows? The drive is compatible with Apple’s Time Machine software and can be used for automatically backing up your system.

   Second, it has both USB 2.0 and FireWire (400/800) interfaces. Most external drives only have a USB 2.0 and/or eSATA interface. FireWire 800 is fast, but it’s a pretty old standard. It would have been nice if the drive had a USB 3.0 connector, as that’s the up and coming ultra high speed interface. I had been using the FireWire interface, but then I went to upgrade the drive’s firmware and found out that that could only be done over the USB connection. I haven’t bothered to switch it back.

   Third, it has a cute little display that shows the remaining drive capacity and a programmable line of text. You can label the drive with it’s contents so you can remember it later. Obviously it’s a bit superfluous if the drive remains hooked up to your computer…you can easily see the information on your screen. Unfortunately, the production line didn’t take off the protective plastic file from the display in my unit before they assembled it. There are now very visible bubbles where the film is separating from the display. I suspect that that flaw is just in my drive, but I recommend carefully inspecting the display once you receive yours.

   My conclusion -
   
   If you have a Macintosh and you need more storage space, this is a good way to go. It’s quiet, nicely designed and just plain works.