Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABM0010BBK-NESN (Midnight Black)

10 Review to this product

• 

  Andriy Fazan
  October 28th, 2009 on 6:45 pm

  Rating

  October 27, 2009 I pre-ordered my WD Passport like 3 weeks in advance. When I first opened it, I was excited: slick design, smaller than my previous WDPassport, and … it packed the whole 1TB. As I started using it I became more and more disappointed for 2 reasons:
  
  1. software, I didn’t really tried to erase it, but as I noticed from the reviews it’s impossible. Without the software was so much easier.
  
  2. USB connection: I’m afraid to move my notebook or the Passport itself: slightest move and you get disconnected, have to start all over again with the software. I was thinking of duct-taping the USB to the disk
  
  Conclusion: don’t buy, wait until WD comes up with sth new.

  Updating my review
  
  May 10, 2010: Glad to share the news: WD offers the USB cable replacement free of charge. I recently received mine (in less than a week) and it fits perfectly. Now I can surely say that I’ll continue using the WD products.
  
  Follow this link to submit your USB replacement request: [...]
• 

  R. Sirhan
  November 18th, 2009 on 1:22 am

  Rating

  I own it for two weeks now, and so far it is the best western digital drive I ever owned. I have 4 ealier 500GB drives, and I was happy with them. and as soon as I heard about this 1TB drive, I planned to buy it immediately, but DID NOT. Why? because of those bad reviews written by others. They were very convencing. But somehow I have 20+ years believe in WD products quality so I bought it and below are my reply to the raised concerns:

  1- USB connecter 2.0:
  
  yes it is a new interface, but believe me, I hardly can unplug it from the HDD! contradict what other people are saying! it is very tightly secure in the drive without any loose problems! may be they have change it recently! but I am very happy with the connection

  2- WD software:
  
  Western digital website already published a firmware update to remove (hide) their annoying CD partition and avoid their new software. so basicly this problem is history.

  I am using this drive in both windows 7 and Mac Book Pro at the same time similar to the older WD passport model but with smaller physical size, and really it is working like magic in both computers with full capacity of 999GB (yes I have reclaimed the full hard disk size after using the new firmware)

  don’t make my earlier mistake and do buy this great 1TB drive … it is really worth the money, 1TB in such small size! wow
  
• 

  nikoman
  December 15th, 2009 on 10:13 pm

  Rating

  I own both the 750Gb and 1TB versions of this drive and I love them. The cable that ships with them is of a nice quality (too thick for its own good) and I think being too short doesn’t help either. They do pop off easily with the slightest gaze (if you look at them wrong) – but I can’t fault the drive due to a cheap-ass cord. I bought another cord that is MUCH longer and it REALLY stays on the drive. As for the dumb back up utility that keeps popping up is no longer an issue since I disabled it using WD’s latest firmware. I will keep this review plain and simple and so far I give them 5 stars due to their massive capacities.
• 

  Sheldon Chang
  January 3rd, 2010 on 1:46 am

  Rating

  First of all, the cable is fine and it’s a lot better than the other cables that came with WD passports. The old USB cables did have a serious problem with jiggling loose and I could never use them on my laptop if there was any chance the laptop might move even a little for fear of disturbing the cable. I do not have that problem anymore with this passport.

  The USB cable is a micro USB cable that is the same as on my BlackBerry 8900. Everyone crying about the “proprietary” cable… get a grip. It’s not and it fits way more securely than the cable type it replaced.

  I’m favorable to the software too. I want something hardware based that will password protect my drive because I use WD Passports exclusively as portable backup drives that are secondary backups in case of disaster. I own a bunch of them. This also means that I don’t need to interact with the drive all that often so perhaps if I had to use this drive a dozen times a day and had to deal with the auto-mounting partition, it might get annoying, but it hardly seems like a big deal to me. I don’t need the backup software on it so I can’t comment on if that’s any good at all but it’s not getting in the way either. I use Apple’s Time Machine programs to backup directly to this disk at least once a week and it has no conflicts with the permanent backup software on the drive.

  As for the drive itself, all I can say is that it’s so far so good. I’ve only had mine a few weeks. It’s worked fine, it’s fast, it’s quiet, and it doesn’t accidentally disconnect all the time like some of my older WD Passports. I normally wouldn’t write a review so soon as the real test is if the drive is healthy after a few months of real use, but I just couldn’t believe all the bellyaching going on here. Until further notice, I wish all of my WD Passports were like this version.
• 

  Marco De Vivo
  January 7th, 2010 on 7:38 pm

  Rating

  1) The cable is a ‘standard male’ to ‘MICRO USB male’. The same one NOKIA uses as DATA cable for their cel phones to communicate with computers. Note that this is a MICRO (not a MINI)plug.
  
  2) For the VCD you just follow the link shown at the beginning of this amazon page indicating news about the related software upgrade. Then choice your model and download the firmware utility and the vcd manager. Follow the quite long (24 steps) but otherwise easy procedures and remove the wired partition. you can use MAC or Windows software (both available) First make the firmware upgrade and then run the vcd manager and VOILA the extra icon disappears! My hard drivers came NTFS from FACTORY. I formatted MAC HFS (WITH GUID partitioning )with DISK UTILITY and THEN made the upgrades running the downloaded mac software. Mac owners ADVICE: try to stop spotlight (for the drive upgraded) while upgrading. Just to be on the safer side (even if not strictly mandatory I guess). Good luck. Excellent Hard Disks!.
• 

  D. Docherty
  January 14th, 2010 on 12:29 pm

  Rating

  It took me about ten minutes to deactivate the Western Digital software, using the download available from their site. It now simply works as a single drive under both Windows and Mac. I have owned this drive for several months and it has been a reliable performer. It is a very small form factor for 1 TB of storage. The USB cable works just fine, no problems at all. Way to go, Western Digital — keep these excellent drives coming, and take a good hard look at giving us an option to buy a version without the software.
• 

  H. J. Spivack
  January 21st, 2010 on 3:43 pm

  Rating

  I have had a series of external hard drives and let’s face it, the only time it really fails expectations is when it fails to work. Chances are, unless it is really in bad shape, you will only notice speed issues when it is failing. I did however clock it (5400 RPM is what I saw online and I got a reading a little slower than that, but that could as easily be my computer as this drive’s fault…still pretty danged quick IMHO) and the drive is fast in both reading and in writing. So, I decided to put my new Western Digital through its paces. If you read nothing else, know this: It worked well, I essentially have no complaints and plan on using the drive often. It is sexy looking, I’ll give it that. What other hard drive do you know of that you can say that about? If that’s all you’re looking for, you can now close the window.

  Still there? Ok, so let me tell you how I came to those conclusions.

  The issues I saw online about faulty cables did not show up with my drive. It was a mini USB, plugged right in and off it went. The drive was immediately recognized and available for use. It tried to install a software GUI, a process which I immediately cancelled to reformat as a FAT32 to get it ready for testing. The

  I setup the external hard drive and copied a variety of media to it, pictures, application, music, videos as IPOD and MP4 compatible files. The ‘My Passport’ was very fast and successfully wrote and read everything I threw at it. I hooked it up to my media center where it was recognized and I was able to watch both HD and nonHD video on my HD TV. The non-hd came through with artifacts (not surprisingly) and the HD had a few minor hiccups that could have been more about the connection than the drive.

  All in all, a nice external hard drive which I’ve been using daily for several weeks!
• 

  Dan Mueller
  March 13th, 2010 on 1:24 am

  Rating

  Until I remembered that most people are idiots… This is not a 1 Star Drive… this is a 5 Star Drive.

  If you read the one star reviews, you will find that most people who wrote them are bothered by the Western Digital Smartware Software. Let me be perfectly clear. The Western Digital Software is NOT removable without a hardware hack, but you can prevent it from auto-running or auto-launching IF you update the drive software to the latest version. This software is necessary for an advertised feature of the drive: Data Encryption. It also does one click backups, and has some other utilities as well. Finder reported 999.2 GB Free on this disk ( Under Snow Leopard 10.6.2 )… So about 800 MB is used for overhead to do what it does. If this bothers you, then don’t buy this drive.

  The other complaint was about the cable. Either is was too loose or “proprietary”. There may very well have been some loose cables in the early batches, but the one that came with my drive in March 2010 fits snug and secure. In fact, I can let the drive dangle in midair, suspended by the cable, and the drive still stays mounted. I do not recommend doing that though… The cable is NOT proprietary. It is an 18″ micro USB cable. This is a standardized interface that is used on newer devices like the new blackberries, and the Amazon Kindle for example.

  Pros:
  
  - Huge Capacity (999.2GB Free)
  
  - Very Small (2.5″ Drive inside Enclosure)
  
  - Bus Powered (No External Power Supply Needed)
  
  - Affordable (Currently $149)
  
  - Cross Platform Encryption Option
  
  - Free Cross Platform Backup Software & Utilities

  Cons:
  
  - WD Smartware Software is not removable and takes up 800 MB of space.

  Bottom Line:

  Epic Win for Western Digital & Amazon. I will be buying more of these drives and recommending them to my friends and clients.

  Fail for people who buy this drive without reading about it’s well documented and advertised features, then complaining about it.
• 

  R. Poole
  March 22nd, 2010 on 3:27 am

  Rating

  I was at first reluctant to buy this hard drive because there were several negative reviews regarding the software that comes with it. I am so glad that I did because it works great….Fast, smooth, silent, cool running, esthetically appealing, and the price is right. I downloaded the software updates from the WD website and installed them right away so I didn’t experience any problems others spoke of. In fact, I use the Passport software for my system backup and it works as good as or even better than the Windows OS backup. My only problem I can forward is relevant to 64 bit OS users. I notice if I restart my computer with the Passport HD plugged in, the Windows op. system will not start until I unplug the HD USB. I don’t believe this has anything to do with the Passport because it also happens with my USB wireless modem. When I use my Passport with my 32 bit OS computer I don’t have this issue.
• 

  Conor P. Cahill
  March 31st, 2010 on 6:56 am

  Rating

  I’m a long term WD-Passport user and looked at these drives with a bit of trepidation given the reviews that I’ve seen here and elsewhere. However, I carry around a few 512GB drives and one of them was getting a bit low on space, so I thought it time to upgrade.

  I like the new WD drives because they are smaller and sleeker than the older WD Passport drives. Well, I should be a bit careful with my words. Compared to my old 512GB WD Passport, thew new drive is slightly wider and thicker, but about a half inch shorter. It is also about 1 ounce heavier (7.2 oz vs 6.2 oz on my old drive).

  I had no problems plugging in the drive and just installing the driver without having to install their “SmartWare” software (an oxymoron if I ever saw one…) by just selecting the device in the hardware management, selecting update driver, and browsing to the “ExtrasWD SES Device Driver” on the CD image that was mounted when I plugged in the drive.

  Later, I installed the software just to see how it worked and was not impressed. However, I’m a long term computer hack that doesn’t want hand-holding software. I could see how this software could be useful for the standard off-the-shelf windows configuration that most average users have on their system.

  So I uninstalled the software and use my own copy/backup routines.

  Some have complained about the lost space due to the software being stored/managed in a protected partition that you can’t delete on the drive. I’m not so concerned about losing a few hundred megabits on a terabyte drive and it isn’t uncommon for manufacturers to have protected partitions for software restoration/debugging (Dell has a small protected partition on most, if not all, of the systems they sell to be used for diagnostics should there be a problem. Yeah, with Dell, if you know what you’re doing you can go erase that partition (which I used to do in my younger days when every byte of disk space mattered, but no longer feel that the return is worth the cost/effort).

  Some have also complained about the connector. It has changed from a standard mini-USB to a micro-USB. It is still a standard connector, just a smaller one that most small electronics are moving to (and the phone industry appears to be moving to standardize upon. My other micro-USB connectors that I have for several other devices with the same connector all work fine with this drive.

  I don’t know if my experience is that different from others because WD has fixed their issues in later releases of the drive, or they have more clearly explained the resolutions for issues that they’ve been experiencing or if I’m just less concerned about the little stuff that doesn’t have an impact on how I will use the drive.

  All in all, I’m happy with the device and don’t have a problem recommending them.

  BTW – WD has several cases out there for this drive. I’ve purchased both Western Digital Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Portable Drives WDBABJ0000NBK-NRSN – Black and Western Digital Soft Carrying Case for My Passport Portable Hard Drives WDBABK0000NSL-WASN (Silver). I find I prefer the soft case because it is sized a bit better for this drive and is smaller than the hard case. However, if you’re going to bang the drive around a lot, you might consider the hard case as I think it would provide a bit better protection (I’m not too hard on my drives, though I carry them around everywhere and I travel a lot).