I just bought in quick succession two WD My Passport drives: a 500-GB Elite and a 320-GB Essential (actually 465 and 298 "real" binary GB, respectively), both for backup purposes. Since I have both models, I will be posting this review in both product entries.
First of all, why Western Digital? Well, I have two Seagate internal HDDs in my desktop PC and no complaints, but lately that company has been making a lot of serious flops and lost much of its reputation and reliability. I did consider the FreeAgent Go, but user reviews were discouraging, with reliability issues and a mysterious and frequent write error in Windows, for which Seagate offered no solution. Toshiba and Samsung models had even worse reviews - they just "died" after a short while. While Iomega models seemed to be good, their design was a bit awkward and bulky, and they were too expensive. And I didn't want obscure brands, or worse, one of those crappy adaptations of internal laptop HDDs in external USB enclosures - I don't trust those little Frankensteins. WD My Passport's reviews, combined with WD's reputation, were good enough to convince me that it was the best choice.
Why an Elite first? Because price difference at Amazon was only about $10, and I thought it was worth it. I could do without the Elite's matte finish (even though it does look and feel much better), the extra LEDs and the crappy extra software I won't use anyway, but I think the Elite is a much better deal because it offers 5 years' warranty, vs. 3 years for the Essential. Definitely no small thing, especially for HDDs and for such a small price difference.
Then why was my second one an Essential? Because I live in Brazil. I had a visiting friend from the U.S. and he brought me the Elite I had bought here at Amazon and shipped to his home, but Amazon doesn't ship electronics directly here, and even if it did or I shopped elsewhere, freight and customs duties would do away with any advantage. So, I had to buy the second drive locally, and here prices are MUCH higher than in the U.S., and the price difference between models was much greater. So, I had to settle for an Essential, but this was no tragedy - it's a great product as well!
Both are working very well, and I'm extremely satisfied. The performance of both models is exactly the same. Don't expect anything close to an internal HDD's speed: the USB 2.0 interface is much slower, and the drives don't even come close to USB 2.0's nominal transfer rate (480 Mbps, or 60 MB/s). SiSoftware Sandra benchmarked both drives at around 18 MB/s, but this appears to be the market average and a realistic expectation for this kind of drive. But keep in mind that external HDDs are primarily meant and designed for *off-line storage* and *occasional* access, unlike internal system drives, which are meant for fast, *constant* access and where speed is critical.
Attention, Linux users: I tested the drives on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and it recognized and worked flawlessly with them - and much faster than Windows: up to 28 MB/s, as reported directly by Gnome during a large file transfer.
I reformatted the drives in NTFS because I have some individual files larger than 4 GB, so FAT32 wouldn't do. I'm also using TrueCrypt for privacy - it's great free software, available for Windows, Linux and Mac, and it didn't affect the drives' performance the least bit: its on-the-fly encryption is faster than the drives' transfer rate even with the stronger but slower encryption algorithm "cascades."
The manuals (in PDF files that come on the drive but can also be downloaded from WD) could be better. True, there isn't much to say about a device whose function is obvious, which has no controls and works out of the box, but what about WD's recommendations for cleaning, or detailed technical specs, for example? They aren't there. My only other complaint is that the provided USB cable is way too short, and the drives didn't work with a longer spare I had. But these are really minor issues, and don't even scratch these drives' excellent value. I still give them 5 stars, because the hardware is great, and that's what matters.
Since both of my drives are brand new, I can't tell about their actual durability, but HDDs are ALWAYS a matter of luck by their own nature, and the least that can be said is that WD has a better reliability record than other brands.
For protection, I highly recommend the Assorted Colors EVA Hard Shell Case for Western Digital WD Passport. It's a nearly perfect fit for the drives (the Elite and the Essential are exactly the same size and shape), offers great protection with an outer hard EVA layer and an inner soft foam one, has a neat inside pouch for the USB cable, and it's cheaper than Amazon's current recommendation, the Case Logic Compact Portable Hard Drive Case, which according to user reviews is too large for My Passports (though good for the older and slightly larger Passport line) - the drive slides and bounces inside it.
In short: can you buy a WD My Passport with confidence? Definitely so! Then an Elite or an Essential? I'd advise the Elite because of the longer warranty, but you can't go wrong with an Essential either. Go for them!Get more detail about
Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDME5000TN (Midnight Black).
