Product Description

Equipped with FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces, and formatted for Mac, this portable hard drive is perfect for Mac users on the go. Use it to pack up your office files and take them home, carry thousands of songs or pictures and back up your Mac laptop using Apple Time Machine.

Product Details

• Size: 500 GB
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDMT5000TN
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Hard Disk: 500GB

Features

• Box Contents - Portable hard drive, FireWire 800 cable, USB 2.0 cable, Drawstring bag, and Quick Install Guide
• Formatted HFS+ Journaled for Mac OS X 10.4.11, 10.5.2, can easily be reformatted for Windows Vista, XP, and 2000
• Fully compatible with Apple's Time Machine backup software
• Dimensions - Height 0.59 x Length 4.97 x Width 3.13 (15.0x126.15x79.5mm)
• Weight - 0.40 pounds (0.18 kg)

Customer Reviews

WD 500gb passport studio 2.5 drive FW 800

PROS:
This has spacious 500GB drive. Very quiet. Small size. I really like the LED that indicates operation and rough capacity taken. The FW 800 is much faster then USB, that was my reason to get this drive.

CONS:
the provided cables are too short for me, so i had to use longer 3rd party FW 800 cable. The case is plastic. i would like aluminum.

Nice drive, but Firewire has died
I was very happy with this drive, until after less than three months of light use, the Firewire port died. I tried both the 800/400 and 800/800 cables, on two different Macs, and neither machine mounts the drive. (Disk Utility doesn't see it, either.) When I plug in the drive with either cable, one light is illuminated, the platter spins briefly and then stops, and the single light is extinguished.

The USB port is still functional; and I can use that to connect to my desktop PC (which has no Firewire port) and my MacBook Pro, both of which support USB 2.0. But I'm forced back on the agonizingly slow USB 1 connection on my older PowerMac G4.

The main reason I selected this drive over other portables was for Firewire. And I'm not the only one who has reported sudden Firewire failures. So if you're considering the Studio version of this drive because it supports both USB and Firewire, look elsewhere.

Fast and Spacious!
This little drive absolutely smokes previous WD external hard drives I have used. It's very fast, even with USB connection, let alone Fire Wire. I did have to re-format it for my PC, since it comes formatted for Mac.
After running an HD Tune Pro "error scan" on it though, it shows to have one bad or damaged block (at about 64000 MB position right out of the box. This hopefully isn't large enough to affect its performance, but I wish it wasn't there. It seems to work perfectly otherwise. I can sure use the storage space since I shoot a lot of digital images in RAW format with my Canon 40D digital SLR. I would highly recommend this little jewel to anyone looking for a small, portable, yet large (memory space) external HD.