Product Description

With a luxurious, soft-touch finish thats elegant and comfortable to hold, the chic little My Passport Elite Portable USB Hard Drive from Western Digital has mega-capacity for all your digital content. The worlds most sought-after portable drive is now the most stylish way to carry thousands of songs or pictures. Because the drive is powered directly through the USB cable, there is no power adapter to carry. Included automatic backup software lets you back up all your files on your laptop computer; WD Sync software synchronizes and encrypts your data; and MioNet Key software gives you remote access to your data.

Product Details

• Color: Silver
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDML5000TN
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .59" h x 3.13" w x 4.97" l, .40 pounds
• Memory: 128000MB DRAM
• Hard Disk: 500GB
• Processors: 1
• Native resolution: 640x480
• Display size: 669.2913385827

Features

• Luxurious Soft-touch Finish
• Capacity gauge
• Backup and Sync Software
• Powered directly from the USB port on your PC. No separate power supply is needed
• Connect My Passport to any PC and run MioNet Key software to remotely access files, music, and photos from any of your computers

Customer Reviews

Hardware excellent, Software not so hot
The main difference between the WD Passport Elite and the slightly cheaper Passport Essential is in the pre-loaded software. Both versions include sync and encryption software, but only the Passport Elite comes with the "WD Anywhere" automatic backup software. However, if your main reason for buying the Passport Elite is to use it as a data backup drive for your PC, you better think twice - details on that later.


What's so excellent about the hardware?

SIZE: The drive is so compact and light, it can fit in my shirt pocket easily.

CONNECTION: Just a simple USB cable takes care of both power and data. The provided cable is only 15 inches long, but I have tried a generic 30-inch USB cable and it works just fine.

SPEED: I benchmarked the data transfer rate to be 30MB/s for writing large files. This is about as good as it can get for a 5400RPM hard drive connected through USB 2.0.

NOISE: What noise? I have to put my ear right on the hard drive, in order to heard a faint sound during read/write.


What's not so hot about the WD Anywhere backup software?

Initially, the WD Anywhere software appears to be a 30-day trial version. It turns out that on-line registration is required to activate the full version. Fair enough, except that my virus protection program blocked this software from accessing the Internet. So I have to temporarily suspend the virus protection in order to register.

Next, I started to backup selected directories on my PC. The software seems to get 'stuck' after transferring just a few GB of data. It would consume over 60% of my computer's CPU power, yet the files are just crawling along. I restarted the process a few times, but the results are the same. Finally, I downloaded the latest WD Anywhere Backup version 3.50, and it doesn't hang up anymore. However, there are still problems when using this automatic backup software.

Suppose I transfer some image files from my camera to my PC, while the portable hard drive is not connected. WD Anywhere will queue-up those files for backup later, once the drive is connected. The problem is: if I rename/edit those files in the mean time, WD Anywhere is not smart enough to update its queue accordingly. So it will try unsuccessfully to backup those old files, and it will NOT backup those new files I have edited. It is ironic that the backup software for a PORTABLE hard drive requires the drive to be connected all the time. I have yet to find a way to force the software to rescan my directory and look for new files to backup. It is easier for me to just copy the whole directory manually.

The bottom line is, WD Passport Elite is still an excellent USB hard drive. Just remember that you cannot rely on WD Anywhere to backup all your files automatically.

[Update on April 4th]
Thanks to suggestion by William E. Merkley II, I downloaded a free program called 'SyncToy' (part of the Microsoft PowerToys suite). It works exactly the way I want to backup my photo files. I have already deleted the WD Anywhere backup program and will only use SyncToy from now on.

[Update on May 25th, 2009]
I tried using this hard drive connecetd to the USB port of my Philips DVP5990 DVD Player. The DVD player can detect there is an USB device connected, but it cannot read anything from the device. I think the fault is with the USB port of this player. It seems unable to supply the 500mA current required, therefore the hard drive cannot spin up. For this application, I need to get an USB hard drive with its own power supply instead.

Excellent in all respects
Western Digital got it all right with this drive, finally. The new case is a pleasure to touch, it's silky soft. The USB port is no longer inverted. And they did away with the silly rubber cover for the USB mini jack (thank you). The titanium refers to the color, not that it's made out of titanium.

The form factor is wonderful on this drive. It's thin, very thin. Definately a highly recommended drive for the road warrior. It will slip in about anywhere.

Access speed is fast via USB 2, just like most portable drives. It makes almost no noise.

The difference between the WD Elite and the standard Passport is backup software and the fuel gauge lights on the Elite (none of these things are worth a premium).

Great accessory, caselogic carrying case.
Caselogic Neoprene LHDC-1 Portable Hard Drive Case (Dark Gray)

WD My Passport: a great drive in 2 versions
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!