WD My Passport Essential SE (750GB)

• Average user rating: 1.0 stars out of 4 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 4 stars

  Unreliable.

  by dbb2012 on August 26, 2012

  Pros: Small, light.

  Cons: Doesn't work.

  Summary: Nice package. Great promise. But it just doesn't work, or breaks down easy. After working very well for the first 2-3 months, my unit has given me all kinds ...

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  Summary: Nice package. Great promise. But it just doesn't work, or breaks down easy. After working very well for the first 2-3 months, my unit has given me all kinds of problems since then. Mostly it stops being seen by the system when the USB is plugged. I feel that it is spinning, but nothing happens. Switched through all USB ports, initially it worked at some, now at none. My older, heavier hard disk works perfectly.
  
  Updated on Aug 26, 2012

  I would like to withdraw my review above. I made a mistake. The problems that I was experiencing were not due to the MyPassport drive, but to my Dell's USB 3.0 ports. This became apparent to me after I tried to use a hard drive from another manufacturer and encountered exactly the same problem. At the same time the MyPassport worked flawlessly when I tested it on two other machines. Sorry for the confusion and inconvenience.

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• 1 stars

  This Disk Drive is total junk.

  by flagstaff17 on November 4, 2011

  Pros: Absolutely none.

  Cons: I think that the drive mechanism for this disk may be OK but the WD "SmartWare" software is total garbage and prevents this disk from being used in any proper or normal way with my old Windows XP computer. The software simply does not work right. See my

  Summary: I bought this Western Digital My Passport Essential 750GB portable drive. After three days of messing with it, I took it back to the retailer.
  
  I have an old (2002) ...

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  Summary: I bought this Western Digital My Passport Essential 750GB portable drive. After three days of messing with it, I took it back to the retailer.
  
  I have an old (2002) Windows XP computer with a 40GB internal hard drive. I wanted this disk to provide automatic back-ups for me and maybe some additional storage in time. (Of course, a 40GB internal hard drive is miniscule by today's standards. But my 40GB disk is only 70% full now. I do not store videos or games.) I hooked the WD disk up via USB 2.0 and was able to access the internal software and files that WD loads on the drive. The first irritation was that the WD instructions that you access tell you not to let Microsoft's USB configuration software configure the disk drive. Well, how are you supposed to get the WD disk to work so you can actually read these instructions from the disk drive without Microsoft XP doing something? That ass-backwards paradox should have been a clue to me to leave this disk drive alone and return it to the store right then. But No-o-o! That was a harbinger of problems and screw-ups of WD's part to come. I reached the point where I ran WD "SmartWare". As soon as I got it running it prompted me to load some new disk firmware. Apparently mine was out-of-date. That actually makes some sense since the disk drive was built months ago and WD may have newer firmware by today. So I followed the instructions. I downloaded this WDFirmwareUpdater zip file, extracted the firmware updater, and ran it. The software tells me nothing: all it does it pop up a new window with no information. I assume the firmware is being loaded but you would not know that from anything. After about 10 or 15 minutes the window goes away and I assume the firmware is loaded. Then I re-boot my computer as per the WD instructions. I run WD "SmartWare" again. What does it do? It tells me my firmware is out of data and I should download this zip file. etc. So I do it and, of course, it tells me that the file already exists on my computer and do I want override? Sure. I follow the instructions again and get the same result as above with the unhelpful window which may (or may not) indicate that the firmware is being or was updated. I reboot, and run WD "SmartWare" again with the same results. I do this several times until I got tired of this infinite loop of reloading firmware (or not) and ignored it. I follow the instructions for WD "SmartWare" to set up my WD disk for the first back-up and things begin as per the instructions. It evaluates my computer internal hard drive for file types and it seems to finally be ready to truly back-up. It says it will back up 21G of data. But then the WD "SmartWare" wigs out and goes into this "Analyzing Files" step. This mode is not even documented in the instructions at all. After 10 minutes of this I decide the software has failed and abort the whole thing and start again. Same result but this time I let the "analyzing" run to a finish, which is 45 minutes. So here's this mysterious 45-minute process that is not even documented in the WD-supplied instructions. You'd think that WD would say something if their software was going to take 45 minutes to do something. In fact what time would it have taken if my hard drive was 500GB to 1TB like many are today? It would have been a day-long affair. So finally it is appears to be ready to back-up my internal hard drive and I tell it to do so. It begins by transferring a limited number of files per minutes. It has some 17,000 files to transfer. I know something sucks if it is only transferring a dozen files per minute. Guess what? It takes overnight and fully 12 hours to back-up only 21GB of my internal hard drive to the WD Passport. Can you believe it? 21GB!??! It would have taken over a week to back up a 500GB disk, right? And during this "back-up" I check Windows Task Manager and the WD "SmartWare" is hogging 90% of my processor performance! My computer is locked up for 12 hours to back-up just 21GB of data from my internal hard drive to this WD Passport disk. How can this be acceptable to anyone? At the end of 12 hours it does appear that my internal hard drive is backed up though. I can see my hard drive files out there.
  
  But with all these firmware load/no-load problems, the mysterious 45-minute "analyzing" step and the 12-hour 21GB back-up I call WD tech support. The person I take to is somewhere between clueless and puzzled. He tells me that their "SmartWare" software is written for 64-bit processors and my early Pentium with XP is a 32-bit so things go slower but they should not be that slow. But he has nothing definitive to tell me, just some open-ended suggestions like "try this" or "try that".
  
  I leave it at that. I can not have 12-hour tie-ups every time I want to back-up my computer. And what about this firmware upgrade that may or may not be happening? I am not going to spend hours and hours more trying to get something to work that should be a no-brainer. The fact is this product simply can not be used. It is absolutely unacceptable.
  
  But now I have my internal hard drive backed-up on this Passport disk and I am going to return this POS back to the retailer. So I have to wipe the Passport clean with a disk scrubber program because I don't want all my files, even though they have been deleted, available to some one with software to read them. The disc scrubbing takes another 13 hours.
  
  I spent probably 6-8 hours directly on dealing with this piece of junk. I will never in my life buy a Western Digital product again.

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• 1 stars

  This hard drive is hopeless

  by adil_project on June 27, 2011

  Pros: I don't see any , it just dies in few months

  Cons: This hard drive suddenly stopped working after few months. I lost all my pictures and videos . I thought Western digital is a well reputed product. Even the support is hopeless

  Summary: Would never buy Western digial again

  Summary: Would never buy Western digial again

• 4 stars

  Unnecessary auto installation

  by kevinnash23 on June 25, 2010

  Pros: Sleek, spacious for 750 GB, password protection

  Cons: Auto install software not intended to be used, unnecessary eating of space, only wd cable works for this, fingerprint magnet

  Summary: Western Digital My Passport Essential SE is the sleekest external hard drive I?ve ever used. And has a 750 GB space. It offers added protection to my copyrighted material ...

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  Summary: Western Digital My Passport Essential SE is the sleekest external hard drive I?ve ever used. And has a 750 GB space. It offers added protection to my copyrighted material that I store in it by offering password protection. Here are the cons: The software auto installs itself into the machine, which is something I don?t like. Why would I want to offer space to this software that I don?t intend to use? I?ve been told that the software installs itself in the BIOS, which means it can?t be removed. WD should have considered an in-built cable because the one that comes with this device is too bad? won?t stay on the slot for long. There is no way this device would work with any other USB cable other than the one that comes with it. Have tried a couple of them and found it doesn?t work. I appreciate the design but lacks a fine finish. It is a fingerprint magnet and I hate that.

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