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Western Digital My Passport Studio 320 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive WDMT3200TN (Silver)
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Customer Rating:
 
List Price: $149.99
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Product Description
320GB MY PASSPORT STUDIO EXT HD FW800/USB 2.5 5YR

Product Details
  • USB/FW400/FW800

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Customer Reviews
Fast, Small & Sleek
 
Review Date: December 26, 2008
Reviewer: Travis B. Stevens, Knoxville, TN
I'm a digital artist responsible for photography, high definition motion graphics and overall general graphic design, print and web. I got my passport for Christmas this year and I couldn't be happier.

Firstly, My main machine is a MacBook Pro laptop. My work computer is a Mac Pro and 99% of the computers I work on in my industry are Macs. So this review is from a Mac Users perspective. Windows users beware (apparently this drive will require a reformat.)

I had read a bunch of reviews talking about the difficulty of the short thick fw800 cable and I have got to say they're unfounded. Sure it's thick, no lie there. But it's completely manageable. The package also comes with a USB cable and a FW400 cable for ultimate compatibility (which is Ideal for a freelancer who is constantly working on many types of machines.) And the best of all IT DOESN'T REQUIRE A POWER SUPPLY!!!

For what it's worth i found the drive to be physically appealing and very small & light weight. Compared to a GTECH 500GB GDrive. It comes with a pretty slick carrying bag (to hold the extra cables as well as the drive.)

The drive comes with about 280~ mb of drivers and Documentation in every possible language on it (install-delete imo) After that i did some basic workhorse transfers on them. I moved my entire 36 gig Aperture Library and my 45 gig iTunes library on the drive and it was finished by the time i went in to check on the progress the first time. I was planning on checking on it at least 3 or 4 times. That was a nice surprise.

All in all this drive deserves 5 Stars easily. What this drive doesn't deliver in affordability It easily makes it up in literally every other aspect of it. (I wouldn't knock off a star off any other FAT formatted external for having to reformat it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so i don't think the previous 4 star rating was deserved.)

Now, because i hate reading reviews that are all praises and no criticism and as much as i hate to try and find anything wrong with this product I guess i would say they default "turbo" icon after installed those drivers is pretty ugly and something i changes immediately.
Outstanding portable Firewire 800 drive!
 
Review Date: September 15, 2009
Reviewer: Navarro L. Parker, San Diego, CA United States
I bought this drive to replace my aging LaCie Rugged 160GB drive. I'm thrilled at this product. The Firewire 800 performance is blazing fast at times (over 66MB/sec reads and 50MB/sec writes!). I like that it's smaller than the LaCie Rugged, but the plastic shell obviously isn't as durable as the Rugged rubber bumper. So be sure to use the provided cloth bag. Another thing I like is that when you need to use USB, it's powered by one single USB cable! No more weird dual USB/DC cables to lose! It comes with a short USB cable, Firewire 800/800 cable and a Firewire 800/400 cable.

A couple notes, Mac OS X Leopard reports this drive as 465GB, Snow Leopard reports is as 500GB because of the new way 10.6 calculates disc space. Both are accurate. Also, this drive comes formatted as HFS+ Journaled, BUT uses the older "Apple Partition Map". That means it's only *bootable* on PowerPC Macs (you can still use it as storage on any Mac or PC). You will need to repartition the drive to "GUID mapping" using 10.5/10.6's Disk Utility. GUID drives are usable on any Mac, but can boot Intel Macs (over Firewire, and yes, even USB if memory serves).

Very fast. Very quiet. Can't complain about anything really.
Fast, Easy & Flexible
 
Review Date: February 4, 2009
Reviewer: Jack Benjamin, Bellevue, NE USA
I wasn't even looking for a drive when I spotted this gem. I own an iMac and MacBook Pro and do a lot of photography. The firewire connections and the price for 500GB got my attention first. Then I noticed NO POWER Supply required. Oh do I like that. It worked right out of the box. I have been in situations where each of the different connections, i.e USB, FW400 and FW800 have been put to the test. FW800 just flies. I agree that I thought it would be an aluminum case but the light acrylic case seems to take normal handling well. I toss it into my jacket, bag, pants pocket, and use it in my studio with out issue. I wouldn't be over confident in just being abusive to the thing, but not having to deal with external power adapters and extra cords is a treat. This makes a great backup drive with the Mac's Time Machine software or just drag and drop files, folders, etc to it. It has a LED bar that shows how full the drive is getting. This is represented by a series of LED dots. I do plan on purchasing another drive just like this one soon. This comes PRE FORMATTED for the MAC. It will work with windows if you RE FORMAT the drive, other similar WD drives that are configured for Windows users will also work on the MAC but check the specifications before purchasing.
Awesome Hard Drive
 
Review Date: March 5, 2009
Reviewer: Jose A., denver, co
After doing substantial research I decided to purchase this hard drive, and I'm glad I did! I'm running Tiger 10.4.11 on my imac and wanted something that had firewire 400 so i wouldn't take up one of my usb ports. I backed up 200gb to the my passport, and it took about 3 hours. I like the fact this hard drive is powered through the firewire cable and don't have to connect it to a AC outlet. I couldn't be happier.
Best portable HD for Macbook Pro!
 
Review Date: April 6, 2009
Reviewer: Dustin Thomas, Vancouver, WA
This is an amazing Hard Drive. I use it with my Macbook Pro through firewire 800. It is lightning fast! I use it for everyday storage, run computer games off of it, run windows off of it (through VMware Fusion), and use it for audio production. Also works like a charm for PCs if re-formatted.

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Filed under: External Hard Drives

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