Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)If you're a Mac user or, like me, use both Macs and PCs then you know that portable hard drives still come in two flavors - those that are Mac ready and those that are PC ready. If you want a PC ready drive with Firewire capability you're still out of luck but this Western Digital offering is much closer to plug and play that previous offerings.
I have two of these drives. The first I use at work with a Mac and the setup was as easy as advertised. Just plug it in and it works. The second I use at home with a PC and that's a little tricky. I wanted the FireWire option (if the coolest PCs only have so many USB ports) so I was willing to put up with some hassle for the functionality. Here's what you need to do on a Windows 7 PC:
Plug in the drive
Click on the start button
Go to Computer and right click
Select Manage (you'll need admin rights)
On the Computer Management screen select Disk Management (under Storage)
My Studio will be listed as not initialized. It won't have a drive letter.
Right click on the My Studio disk and select Initialize
Then Right click again and select format. Make sure to format for NTFS.
Since you're only partitioning and not really formatting the drive this will only take a minute or two to complete. Then you're ready to go. That's a big improvement over other drives such as the otherwise fine Iomega FireWire drive that requires a full formatting.
The digital read out on the front of the drive lets you label it and see how much space you have left. This is a great feature if you use multiple hard drives like I do. The only downside it that this feature seems to be the reason this My Studio drive is almost twice as thick as WD's My Passport drive with the same GB size. Both are highly portable but I'm not sure this feature is worth the additional bulk.
The only bad thing about this drive - and it's the reason this is a 4 star instead of a 5 - is the horrendous ironically named "WD SmartWare" backup software. The virtual CD can be unmounted now but it is still an unnecessary intrusion. The software itself eats up more RAM than anything else running on my PC. More than Explorer. More than Microsoft Office Suite. All that for limited backup functionality - you can only access backed up files through a full restore. You need to install "SmartWare" to turn off the virtual CD, label the drive and register it even if you don't want to use the drive for back up. Then it just sits on your computer eating up memory and CPU speed. The only fix is to go to Windows Control Panel and uninstall the software. This is Western Digital's Achilles Heel and they need to get it fixed.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Western Digital My Passport Studio 500 GB FireWire 800/400 USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive (Silver)
WD's ultra-portable, My Passport Studio drive is packed with innovative features including a customizable e-label to remind you what's stored on the drive. Formatted for Mac and compatible with Apple Time Machine, this drive is plug-and-play ready for Mac computer users. WD SmartWare enables automatic, continuous backup with visual display. FireWire 800 provides fast data access and saves.
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