WD My Passport Studio 2TB Mac Portable External Hard Drive Storage FireWire

It has a huge (2TB) storage capacity. It physically is no larger than a oversize deck of cards—so it's small enough to hide, but really it's too beautiful not to display up front. It came with 2 cables to choose from (a USB2 and a Firewire800), so it was incredibly easy to install on my Mac OS 10.6 iMac as the backing-up Time Machine. It's soundless because it does not seem to have moving parts. It requires no power cord because it draws power from either the USB or Firewire port. Its online documentation/manual is a bit hard to get to, but since it was so easy to install, maybe it does not need a manual? It's the best external drive I have ever purchased.

For being a small portable device that you don't leave plugged in all the time, it is ok. But what I was hoping for is an external drive solution I could leave plugged in all the time that would be handy to take with me on the go. Keep in mind the way I use my laptop is more like a desktop while only going mobile with it a couple times a month.If you leave it plugged in, it gets hot. Not too hot to touch or anything that bad but hot enough that I question the longevity of the device if it were to be left plugged in. It also blocks my machine from going to sleep even with Time Machine turned off. I find it annoying to have to plug it in and unplug it.If your goal is to have a huge thumb drive, then I might recommend this product. Otherwise you should look elsewhere for an external desktop solution.

CONCLUSIONCan two, or more, external drives be placed in a RAID array so you save the same information to both drives simultaneously and thereby cut the time in 1/2, or less, to have identical disks, aka, backups?ALTERNATIVEOr, to make it simple can the "Save" command be upgraded on the toolbar to add a 'save cc:' choice - File / Save cc: / specify drive (s) / ask each time / don't ask WD  ]REVIEWDurability: stepped on MacBook Pro power cord. Highly magnetized plug didn't come out. WD harddrive was pushed off table edge to carpeted hotel floor.Likely drive was in the idle mode at the time.Firewire 800 plug came out. Reconnected. drive worked.When compared to the other WD drive on the other MacBook Pro, ear to case hears a slightly lower overtone to the drive as it now uploads folders to Google drive, but test file opened OK, and upload is proceeding.#46 of 64: William Hale (hinging0) Thu 27 Sep 2012 (06:03 AM)Errors in effort to upload massive folders from my passport WD to google drive, but that could be bandwidth issues - or the drive after being dropped.Need settings in the external devices that let you mark files then and there for upload all the way through to cloud destinations, or to stop and reside on your own internal, or local external drives; xref: morse code; xref: President of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi.COMPARECompare this to Lacie ruggedized hard drive with orange bumpers which fell out of the box while opening the clever packaging - and failed to work after a 3.5 foot drop to a carpeted floor, but which was replaced with only the question, "Did you drop it?" from Lacie; xref: quality control, I guess.RAIDCan you place two external drives in a RAID array so both simultaneously fill up as identical copies of your internal drive?I once put two external Lacie drives in a RAID array, but that didn't last for long why I can't recall and I ended not copying the same data to both drives.Using the copy command to get identical copies of folders from the internal drive to the two (or more) external drives takes hours even at FW 800 speeds. A simultaneous 'save' command which saved to more than one location might speed things up, but that would be like a selective RAID array. Is that right?COSTAt $99 / month per 2 TB on Google drive the limiting factor is the wi-fi upload speed, or iPhone unlimited 4G speed with Sprint, or whom:$1,200 / year to have 2 TB external hard drive via on line.COMPARECompare this to $212.49 per 2 TB WD drive or $460.49 to have redundancy of two 2 TB drives you have to carry and protect and can access at FW 800 speeds vs. wi-fi or 4G speeds.PACEBut I just found my work flow did not permit me to get all the data from my 2, 500 GB Mac Book Pro's and my daily 5 - 10 GB of video data on to both drives identically before stepping on the power cord the plug of which is so highly magnetized now id didn't come out and thus slid the Mac Book pro and pushed the WD hard drive off the edge of the table for a 3 foot drop.DAISYPower from the MacBook Pro through the FW 800 cable and bandwidth of the cable while multiple drives are working appear to be the limits on daisy chaining external HD's to have external drive libraries.THEORYTheoretically 64 X 2 would mean a 128 TB external library [ignition] would be possible, but searching it would require all 64 drives to spin. If you want to access the drives individually, it doesn't appear the drive has to be up and running for the daisy chain to pass through it.NO FANSQuiet. One less highly used part to fail.ONDoes the drive need to be on for the pass through to work? ...CHRONOLOGICSo would a chronologic system let you look back one drive at a time and search it?SPOTSpot light searches both internal and external drives which are on.COST16 TB of external storage, or 16 WD 2 TB drives (redundancy) would cost $800 / month via Google drive = $9,600 / yr...COMPAREcompared to $460 for two WD drives X 8 = $5,280 for eight, two TB, WD drives AND a cc: copy of another eight drives, and that might be expected to last 18 or 24 months? 48 months? under heavy use...REDUNDANT...(plus shipping and storage costs of the redundant drives and confirmation they arrived with the data intact - so theoretically three identical drives are needed until safe arrival is confirmed, THEN you can erase the second one you have on site, if you can wait however long it would take to copy the back up and send you the copy in the event it is lost, stolen, damaged...CLOSELacie recommends keeping the external drive as close to the mother board as possible. But if they are data files, documents, desktops, videos, text edit, Open Office, or passive, data files, and not applications, why shouldn't they be able to sit out there?INTENTIONThe main thing I want is for spotlight to find stuff to xref: or insert into what I'm doing so I can give verbatim proof.PROFITWhat would be easiest for me is a Remote Desktop Client like Google Drive with sharing choices and ticket sales so people could "Come on in," and enjoy the show of me working live on my hard drive, with permission to edit copies in real time for me and / or who else to see... and glass bead game winners would get access to one, or more, cursors to work in real time with whom.COLLABORATIONSo this next line might be typed by whom else, while I pause to think.TICKETSTicket sales might cover the cost of archiving the show on a google drive, ...APARTHEID...but you should be able to record to your own WD external drive so you can access the archive whether or not you are on line, and thereby have a level playing field and overcome unnecessary barriers to entry to search, aka, information apartheid.

I have had great successes over the years with Western Digital Passports, up to 750 GB in size. As my personal and professional archives have increased, however, I thought that instead of seeking to use multiple "smaller" drives for data storage, I would go get a "big daddy" and copy all of my files onto it as a back-up. Well, this "noble" idea did not work with the WD 2 TB hard drive. It simply is not recognized on any computer I own, either at home or at work. I have tried to interface this hard drive on desk top and lap top computers, and have had IT people who are computer experts attempt as well. Nobody can get any computer to recognize the drive, although it does appear on "my computer" when I go to discharge it! I thought that perhaps this is a defective unit, but it does not appear to be so. I believe that the huge size of the drive may be interfering somehow with most mother boards, although I do not know how. I would love someone to solve this riddle for me, as this was not a cheap investment. Thanks.

I wanted a portable hard drive with large capacity because I have had it with power-supplied hard drives (bulky and needs power source) so I took my time looking around websites and reading reviews. I was about to go for  Western Digital My Passport 2 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive -WDBY8L0020BBKNESN (Black)  but then I found a link for this one and since money wasn't an issue plus the advantage of having Firewire connection, I also thought this would look better to go with my MacBook Pro, I chose this one.Packaging was not so good due to my freight company (ARAMEX) collecting Amazon deliveries from USA and ship them to my address here in my country. The package box came in damaged, and the drive plastic box casing was also ruptured, but the drive case (shell) itself had not a single scratch on it. I was worried the drive is damaged but fortunately it worked pretty well too.On the performance side this might not be the best hard drive out there, but to someone like me it is more than enough due to Firewire 800 cable. I have backed up all my files and still have +950 GB of free space. The formatted capacity is 1.99TB which, to my shock, is perfect. Some hard drives come with a formatted capacity of more than 20GB lost.I highly recommend this drive.

I bought this as a transportable back up drive for my iMac. I already had the 500gb version, but it was too small. Like all WD products in my experience, it just worked with no fuss. Time machine talks to it with no problems.I have actually daisy chained the 500gb drive from the 2Tb drive - this is quite a useful feature. The 500gb drive holds all my movies and tv shows (iTunes finds them via the TuneSpan app - money well spent) and the iMac hard drive and the 500gb hard drive are both backed up on the WD 2Tb drive.It was a little more expensive than buying a desktop based hard disk drive, but I wanted portability and no clutter from additional power cords.Would buy again and would recommend to a friend.

I own more than 10 hard drives and this one is the only one thats ever given me a problem.

Great product and works perfectly with my mac book. Accessing speed is awesome with FireWire.

Small enough to go anywhere and the fact that it is a USB connection means you don't have to carry an external power source.Would recommend this to anyone.

Bought this drive specifically for off site backup. The 2TB lets me backup all my current business client's data. With the small foot print it makes it perfect for travel.