500GB 2.5" USB Drive-Blue
by Western Digital
List Price:
Our Price: $83.00
You Save: $66.99 (45%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: CE
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Digital product summary information
Manufacturer: Western DigitalAudio: English (Original Language)
Format: CD
Platform: Mac
Model: WDMEB5000TN
Product features:
- Box Contents - My Passport Essential 500GB Portable USB Hard Drive, USB 2.0 cable, Quick Install guide
- 500GB Hard Drive Capacity
- Just plug it in and it's ready to use. There is no CD to install; the included software loads from the drive the first time you plug it in
- Powered by the USB bus. No separate power supply is needed
- This ultra-portable drive fits easily in your pocket or purse, weighs only a few ounces, and holds tons of valuable data
Digital camera reviews of 500GB 2.5" USB Drive-Blue
Digital camera Review: 2 Stars for Dumbing the Software Down Too Much
Summary: 2 Stars
I feel bad giving 2 stars, but I'm of the mind that this external hard-drive has tried to make things TOO easy on the user. Before you think I'm a fool, let me explain...
When you back up, it goes out and selects what to back up (based on file extensions I suppose). However, there's no real way to ensure that it is grabbing EXACTLY what you want backed up. You can only tell it to back up "Pictures" or "Music" or whatever. You can't see the directories that it's pulling from.
Browsing the drive itself to confirm what has been backed up is of little help. For some reason mine currently has 12 folders, each with names like "1E79E695AEFA4A248F06F392E92C9DFE". Opening these folders, you can see some of the familiarity of the Windows directory structure, but it seems to put C:\users\????\Pictures under one of the crazy named folders and C:\users\????\Music under another, while splitting up C:\users\????\Desktop into several. My last hard-drive had everything for one computer under the same directory and had not re-organized the directory structure. My only hope for this drive is that the crazy directories and re-organization is caused by the drive's ability to store up to 5 versions of the same file, otherwise the programmers must just be completely off their rockers.
Also, I backed up once under one user and then backed up a second time under another, and I believe, but am not positive, that it picked up all the second users files the second time. Who knows what else it is missing?
I haven't tried restoring and I have no fricking idea what will happen if I try to do that using the software included. I would probably just wade through the crazy directories to do it myself manually.
Thinking about it, I kind of want to just copy files to the thing manually as well. I don't care about the ability to copy any files that have been added or changed if I don't actually trust it to get everything.
In summary, the drive is small, quiet and comes with a little case, but if you know anything about computers, you will find the software it comes with very frustrating.
Summary of 500GB 2.5" USB Drive-Blue
Pack up your office files and take them home. Carry thousands of songs or pictures. Synchronize files between home and office and encrypt everything on the drive for added security.External Hard Drives
Cameras and Photo
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