WD My Passport Essential SE 750 GB USB 3.0/2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive (Black)

I bought this  Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive (Black)  strictly to store and play videos.The first thing I did was to reformat the drive (in its native NTFS format); this immediately deleted the Western Digital software for which I have no need.Then I copied two videos to the drive: one, an HD [720p] video of about 4 GB and another of 600 MB (SD). I played both of them through my new  LG HX350T 720p Front Projector - Black  and I will soon be playing them in my home theater via my  OPPO BDP-93 Universal Network 3D Blu-ray Disc Player  and my  Panasonic PT-AE4000U 1600 Lumen LCD Home Theater Projector .Via the LG projector, the video looks fantastic as would be expected.Storing music on external hard drives is already a de facto standard. Storing videos in this way is rapidly becoming practical too as hard drives' capacities increase dramatically and their prices fall just as dramatically.If all of my video could be compressed to 4 GB, I could store 250 full-length movies on this drive - which I could carry in my pocket! (I am using an  AmazonBasics Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Essential - Black  which I highly recommend.) However, most of my movies can be compressed to far smaller files, thus increasing the number of titles this drive will hold.I do not yet have a computer with USB 3.0 ports. Mine has only USB 2.0. But the transfer of the 4 GB file took only about 10 minutes. (Obviously the 600 MB files took much less time.) Once USB 3.0-equipped computers become widely available, that transfer time should drop considerably.All in all, if you are looking for a portable external hard drive on which to store movies, I believe that this is the one you should buy now. Its capacity, its physical size, its price, and its overall quality just can't be beat.I am planning to buy more of these drives. I will want additional ones for films (I own a LOT of films) as well as backups (in other words I want two drives carrying the same data in case one were to break down). Once I have placed all of my films on drives (and that will take many years, mostly due to lethargy on my part), I can get rid of my physical media. Think of the space that can be saved!Storing music, movies, and maybe even books on drives is definitely the wave of the future, at least in my opinion.Thank you for reading this. I hope it has been of some interest to you.==================================================================================================================================Update: August 5, 2012A person made a comment (on another review I wrote of a different WD hard drive) which impelled me to revisit this review and tell you that I now DO own a computer with two USB 3.0 ports. Thus I can now take full advantage of these drives' capabilities. Let me tell you: USB 3.0 is FAST. I am noting, in the real world, transfer speeds about four times faster than what I was able to get using these drives with USB 2.0 ports. I transferred 625 GB of data FROM one of these hard drives TO another one via my computer's USB 3.0 ports and the process took slightly under two hours. That translates to about 85 MB/s. I continue to HIGHLY recommend this particular drive and Western Digital external hard drives in general.Lawrence H. Bulk

To think you can get a terabyte of storage that fits in the palm of your hand and costs nearly nothing is quite amazing to me. I remember seeing a research article several years ago that claimed the human brain's capacity to be equivalent to about 20TB...that's like a small stack of drives like this - all I need is the backup software for my brain and the right cable, and I'll never forget another thought!From an overall quality perspective, the WD is about the same as competitors...I have similar (but smaller capacity) Seagate and Toshiba drives, and to be honest, it's good that the WD is slightly thicker, otherwise I'm not sure I could tell them apart from a distance.Operationally, the drive is really simple: plug the USB cable in, and it runs. No separate power cables or anything - it's self powered off the USB connection (which may mean you might need a powered USB hub, if your computer is low on USB power, or if you have lots of devices plugged in). It has a very small white LED access indicator but no other visible controls. It's quiet in operation, though I'd say it's not the quietest of the several other brands I own. It does vibrate a bit more than other brands - if you put your hand on the drive, you can feel it spinning. It also generates a bit of heat, so I'd be careful not to stash it somewhere where there is poor air circulation.The device is read-only on a Mac unless you either install a Mac device driver capable of mounting NTFS volumes read/write, or you reformat the disk to a more friendly Mac format. This is no different than any of the other devices out there, although I see you can buy a dedicated Mac version of the WD drive that comes ready to use on a Mac if you like.Performance is really different on USB 2.0 vs. USB 3.0. On USB 2.0, I'd say the drive is an average performer - about the same as similar products from Toshiba and Seagate. But if you're lucky enough to have a USB 3.0 computer, the difference is fairly dramatic. The fastest external drive I have is a RAID stack inside a FireWire 800 cabinet for my Mac...the WD on a USB 3.0 channel is faster. I have several computers, but only one with USB 3.0...I've settled on keeping the WD on my USB 3.0 system, and accessing it everywhere else via network share. In my environment, this is faster than connecting via USB 2.0.About my only complaint is the backup software that comes with the drive...it's fairly slow, it slows down your PC, and it's relatively primitive in terms of capabilities. Still, I didn't purchase the drive as a backup device, so I don't actually use any of the included software. If you need it, there might be better choices - even using the built-in backup software that comes with Windows would be a better choice.Definitely recommended at the price.

For anyone who is looking for a good review on this product . I will give you one right now . I haven't had any issues with any of my portable drives I have bought that are the same brand .

Western Digital makes the best hard drives in my experience. I own two of their internal drives for my PC, and also have subsequently purchased two external passport drives. This TB hard drive is packed into a very small package and is perfect for backing up media or transferring large files around. USB 3.0 connectivity is an awesome bonus for the speed, and it's where the standard will be in a few years I'm certain. I wanted a hard drive that was affordable, had a lot of storage, didn't require a separate plug in for power and was portable.I highly recommend this hard drive or any other western digital product as I've had nothing but great experiences with them.

No problem with it. Shipped in time, nothing missing and just what I needed for, a not expensive and good sober product.

This is a great buy for a good price! Most stores sell 1Tb hard drives like this for about $180-$200.It's small and lightweight, easy for travel.It reads fast on my mac, but you will have to find a program that allows you to read and write to hard drives like this since they are typically for Windows systems.I recommend buying a good case for this since it can be prone to breaking if dropped hard or often. I'm prone to dropping things so I have a good case to protect this in order not to lose any of my data.

This storage device is great so far. Fits well n your pocket, small physical size with plenty of storage, It is decently fast (only used it with USB 2.0, do not have USB 3.0 port). Total formatted capacity id 931MB. It is quiet and have never had any problems with it so far. I did not use the software which comes with it though. I bough it with a good price though (C$ 129 ), but the saving from the list price is misleading, the average price for the second edition of My Passport is around C$150. I highly recommend this product.