Western Digital My Passport Studio: now with FireWire 800

Western Digital announced a new member of their wannabe-buddies-with-Mac My Passport Studio line today -- it's the exact same drive as the previous Studio model, only this one comes etched with your favorite character from "Friends" on it! Not really: it's got a FireWire 800 port in addition to the old hat FireWire 400 and USB interfaces, perfect for those brand new MacBook Pro owners -- if they have any cash left, that is. The 400GB model is going to run you $229.99, 500GB will be $249.99, and they're available now.

[Patriks7 @ Oct 30th 2008 1:28PM]

God that looks awesome.. I wish I wouldn't have bought that non portable external HDD last month :\

[who? @ Oct 30th 2008 1:30PM]

Phoebe or Rachael... tough one.

[klonow @ Oct 30th 2008 3:10PM]

rachael!

[steezy @ Oct 30th 2008 1:36PM]

no it's not, Rachael

[Atropos @ Oct 30th 2008 1:36PM]

Based on the characters... Phoebe. She implies all the time that's she's insanely dirty. In real life? Aniston. Because Kudrow seems like a bitch.

[Lars @ Oct 30th 2008 4:41PM]

Atropos FTW!

Rachael is a big ball of emotional baggage.

On topic: I don't get why this is geared towards Macs... did I miss something? Firewire ports are on everything these days. HDD's, cameras, PC's, hell even my Playstation 2 has firewire.

[Dave @ Oct 30th 2008 1:35PM]

I will never buy another Western Digital drive again. Too many failures!!!

[Mega 777 @ Oct 30th 2008 1:45PM]

Sucks for you cause I have been buying Western Digital products for years
and never had a problem with one product.

[Philster @ Oct 30th 2008 2:42PM]

I second Dave's comment. I've had nothing but problems with Western Digital drives, as many others have:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6937803

[happy_penguin @ Oct 30th 2008 4:10PM]

WD drives have been mostly fine for me too.

[melo @ Oct 30th 2008 7:28PM]

Me either. I just lost a 400GB WD MyBook to failure. How companies get away with selling self-destructing products is a complete mystery. I will Never buy WD again.

[happy_penguin @ Oct 30th 2008 7:31PM]

A word of warning about external drives: Set it down before you power it up and don't move it while it's on. Movement while spinning will contribute to the failure of any drive.

[Andrew @ Oct 30th 2008 1:44PM]

Just in time for the new MacBooks!

[CraigJ @ Oct 30th 2008 1:47PM]

via USB of course...

[danielmilhousechun @ Oct 30th 2008 1:50PM]

exactly what i was thinking

[mackid105 @ Oct 30th 2008 2:24PM]

@CraigJ except the new MacBook Pro does have a Firewire 800 port they just dropped the firewire 400.......

[CraigJ @ Oct 30th 2008 7:27PM]

yes, it does.

[TurboFool @ Oct 30th 2008 1:49PM]

Just in time for the new MacBooks that have no FireWire on them!

[happy_penguin @ Oct 30th 2008 4:11PM]

I think that's the point of these drives. They have you covered, Firewire 400, 800 or USB.

[Joseph @ Oct 30th 2008 5:52PM]

My thoughts exactly. This'll go great with my new macbo...damn!

[Andrew @ Oct 30th 2008 1:49PM]

Why do they refuse to tell you what speed dive it is. I guarantee is 5400rpm. Would it kill them to put a 7200 rpm drive in one of these things?

[Shadyman @ Oct 30th 2008 1:53PM]

Considering it's a laptop-form-factor drive? Yes.

[Skyride @ Oct 30th 2008 1:56PM]

Wel not really shady-man. 7200rpm laptop drives are easily available now and are much faster. Although USB would probably struggle to power it and would make the increased speed a waste of time. Even with firewire its going to be of little benefit.

What would be nice if they made one of these things which detected whether it used Firewire or USB and ran at 7200 or 5400 respectively (or even a switch?). WD have made that in their desktop drives and i'd assume they are working on laptop drives to do the same right now.

[Ashwin @ Oct 30th 2008 3:24PM]

Usually the highest capacity drives are at 4200 and 5400 rpm. With respect to performance, the USB bus that most users will have is slower than even a 5400 rpm drive is likely to be if inside the laptop.

[loosely_coupled @ Oct 31st 2008 2:05AM]

Well, I don't think there is a 400GB or 500GB 2.5" drive that is 7200RPM yet. On the other hand, for capacities lower than that, It should be criminal to use a 5400RPM drive with a Firewire 800 interface... Also, where are the eSATA portable SSDs?

[Skyride @ Oct 30th 2008 1:53PM]

I had the ORIGINAL passport drives. 120GB. Was pretty unlucky with it.

The first one I had died and was replace under RMA with no fuss and that one was stolen on holiday :(

I think this might be a good time to get one though. Even though I have a laptop, a kick ass computer (bassically every gadget you could think of except a iphone) i don't even have a pen drive. Ive always detested those silly, 4GB crap things. Too much space for most peoples needs and not enough to be useful. Im interested in a 320GB model of these if they make one. 400GB if they don't have that.

My dell vostro laptop has firewire 800 so this is a clear winner.

[max andrews @ Oct 30th 2008 3:41PM]

Costco has a 320GB passport drive (USB only) for $109. I have one and it works great. Of course it won't be as fast as this one but for half the price it's worth it for cheap portable storage.

[MarbleMind @ Oct 30th 2008 1:59PM]

"The 400GB model is going to run you $229.99, 500GB will be $249.99"

Why do they even bother?

[y3k.nik @ Oct 30th 2008 2:04PM]

Because for some people, 400gb is more than they will ever need.

/sarcasm

[NoAndThen @ Oct 30th 2008 5:01PM]

Seriously, right?

I mean WTF are you doing spending $229 on a drive when you get an extra 100GB for $20?

It's probably a way to get rid of older drives or something.... or they're making a ton of profit on 400GB drives.

Marketing tactics never cease to baffle my mind.

[t @ Oct 30th 2008 2:05PM]

Your probably not going to get much benefit going from 5400 to 7200 when its goign to work over FW800, mostly what a 7200 speed drive is going to do is drain more juice from your laptop. If you need a super fast external drive then you should look for a drive with eSata on it.

[digitallysick @ Oct 30th 2008 2:17PM]

You can get a 1tb external at newegg with usb,firewire, and esata for under 140 dollars

[Homer @ Oct 30th 2008 2:26PM]

You're a smart guy, aren't you?

[Skyride @ Oct 30th 2008 2:48PM]

Ye, Pfft, i know. What idiots. That 14pin power connecto on SATA drives is just optional really.

[telepheedian @ Oct 30th 2008 3:05PM]

I'm sure it fits in your pocket really nicely, along with its power adaptor.

[Kelmon @ Oct 31st 2008 4:05AM]

@telepheedian

Is that a "1tb external at newegg with usb,firewire, and esata" in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

* BaBoom, Ching *

Here all night, folks...

[Galley @ Oct 30th 2008 2:27PM]

FireWire 800 should be mandatory on all storage devices, and all devices that can access them.

[happy_penguin @ Oct 30th 2008 4:15PM]

Use of Firewire was historically controlled. That's why it was necessary to create USB. Now USB dominates the market. Still, I find them to be complimentary rather than exclusive of each other.

[NoAndThen @ Oct 30th 2008 5:07PM]

I partially agree/see what you're saying, Galley, but how can you make it mandatory to pay royalty fees? some co's just want to make cheap ass drives/enclosures.

We should make it mandatory to get rid of FW royalties so it saturates more tech... but that's just about as likely to happen.

[Kelmon @ Oct 31st 2008 4:07AM]

100% agreed. Now, if only Bluetooth would also be much more widely supported for the likes of proper mice and keyboards then I'd be as happy as a pig in shit.

[effgee @ Oct 30th 2008 2:43PM]

I have the FW400/320GB version of this drive; cheesiest looking plastics ever, not even an activity light in the front, and - worst of all - can't be used with standard FW cables (WD provides their own). Cheap at the register, and cheap is what you get. Not recommended.

[crescentdavid @ Oct 30th 2008 3:02PM]

OK, I'll bite. FW 800 sounds great, no downside (other than if you have it or not). 5400 vs 7200, usb 2, fw 400, fw 800, eSata ... where's the bottleneck ... the limiting factor ... the hard drive or the connection or ... ? Thanks in advance.

dr. confused

[mingistech @ Oct 30th 2008 3:25PM]

Don't buy this drive if you plan on booting a Mac off it.

I'm a Mac Tech and I bought one for a diagnostic drive to boot damaged systems off of to run maintenance software on.

The chipset WD uses doesn't support booting a Mac... and they market this drive as a "Mac Drive" and even have it pre-formatted HFS for Macintoshes.

[Joseph @ Oct 30th 2008 5:55PM]

Thanks for the warning, but this one works great booting using 800->400 or USB(on intel macs). I don't think i have magical hardware. Not sure what youre doing wrong. Maybe it is time for a career change.

[JPryda @ Dec 31st 2008 2:00PM]

Yes it does boot, albiet, you have to use USB 2. Firewire 400 and 800 don't appear in the boot menu.

[effgee @ Oct 30th 2008 3:25PM]

Everything is a limiting factor - the drive, 2.5" drives are always slower than 3.5" ones, even at identical rotational speeds; the drive itself, not every manufacturer tries to squeeze every last ms out of their products; the bus, not much point in using a 7200rpm drive via FW400; as well as the FW-chipset used in the enclosure (Oxford has a good rep here).

If speed is king and money isn't a factor, get a LaCie 2.5" RAID (up to $700), or an external enclosure from http://www.wiebetech.com and buy your own 7200rpm drive at newegg. If you live in Europe, you may also want to look at enclosure from http://www.macpower.com.tw.

These WD, Seagate, etc. drives are compromises - max. revenue for the manufacturer @ lowest possible cost. Doesn't mean they're crap per se, but nothing to write home about performance-wise.

[Hoyt L Kesterson II @ Oct 30th 2008 3:41PM]

I bought one recently. You can't boot from it. Here's the email I sent to WD support and the email I received in response.

*********
October 2008, I purchased one of your external disk drives from Fry's Electronics

I connected drive with firewird. Erased contents after copying contents to internal drive. Partitioned into three spaces - a very large one for Time Machine backyup, a 150 GB for external storage, and a 100GB for a boot partition. Used SuperDuper to put a bootable OS in that partition.

My OS recognizes it as a bootable partition. I can use the Startup Disk function in System Preferences. However, it is ignored on a restart - the system boots from the internal drive.

I have put the OS up there several times but have had no success on booting with it.

In searching the Web I found a statement purported to be from WD support staff that claimed

"This issue is a Macintosh bug cause by the Mac ROM code of the computer and how it attempts to boot from the first SCSI LUN it detects (LUN 0). In the case of the aforementioned hard drives, the LUN 0 device is dedicated to the button board and safe removal tools of the hard drive case and not the internal hard drive, thus causing booting to be impossible."

Is this true? If so, I would hardly call it a Mac problem but you should at least put a sticker on your boxes to alert a potential purchaser to the restriction.
************

Dear Hoyt L,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

From your email There are a couple of things that need to be addressed.

First, If you are using a drive for Time machine, it is recommended that you only use that drive for time machine and not a partitioned space of a drive.

Second, WD does not support or recommend booting your system from external drives. Although this function should work, because of system configurations and setting we are unable to provide support for this feature.

Answer Title: Can I boot my computer system using an external (FireWire, USB, Combo) hard drive?
Answer Link: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1059&p_created=1062104677

Third, As with any Operating systems there are hundreds of issues which developers and end users discover after the release of a new OS or update. I would recommend contacting Apple for support of the issue concerning, booting to external and and LUN issues you may be experiencing.



Sincerely,
James K.
Western Digital Service and Support

[Joseph @ Oct 30th 2008 5:57PM]

On intel macs, you need to make sure you use GUID partition table.

[Tony @ Oct 30th 2008 4:04PM]

yea, I can't boot either. Recently bought an open box 1tb WD mybook studio (all connections) and imaged my mac pro install disc on it. Mac OS actually gave me a message that it cannot boot from the disk. It's ten times faster to reinstall from a FireWire drive than from optical disk. Luckily I have an older different brand that does it fine. It really sucks though.

[matt merritt @ Oct 30th 2008 4:09PM]

Did WD change something then?

I always used to be able to boot from my MyBook over firewire 400. I used SuperDuper though.

Also: I say used to be able to because my sister sent that drive flying off my desk whilst it was on. The drive didn't like that... neither did the MacBook which followed close behind.