Western Digital My Passport Studio: now with FireWire 800
By Laura June 
posted October 30th 2008 1:22PM
posted October 30th 2008 1:22PM
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.
@matt
bet you wish there was a magwire/firesafe to go w/ your magsafe
Turns out, you can boot from any WD drives. They come with a partition map of Apple Partition Map which is "To use the disk to start up a PowerPC-based Mac, or to use the disk as a non-startup disk with any Mac." but I changed it to GUID Partition Table which says "To use the disk to start up an Intel-based Mac, or use the disk as a non-startup disk with any Mac with Mac OS X version 10.4 or later."
Good to know. I got both and had issues with my Intel since it is formatted as an APM and not a GPT.
No ESATA == FAIL.
Too bad you won't be able to connect that to a newer MacBook via Firewire.
I think I might pick one of these up to use with my (old) MacBook Pro. I already use a LaCie drive on the Firewire 400 port for Time Machine and I could use one of these at the same time for storing my Aperture image library off the main disk. The Aperture library, however, will be backed up on another disk at home, just in case.
When are they coming out with an eSata model? I made my own 320GB eSata using their drive and an aftermarket enclosure, works great. This left me with a 160GB USB Passport which was now obsolete but would have been an upgrade for my old laptop. Boy was I suprised when I opened the case and discovered an Sata drive inside (of course, my computer is Pata). I contacted them and asked why they would go through the trouble to build a USB to Sata interface rather than just going native and making an eSata drive. They told me they were looking into it.
As for reliability I've got hundreds of their drive in a hard core industrial setting and have only had one failure at the 3 year plus mark, they RMA'd it and sent me a new larger drive as mine was no longer available.
Jon: Didn't see your comment, couldn't agree more! We should start a letter writing campaign.