Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABM0010BBK-NESN (Midnight Black)

Despite what Amazon implies in the updated product description, there is no way to actually remove/delete/overwrite the WD SmartWare Software from their drives. If you're looking for a small, reliable and capacious external USB hard drive WITHOUT software you don't need, do not buy products from Western Digital. With tremendous technical effort you can hide the virtual CD (VCD) from appearing on your Mac or PC, but the software will always be on the drive itself, taking up space, and -- without any explanation from WD to the contrary, potentially sending information from your computer or drive back to the company. I'm returning my purchase as soon as I'm done typing this.

I think that, for the most part, what everyone else is saying here is fairly accurate. However, don't gloss over the cable issue. I use the drive at work and sometimes when I set my elbow on the desk the drive will unregister and re-register. Not always, but often enough that I finally broke down and contacted support.First I tried going through e-mail support. Don't bother. All they will tell you is that you have to contact phone support for this issue. Then phone support, while very polite and helpful, was not aware of this known issue.They told me that they will send me "a new cable" that the support guy said "should be in better shape than [my] old cable." I told him that the cable is 100% brand new. I've only plugged and unplugged the drive like twice since I've had it. I told him that it isn't an issue of it being worn out or anything like that.I tried to explain the situation short of saying something like "the original cable is a bad design!" Which maybe I should have. I tried explaining the differences in the cables shown and described here, and again, he was very polite and somewhat understanding but I don't think that he really connected to exactly what I was saying.We'll see if the new cable fixes the issue or not when it arrives. I'm hopeful, but not confident given the exchange.The backup software is so-so. It isn't all that bad, it isn't all that good and it is actually easy enough to disable. That is pretty much a non-issue for me.If someone selling these drives would assist in the cable situation it would be ideal, i.e. not just telling you to contact WD support and good luck.Oh and another thing that should be known is that WD will give you 30 days of support for free from the date of your first call during the warranty period. After that they want to charge money for support. So either you resolve all of your support issues in those 30 days or you pay money for additional support even during the warranty period. Which I think kind of sucks for a company as huge as WD.

I purchased this product last month and I almost wish I hadn't. The idea is great, lots of storage on something almost as small as an ipod. I was very excited to get this thing plugged in and start filling it up. Well first the completely ridiculous "WD Smartware" program is just stupid and useless. The idea was great, auto backup. Well all it does is make a window pop up when you plug it in to ask you if you want to open the program and then it slows your computer down to a slow crawl. It also is not optional, you have to either reformat your drive, or go into the preferences and tell it to not open when you plug the drive in. That aside, even without the stupid program running, this drive slows down my computer to almost a standstill the entire time its plugged in, even if im not using it. Maybe it's my computer but i dont think so, my computer runs great with my 125GB WD external drive. so its either the fact that the 1TB drive is getting all its power from my computer or the thing is just made to slow everything down. It doesnt transfer files very quick either, i moved 70GB of music from my computer to it and it took over 4 hours, that is ridiculous. it only took 1 1/2 hours to be copied onto my 3 year old 125GB drive. I would say try to find a better alternative to this drive, you let us down western digital.

There are two main reasons to be unhappy with the product. 1. The connecting cable. It disconnects very easily on little movements.2. I bought 750 gb hard drive and all I get is 697.37 gb available free space. What on earth makes the other 50gb+ of space not available?

I love this hard drive. I have only have one small complaint. WD Smartware wastes 668MB of space. After losing data on other brands due to heat or other contaminants, I only use Western Digital drives. I now have five. I use these to hold movies and other data while deployed to some harsh environments. Since the passports uses the computer for power I do not have to search for places to plugs both my laptop and these external hard drives. I will only replace this when they come out with a passport that holds 2TB or more.