taking apart a wd my passport for mac external hard drive

May have to contact WD and see if we can get replacement cables, as suggested in the reviews for one of the other WBAAA My Passport Essentials

The USB cable provided does seem a bit short, and prone to dislodging. use it as a regular external drive, etc). The price you pay for the security features, I guess.Ģ) 'Found New Hardware' wizard - dig for the inf file.Ĥ) Configure SmartWare settings to your preferences (use the drive as a 'mirroring' backup drive vs. And steps 2-4 need run on each new PC you plug the drive into. The steps you have to go thru on initial setup seem tedious. You have to have the WD SmartWare running, even after unlocking the drive. Performance wise, we didn't do any benchmarks, but it seems sufficiently responsive.Ĭons: WD should have named new HDD models (part# begins with WDBAAA) something different (see 'Other Thoughts' below). Perhaps that isn't always the best, but I guess that's what the encryption is for. Ultra-small sized - can easily fit into your pocket or doesn't take up much room in a laptop bag. When the drive is uninitialized/'locked', the drive is un-readable, even if you remove the drive and place it in a new enclosure. Running the WD SmartWare allows for the drive to 'lock' and 'unlock' properly. The WD 'crapware' is needed to allow for the HDD full-disk encryption.

Most drives use software to encrypt individual files as they're written to the drive. Pros: One of the few true full-drive 'hardware encryption' external HDD options.

Taking apart a wd my passport for mac external hard drive