WD MyPassport Essential SE vs Seagate GoFlex Ultra-Portable

The true advantage of the Seagate GoFlex is that you could use different adapters. Most GoFlex external HDDs come with a USB 2.0 connection, but you could buy and use USB 3.0 or eSATA (I believe that it's SATA 3Gb/s) connections in its place.

Since this is the first time that I've heard of Western Digital's MyPassport SE models, I don't know whether or not it comes with a USB 3.0 cable in addition to the USB 2.0 cable.

EDIT: For further clarification, the GoFlex drives are sold in B&M stores with a USB 2.0 connection. You can buy GoFlex drives online with USB 3.0 connections, but they come at a slight premium. Again, I know nothing about the MyPassport SE drives at this point in time.
 
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Is it true these drives can host Windows on them, and become boot drives? Walking around with a portable 1TB drive with Windows on it would be awesome, and could provide a "sandbox" scenario that would leave the main SSD OS in pristine condition, I would think.
 
I couldn't tell you. I haven't tried using any external drive for that purpose.
 
JYeager11 said:
Is it true these drives can host Windows on them, and become boot drives? Walking around with a portable 1TB drive with Windows on it would be awesome, and could provide a "sandbox" scenario that would leave the main SSD OS in pristine condition, I would think.
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Yes, you can install Windows on them, but it won't really work as a sandbox scenario because of drivers. If you built multiple identical computers then it would work.
 
The 3.5" MyPassports had many bad reviews because of drive problems (Seagate had its share too with Chinese built drives,) but I haven't read negative comments on their 2.5" line, the SE and UP seem quite new, you may be the expert that will answer such questions in the future if you're an early adopter! ^-^
Maybe check out newegg and amazon customer reviews.

I prefer the normal GoFlex perforated clamshell for heat dissipation, but heat is probably not a big problem on 2.5" drives.
Do you really need the small size and small capacity of the 2.5" drives vs. the larger capacity of 3.5"? I could not fit my music on the biggest SE or UP drive.
 
I love WD, but I believe their MyPassport line has that SmartWare crap on it. SmartWare is backup software that will always open and run every time you plug in your drive. It's not some software that's installed on a separate partition that you could just delete, it's part of the external drive's firmware. Meaning it's built into the hard drive itself. Meaning if you were to replace the stock drive with another 2.5" drive in the WD MyPassport case, the drive wouldn't run because it can't find the firmware that has SmartWare built into it. You can "hide" the software from popping up each time you plug it in, but that's all it does. It still opens and runs, it just hides itself. And that requires you to install software on your computer that allows it to hide, so the minute you plug it into another computer, the SmartWare backup software will just open again.

I say this because I love WD drives and bought a MyBook a couple months ago. After discovering the SmartWare crap, and how there is literally no way to remove it, I took it back. It wouldn't bother me so much if they just stated it on the freaking box somewhere, "includes backup software that cannot be removed under any circumstances" or something like that. Plus, the software takes up nearly 1 GB of space. I know that's nothing when we're talking about 500+ GB, but still. Why the hell does backup software need to be that big? If none of this bothers you, then by all means go for it, but it just royally pissed me off. Just wanted to give you a heads up before you discovered this on your own and possibly save you some headache.

That said, the WD Elements line (both desktop and portable) are SmartWare free.
 
Jon55 said:
I love WD, but I believe their MyPassport line has that SmartWare crap on it. SmartWare is backup software that will always open and run every time you plug in your drive. It's not some software that's installed on a separate partition that you could just delete, it's part of the external drive's firmware. Meaning it's built into the hard drive itself. Meaning if you were to replace the stock drive with another 2.5" drive in the WD MyPassport case, the drive wouldn't run because it can't find the firmware that has SmartWare built into it. You can "hide" the software from popping up each time you plug it in, but that's all it does. It still opens and runs, it just hides itself. And that requires you to install software on your computer that allows it to hide, so the minute you plug it into another computer, the SmartWare backup software will just open again.

I say this because I love WD drives and bought a MyBook a couple months ago. After discovering the SmartWare crap, and how there is literally no way to remove it, I took it back. It wouldn't bother me so much if they just stated it on the freaking box somewhere, "includes backup software that cannot be removed under any circumstances" or something like that. Plus, the software takes up nearly 1 GB of space. I know that's nothing when we're talking about 500+ GB, but still. Why the hell does backup software need to be that big? If none of this bothers you, then by all means go for it, but it just royally pissed me off. Just wanted to give you a heads up before you discovered this on your own and possibly save you some headache.

That said, the WD Elements line (both desktop and portable) doesn't have SmartWare.
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Just a reminder:

Current WD Elements units are USB 2.0 only. Which means that you will never see transfer rates above 31.5 MB/s under any circumstances even if connected to a USB 3.0 host controller. That's three times slower than what the drives themselves are physically capable of.
 
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