NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Other Brand/Manufacturers › Other Brand Discussion › Tech question on Costco WD Passport HD
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Tech question on Costco WD Passport HD

post #1 of 7
9/10/07 at 1:38am
Thread Starter 
Hi everyone

I saw at costco some western digital passport hard drives.

These are the 2.5" USB type and come as 160GB or 250GB.

My question.

Anyone know if these drives, or the passport 160GB/250GB 2.5" drives in general are
1) SATA or PATA (IDE)
2) are 5400 rpm and not 4200 rpm

I ask because
-I have a couple of notebooks that are still not outdated but due to video downloading, I am short on space. These are PATA and the manufactures don't seem to be interested in making the new latest and greatest in PATA. only SATA
-Western Digital offers PATA in both 160GB and 250GB
-It would be cheaper to get these from costco than new egg especially since it would include an external HD enclosure for my old hard drives.
-It is Costco with their great return policy after all.
-a 250GB notebook would be kick asse and just a newer model with such a larger HD would be a tremendous improvement in performance
-its been more than a year so its time to reformat and start fresh without all that slowing down spyware/viruses/old software I no longer use.

I emailed Western Digital THREE TIMES to their customer support and they only answered once about repeating the brochure specs about the external HD that did not say anything about what I was interested in. Their website support is useless as it does not answer these questions.

PLEASE DO NOT BE ONE OF THOSE RUDE AND SELFISH PEOPLE THAT JUST KILL THE THREAD BY TYPING USE THE SEARCH BUTTON. If you want to type that then please link to a thread with the answer first then lecture me.

THANKS IN ADVANCE, for all those kind enough to type the information I seek.

TAKE CARE EVERYONE!
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 7
9/11/07 at 2:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry-in-Eastba View Post
Hi everyone I saw at costco some western digital passport hard drives. These are the 2.5" USB type and come as 160GB or 250GB. My question. Anyone know if these drives, or the passport 160GB/250GB 2.5" drives in general are 1) SATA or PATA (IDE) 2) are 5400 rpm and not 4200 rpm I ask because -I have a couple of notebooks that are still not outdated but due to video downloading, I am short on space. These are PATA and the manufactures don't seem to be interested in making the new latest and greatest in PATA. only SATA -Western Digital offers PATA in both 160GB and 250GB -It would be cheaper to get these from costco than new egg especially since it would include an external HD enclosure for my old hard drives. -It is Costco with their great return policy after all. -a 250GB notebook would be kick asse and just a newer model with such a larger HD would be a tremendous improvement in performance -its been more than a year so its time to reformat and start fresh without all that slowing down spyware/viruses/old software I no longer use. I emailed Western Digital THREE TIMES to their customer support and they only answered once about repeating the brochure specs about the external HD that did not say anything about what I was interested in. Their website support is useless as it does not answer these questions. PLEASE DO NOT BE ONE OF THOSE RUDE AND SELFISH PEOPLE THAT JUST KILL THE THREAD BY TYPING USE THE SEARCH BUTTON. If you want to type that then please link to a thread with the answer first then lecture me. THANKS IN ADVANCE, for all those kind enough to type the information I seek. TAKE CARE EVERYONE!
1. PATA & SATA are interface descriptors. The Passport drives have a USB2 interface, so they're neither. 2. according to Newegg, they're 5400RPM edit: just so you know, the Passport external drives are not just 2.5" hard drives in external enclosures. If you want to replace the hard drive(s) in your notebook(s), then you should buy 2.5" notebook hard drives. The WD Passport drives are entirely self-contained and not meant to be disassembled.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 7
9/15/07 at 3:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Djembe View Post
1. PATA & SATA are interface descriptors. The Passport drives have a USB2 interface, so they're neither.

2. according to Newegg, they're 5400RPM

edit: just so you know, the Passport external drives are not just 2.5" hard drives in external enclosures. If you want to replace the hard drive(s) in your notebook(s), then you should buy 2.5" notebook hard drives. The WD Passport drives are entirely self-contained and not meant to be disassembled.

Djembe

Where did you get your information? I am not certain on what else it could be than just a 2.5" drive in an external enclosure.

My last upgrade was several years ago in buying the seagate 100GB backup drive from costco for $109 and just swapping it out of the enclosure with my 40GB and I saved allot of money since newegg wanted like $180 for it at that time.

Since then all of these portable drives I have seen are just that, an external enclosure with a notebook drive inside. The only special thing was their software package like U-Drive or whatever would be set up so it would not work in another drive (i.e. the old swapped out drive put in the external enclosure).

Measurements check out for a 2.5" drive inside the enclosure as it dimensionally it fits one and is even larger than some of my 2.5" external enclosures.

If this allegation is correct about not being just one of their 2.5" drives inside a box then that is a new one for me-but I know manufactures are always trying to outsmart their customers in picking as much money out of our wallets as possible.

Currently
250GB external hard drive @ costco = $130

Seperately
250GB PATA drive sold seperately = $185
External enclouser = $25

Potential savings = $80

Unfortunately I have probably spent $80 of my time trying to get a straight answer from anyone, especially the western digital customer service because the potential problem is if it is a SATA drive then it ruins my plans.

Oh well, at least dealing with their customer service now tells me that I am better off not buying product from them so that shall be my answer.

Thanks!
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 7
9/15/07 at 5:26pm
what I mean by saying that it's not just a 2.5" drive in an enclosure is

1.) the "enclosure" it's in, if you want to call it that, is molded plastic conforming very closely to the size of the actual disk drive. In order to get the drive out, you'd have to break the plastic surrounding it, and if you did, my personal guess is that you'd find just the platters and reader. In other words, the only way you'd be able to swap the drive with the one in your notebook is if you took apart your notebook hard drive and swapped the internals for the internals of the Passport.

and 2.) PATA and SATA are only types of connection specified by certain features. the platters inside the drive aren't any different between SATA and PATA or any other connection form, only the connection itself is different. Since the drive in question has a USB2 connection, you couldn't use it with a PATA connection unless you bought or fabricated a PATA enclosure for it yourself.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 7
9/22/07 at 7:54pm
Thread Starter 
The consensus from GOD GOOGLE is that this is an ordinary Notebook drive with the following specs
-250GB
-8 MB cache
-SATA (shoot!, I wanted a PATA)
-5400

Good candidate for upgrading someone with a SATA machine as even bestbuy has these suckers.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1177113149231

And I coulda and woulda bought one with a $20 off coupon for only $104 but glad I did not since it is a SATA, apparently, but they are really easy to remove and swap with your notebook if interested and you have a SATA.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...ort-250gb.html

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/s...d.php?t=491932

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:...=us&lr=lang_en

These specs are not certain but are repeated for others searching and posted as likely.

If anyone knows different please post

....as opening the passport enclosure is not that difficult and the same one they have had for a while and would be an excellent upgrade/value for someone with an old PATA interface.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 7
9/22/07 at 8:01pm
Actually, Djembe, all external drives are literally an internal drive inside an enclosure with a USB/IEEE converter board. You can use any external drive to replace an internal drive if you don't mind damaging the enclosure.

Larry, your best bet is to just buy an internal drive that's meant to be installed in a notebook. External drives are ambiguous on their specs and tend to be more expensive, not less.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 7
10/3/07 at 12:35am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by nyako View Post

Larry, your best bet is to just buy an internal drive that's meant to be installed in a notebook. External drives are ambiguous on their specs and tend to be more expensive, not less.


Ambiguous on specs to be sure.

More expensive, not quite. My current 100GB drive was way cheaper buying it from Costco as an external drive than the same barebones drive from Newegg, ZipZoomFly, or Tiger Direct.

More recently the external 160GB drive offered at deal prices like the 160GB passport has been a favorite for upgraders as it offered a $40, $50 or even $60 savings and you got the external case to put in your old hard drive for backing up to boot.

This new 250GB drive just came out and even at the new higher COSTCO price of $139 is still $40 better than the best price for a 250GB notebook drive-and don't forget that external enclosure worth another $20. It has now been several weeks so we now know this savings option is only for SATA notebooks.

Now the time devoted to figuring this all out, the risk of being wrong (like the 160GB passport was originally thought to be PATA so allot of folks jumped on the band wagon then found theirs to be SATA then lots of bandwidth was devoted to figuring out how the S's in the "PASSPORT" word somehow were very slightly different between those external drives assembled with PATA versus SATA and so on is the real deal killer that makes the $60 current savings on this one that turned out not to be a savings for me a real bust.

In this case I probably spent 3 to 4 hours oogling it at Costco, reading everything offered at the WD website, googling it, reading and posting at forums, all just to save $60 (it was $90 savings on the first one I saw before price went up) only to see no savings at all.

These tricks only seem to pay out when you happen upon it and it is all spelled out from others experience like now, I do recommend this drive to the SATA community for someone wanting to upgrade to a large drive at an economical price and getting your old drive in the enclosure to boot for doing that backup you never do.

Thanks everyone for you postings and time you took to read this even if you decided to not post
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Other Brand Discussion
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Other Brand/Manufacturers › Other Brand Discussion › Tech question on Costco WD Passport HD