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? Hard Drive Swap WD Passport Essential ?

A

airfrancisco

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 16, 2005
239
9
Hello, I'm looking to upgrade my hard drive to by swapping the 350gb WD Passport Essential with macbook pro internal drive. Questions are:

- Is there any difference between Passport Portable and Passport Essential?
- Difference between the internal hard drive of Macbook and WD Passport, or both share same drives?

Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
 
Wait, are you talking about the passport essentail external 2.5" drive?
So youre break apart the enclosure and then swap it into the MBP?

why not just buy an internal 2.5" surely this will be cheaper?
any 2.5" internal should work, as long as its standard 9.5mm height , which most of them are.
 
it is cheaper to buy, a western digital passport drive and swap it out cuz at the end you get the external case as well for around the same price.
 
I plan on doing the same thing. I want to swap out my original 80GB drive (FINALLY!) with a 320GB from a western digital passport. I think both the passport and passport essentials come with SATA drives, so I don't think it matters.

The good thing about using the external is I can put my 80gb back into the enclosure, and use migration wizard to move all my stuff over, and then have a 80gb external laying around when I need it.

Here is the youtube video about taking the passport apart:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQ0bgz3tyNk
 
Skystar said:
I plan on doing the same thing. I want to swap out my original 80GB drive (FINALLY!) with a 320GB from a western digital passport. I think both the passport and passport essentials come with SATA drives, so I don't think it matters.

The good thing about using the external is I can put my 80gb back into the enclosure, and use migration wizard to move all my stuff over, and then have a 80gb external laying around when I need it.

Here is the youtube video about taking the passport apart:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQ0bgz3tyNk
Click to expand...


Thanks for the video. I hope there's no difference between the portable and essential, other than the size. I'm looking for someone who recently opened the essential and to see what kind of drive is in there.
 
airfrancisco said:
Anyone? Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Except by openin the drive, you void the warranty and if your drive fails, you can't get a replacement. I believe the retail warranty is 3 years? I'd rather have that ran some crummy enclosure.

I'm sure WD knows which drives they put in their enclosures.
 
I'm pretty sure the passport and passport essential are the same drives (2.5 SATA internal), they just have different software bundles and or feature sets. For example, "automatic backup" is listed as a feature on the passport elite drive, but not on the essential drive. I think the essential is just the drive without all the fancy software that we won't be able to use on os x anyways. If you look at the physical dimensions on wd's website they are identical in size and weight.
 
alphaod said:
Except by openin the drive, you void the warranty and if your drive fails, you can't get a replacement. I believe the retail warranty is 3 years? I'd rather have that ran some crummy enclosure.

I'm sure WD knows which drives they put in their enclosures.
Click to expand...

This is why I bought an OEM 320g hard drive.
 
Hello all, first of all, I would like to thank all of you for your inputs. I bought the 320gb WD Passport Essential yesterday and swapped it with my macbook pro under an hour and it's working great. Thanks again!
 
airfrancisco said:
Hello all, first of all, I would like to thank all of you for your inputs. I bought the 320gb WD Passport Essential yesterday and swapped it with my macbook pro under an hour and it's working great. Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Good to know it went smoothly; however if you don't mind, can you go here and put your drive S/N number in? I just want to know if WD will know if the drive was a Passport drive or not.

http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/...270&custtype=end&requesttype=warranty&lang=en

If you don't know to check your S/N, here is where in System Profiler:
6c743c8e.png


The S/N part is the after the WD-______
 
airfrancisco said:
Hello all, first of all, I would like to thank all of you for your inputs. I bought the 320gb WD Passport Essential yesterday and swapped it with my macbook pro under an hour and it's working great. Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Did you put your existing drive back into the enclosure?
 
alphaod said:
Good to know it went smoothly; however if you don't mind, can you go here and put your drive S/N number in? I just want to know if WD will know if the drive was a Passport drive or not.

http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/...270&custtype=end&requesttype=warranty&lang=en

If you don't know to check your S/N, here is where in System Profiler:
6c743c8e.png


The S/N part is the after the WD-______
Click to expand...

I did what you want me to do, the website doesn't show anything about the drives being inside the passport or taken out. All it says is that I have Limited Warranty that expires in 2011 and I have 1 free replacement if anything goes wrong. Hope this helps. Thanks
 
airfrancisco said:
I did what you want me to do, the website doesn't show anything about the drives being inside the passport or taken out. All it says is that I have Limited Warranty that expires in 2011 and I have 1 free replacement if anything goes wrong. Hope this helps. Thanks
Click to expand...

Does the serial number listed on system profiler match the serial number on the enclosure? If not, I bet WD won't know that the drive was once inside an enclosure, so you should still be able to make a warranty claim on the bare drive.
 
The drive inside these enclosures is no different from a regular notebook hard drive, the enclosure and the drive have different serial numbers anyways.
 
yOU KILL 2 birds with on shot by doing this procedure.

I did it on my macbook pro installed the 250gb on the laptop and I use the internal stock 160gb as my portable.
 
airfrancisco said:
I did what you want me to do, the website doesn't show anything about the drives being inside the passport or taken out. All it says is that I have Limited Warranty that expires in 2011 and I have 1 free replacement if anything goes wrong. Hope this helps. Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes that means you still have warranty which means buying the external or better money for the price than the internal drive.
 
uNext said:
yOU KILL 2 birds with on shot by doing this procedure.

I did it on my macbook pro installed the 250gb on the laptop and I use the internal stock 160gb as my portable.
Click to expand...

I know huh!? I almost bought an internal hard drive itself until I came on a post where you can get two hard drive for the price of 1 by swapping.
 
It works, I've tried, but I've ran into a small problem during the disassembly. Apparently, the 2x screws holding the right side of the hard drive are not a standard phillips screw for my system. I'm wondering if Apple would do this upgrade for me and how much it would be... because I don't have the right tools for that type of job.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about and know which tool I can buy to disassemble that part, i'd greatly appreciate it.
 
I don't know about the 320gb WD, but I know that the 250gb WD passport has a cache size of 2mb. I did the swap with my macbook which has a 8mb cache and I can't tell the difference in performance.
 
ayeying said:
It works, I've tried, but I've ran into a small problem during the disassembly. Apparently, the 2x screws holding the right side of the hard drive are not a standard phillips screw for my system. I'm wondering if Apple would do this upgrade for me and how much it would be... because I don't have the right tools for that type of job.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about and know which tool I can buy to disassemble that part, i'd greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...

They are probably "torx" type screws. You need the same type of tool to open up the MBP also (under the ram door). Any local hardware shop should carry it. I have a nice Husky brand one with interchangeable tips (different sizes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Torx_screw.JPG

Apple will not do the upgrade for you because you did not get the drive from them, and most service centers will not as well.
 
Just a heads up for everyone. I went to Best Buy today and they had the 320gb passport drive on clearance for $139.99, not a bad deal. I went there for a 160gb passport which was also on clearance for $75.99. I guess the new Passport Essentials are just the newer models, which are a little slimmer. So they are getting rid of all the regular passports.
 
alphaod said:
Except by openin the drive, you void the warranty and if your drive fails, you can't get a replacement. I believe the retail warranty is 3 years? I'd rather have that ran some crummy enclosure.

I'm sure WD knows which drives they put in their enclosures.
Click to expand...

Honestly... I agree with alphaod. I dunno why so many of yous wanna void the warranty on a new, unknown device. By this, I mean your unaware of any problems which could develop, in time.

Why not buy the OEM version, save some money and keep your warranty?
There are tons and tons of 3-party enclosures on the market, often with more options than just USB. Me, I brought a OEM drive and a combo (USB/FW/e-sata) enclosure for the internal. Sweet!!
 
airfrancisco said:
Hello all, first of all, I would like to thank all of you for your inputs. I bought the 320gb WD Passport Essential yesterday and swapped it with my macbook pro under an hour and it's working great. Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Hi airfrancisco, how did you manage to get it opened? I could not make the round side where the two flaps of the U-shaped part detached: supposedly it should go like this (looking from its short side):
⊂⊃ ----------> ⊂= + —

but while I can partly open the two flaps of the U-shape, the last bit just resists to detach. Please help me!

Many thanks,
bessel
 
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