WD My Passport for Mac 500GB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 (WDBLUZ5000ASL-NESN)

WD My Passport for Mac 500GB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 (WDBLUZ5000ASL-NESN)..

Grab Now WD My Passport for Mac 500GB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 (WDBLUZ5000ASL-NESN) By Western Digital

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604 of 614 people found the following review helpful.
You can use any external hard drive with your Mac....
By Chuck Bittner
TIP: YOU CAN USE ANY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE WITH A MAC AND DON'T NEED A "MAC COMPATIBLE" DRIVE. Amazon has a few cheaper drives if you look around. Be sure to buy the biggest drive you can afford as at some point you will need/want it. Be sure to check your price of the different sizes some are so close as to justify the up charge in price. At the time of writing the 1TBb drive was only $5 more than the 500GB drive so that is a no brainer.

If you're a Mac user setting up or erasing this hard drive up with your computer is super easy follow these steps. I never use software that comes with hard drives I just wipe them & use Time Machine.

1. Plug in the hard drive
2. Open up disk utility found in your applications folder inside the utilities folder
3. Next select the newly plugged in a hard drive and on the right-hand side you should see partition click on that.
4. Then inside that screen on the partition layout drop-down choose how many partitions you'd like to set up. I generally go with one partition and just use folders to organize my files.
5. Then on the right-hand side you can name the partitions and select the format. If you want your hard drive to work with your Mac for doing Time Machine backups (which I highly recommend) choose Mac OS Extended. Sometimes it's good to make two partitions and one using "MS-DOS fat" if you might be transferring files to and from a Windows machine. The reason is Windows machines and Max can read and write to the "MS-DOS fat" format but your files will need to be under 4 GB each as that's the maximum file size it can hold.
6. Then click apply and your Mac will create all the partitions you wanted and you're good to go.

Thanks for reading it is helpful please click the button thanks.

142 of 146 people found the following review helpful.
A great portable drive for new Macs!
By maxmasa31
In ten years, I've owned at least five external hard drives from Western Digital and have never had a problem with any of them. They're reliable, well-made, and priced right. I've never had one die on me and the only reason I've owned so many is that they eventually can't hold enough of my media! To this day, I still use the first 60 GB drive I bought for twice this price!

The WD My Passport is a very compact, lightweight drive perfect for students or professionals. It's not much larger than a deck of standard playing cards and weighs just a bit more. It uses a USB 3.0 interface, which allows for faster file transfer speeds, but you'll need a computer with the right connection.

How can you tell? Basically, if your Mac was purchased before June 2012, it most likely has the slower USB 2.0 ports. All NEW Macs, however, have USB 3.0 ports. If you're not sure, another way to tell is if you look at your USB ports--if it's blue, you're good--if it's white, it's still USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible, though, so it'll still work on a USB 2.0 port; you just won't see the speed increase--it'll transfer at USB 2.0 speeds. Also, USB 3.0's theoretical speeds aren't as fast as Apple's ThunderBolt, but it's the cheaper option. Still, it's a huge speed difference over the older USB 2.0 standard. As an example, I transferred a 25 GB video file from my MacPro to the drive in under 5 minutes; my old USB 2.0 drive took 14.

If you're a Mac user, this drive comes formatted in HFS, so it'll work for your right out of the box, no problems. If you're a Windows user, you'll have to reformat it to NTFS (or just buy the regular WD drive, which is usually cheaper and comes formatted for Windows). If you're planning on going between the two platforms, however, you'll need to format it in exFAT using a Windows computer. An exFAT drive will work on any Mac OS running Snow Leopard (10.6.5 ) or later, but you'll need to install a driver for use on Linux. Another final option is to buy a third-party program, like Paragon for Mac, which allows users to write to NTFS volumes, or MacDrive for PC, which mounts HFS volumes.

All the technobabble aside, this is a standard 5400 rpm external hard drive that's great for shuttling around large files, and with the faster USB 3.0 speeds, is great for on-the-go editing of raw video footage in Final Cut on a Macbook Pro. For reliability, price, size, and convenience, it's an easy five stars!

56 of 56 people found the following review helpful.
Essential for the Retina Macbook Pro.
By Sledman
I've had the drive a few weeks and use it almost daily. I purchased a new Macbook Pro Retina and thought I could live with the 256 SSD drive in it. Turns out I was dead wrong. Even with streamlining my apps, not using it to store music and movies I still filled up the drive very quickly. I use this drive for everything, Dropbox,G-drive, movies, music etc. So far works great and the USB 3.0 is fast. Highly recommended. I do have a couple of notes:

1. This is the same as the standard 1T My Passport, only it comes pre-formated for mac (and has the "for mac" writing on it). You can buy and format the standard and it will be the same thing. I got this version because, I like the color and it was $15 cheaper at the time then the standard version and it saves me the 2 minutes of reformatting the drive.

2. It's very small and very light. I have an older My Passport and it's giant compared to this thing. The case is also plastic. Would have been nice to have aluminum for added protection but it seems sturdy. Also the aluminum and black will match your mac perfectly if thats what your going for.

3. After I received it and commuted for a bit I realized I probably should get a case for it. After looking online I decided on the Amazon Basics case. I can report it looks great, functions perfectly and adds the extra protection I was looking for so If I drop my bag I wont have to worry about the drive.

Again, If you need a great drive at a fair price then this is the one.

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Escort Passport 8500X50 Black Radar Detector, Blue Display

Escort Passport 8500X50 Black Radar Detector, Blue Display..

Grab Now Escort Passport 8500X50 Black Radar Detector, Blue Display By Escort

Most helpful customer reviews

132 of 134 people found the following review helpful.
Substantial improvements across the board, highly recommend
By ZapNZs
The 8500 series Passports have been around for slightly over a decade and have seen two major revisions. This is the current, 2011, revision. I own all three revisions (8500, 8500 X50, and now 8500 X50 Black), and I give this product a lot of praise. For most drivers, this is one of the best choices in its price range.

The X-band performance on all models has been great. For this revision, K and Ka bands have seen substantial improvements, as has the 'ramp-up', which is how a signal has a progressive increase to and decrease from the target. Its laser performance and filtering is unchanged. Like the previous model, its filtering is the best in the business. It's off axis detection seems to be improved, thanks to a newer type of lens. The speaker is LOUD, which is what you want, and the tone sounds are very distinct. Like the previous models (and virtually all detectors), do NOT rely on it for LIDAR (laser) detection. For that you need a LIDAR jammer.

The black color is a nice change as it does not clash with interiors and it looks much sharper than the previous silver colored one. The display is as crisp as always and the included true hard-carry and padded zipper case is a nice upgrade from the plastic box. This is a true travel case and great for the mobile user. As always, the mounting hardware and SmartCord are excellent (the SmartCord allows you to mute an alert without touching the unit and seeing an active alarm when the unit is in 'Dark' mode. The frequency display, expert meter, band customization, city sensitivity customization, voltage display and more give users many features allowing them to customize the unit for their area and specific driving. If you aren't a customizer, then it is ready to go out-of-the-box and is VERY simple to use and reprogram (of so desired). Escort's extended warranty of an additional 2 years for $30 is very reasonable as well and their 30-day risk-free trial is also nice given this is a big purchase. Being able to get it with a blue display is nice, although I swear by the red myself as I find it easier to read, especially at night.

It does, however, lack a few features. The first is voice alerts. Some people love these, and some hate them. I love them, but it isn't a major issue IMO. It also lacks substantial protection against 'quick trigger' radar, which is instant on radar that goes from asleep-to on-to lock a speed-and back to 'sleep'. It is simply not fast enough to detect this short signal, which is very common in some areas. However, it is not used at all in others and for its price point I would not let this discourage you from buying it. It also does not detect the 16 millisecond K-band POP2 (it's POP settings detect the 33.6-33.8 GHz Ka-band 67 millisecond POP), and turning POP on will greatly increase false alerts with a reduction in distance on all non-POP frequencies. However, unlike QT, POP is very rare.

The Bottom Line?...Well, perhaps everything I have thus far said makes no sense if you aren't a radar detector person...if that is the case, let me sum it up in a not-so-dorky fashion. The detector offers good to excellent range on virtually every type of radar, still has the same laser limitations of other detectors (get a jammer), looks really good in person, has a lot of features that let you customize your unit for you, and is VERY easy to use. It has made some substantial improvements over the previous two silver-colored models, and so I would look at the X50 Black (which is this model) over them. So in layman's terms this is a pretty darn good pick for most users and is an excellent overall value.

67 of 70 people found the following review helpful.
Meep-meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!
By Flexy McTwig
This thing can smell bacon from miles out. Laser 17272 <--------look out for this gun (that is what my ticket had written on it), not many officers have it, but if they have line of sight (if they are hidden from view, it doesn't take long to get a lock as you crest a hill or turn a long corner), if they are only gunning potential speeders (people that look as if they are breaking the limit), and have their ka-band switched off, then you my friend, are a sitting duck (with ALL detectors). Drive more appropriately during daylight hours, because at night, they won't have ka turned off and you'll know about them miles in advance. Do your speeding at night! I made it from Miami to Madison averaging over 100mph (wide, open, empty highways) with lunch and fuel stops included (about a week after buying the 8500). This thing gave me about 45 seconds of warning each time that I approached a trap, most of the time I kept on speeding for 15-30 seconds, you'll see the signal bar slowly growing, it must run on magic. If states had the money to use laser only, detectors would be less than useless.

38 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
Substantial improvements across the board, highly recommend
By ZapNZs
The 8500 series Passports have been around for slightly over a decade and have seen two major revisions. This is the current, 2011, revision. I own all three revisions (8500, 8500 X50, and now 8500 X50 Black), and I give this product a lot of praise. For most drivers, this is one of the best choices in its price range.

The X-band performance on all models has been great. For this revision, K and Ka bands have seen substantial improvements, as has the 'ramp-up', which is how a signal has a progressive increase to and decrease from the target. Its laser performance and filtering is unchanged. Like the previous model, its filtering is the best in the business. It's off axis detection seems to be improved, thanks to a newer type of lens. The speaker is LOUD, which is what you want, and the tone sounds are very distinct. Like the previous models (and virtually all detectors), do NOT rely on it for LIDAR (laser) detection. For that you need a LIDAR jammer.

The black color is a nice change as it does not clash with interiors and it looks much sharper than the previous silver colored one. The display is as crisp as always and the included true hard-carry and padded zipper case is a nice upgrade from the plastic box. This is a true travel case and great for the mobile user. As always, the mounting hardware and SmartCord are excellent (the SmartCord allows you to mute an alert without touching the unit and seeing an active alarm when the unit is in 'Dark' mode. The frequency display, expert meter, band customization, city sensitivity customization, voltage display and more give users many features allowing them to customize the unit for their area and specific driving. If you aren't a customizer, then it is ready to go out-of-the-box and is VERY simple to use and reprogram (of so desired). Escort's extended warranty of an additional 2 years for $30 is very reasonable as well and their 30-day risk-free trial is also nice given this is a big purchase. Being able to get it with a blue display is nice, although I swear by the red myself as I find it easier to read, especially at night.

It does, however, lack a few features. The first is voice alerts. Some people love these, and some hate them. I love them, but it isn't a major issue IMO. It also lacks substantial protection against 'quick trigger' radar, which is instant on radar that goes from asleep-to on-to lock a speed-and back to 'sleep'. It is simply not fast enough to detect this short signal, which is very common in some areas. However, it is not used at all in others and for its price point I would not let this discourage you from buying it. It also does not detect the 16 millisecond K-band POP2 (it's POP settings detect the 33.6-33.8 GHz Ka-band 67 millisecond POP), and turning POP on will greatly increase false alerts with a reduction in distance on all non-POP frequencies. However, unlike QT, POP is very rare.

The Bottom Line?...Well, perhaps everything I have thus far said makes no sense if you aren't a radar detector person...if that is the case, let me sum it up in a not-so-dorky fashion. The detector offers good to excellent range on virtually every type of radar, still has the same laser limitations of other detectors (get a jammer), looks really good in person, has a lot of features that let you customize your unit for you, and is VERY easy to use. It has made some substantial improvements over the previous two silver-colored models, and so I would look at the X50 Black (which is this model) over them. So in layman's terms this is a pretty darn good pick for most users and is an excellent overall value.

See all 170 customer reviews...More...