A day ago I bought the new Passport external HD and I have huge problems with the cable that was in the package. The USB cable on the side of the HD is very sensitive on moving. Even the smallest move of the cable disconnects the disk from the computer.

I read a lot of complaints, but got no proper fix for the problem. Will I have to return the HD and get the portable of some other company? Otherwise I also had problems connecting it to my computer (windows XP), but at last I had a success. The reason for not connecting was the USB 4 port bridge I was connecting too. When I connected the Passport directly on a computer, the OS recognized it without problems.

It’s not the cable it’s the the whole idea of the WD USB plug/cable that’s so frustrating: ADVANTAGES:. It’s smaller (but what for? Even the Passsport is not that small that the plug would make a difference) DISADVANTAGES. It’s hyper-sensitive to any movement on the calbe (and hence bad for the HDD inside when it regularily gets disconnected on a whim every so often).

It’s unreliable. It’s easy to break. It’s imcompatible with the standard Mini USB cables.

My Wd 500g My Passport Faulty Location

It’s look and feels says fragile trash It is important to address this issue to WD as a community because we aren’t the only ones who struggle with this new plug. I guess the policy of WD to be “innovative” has been pushed a little too far by abandoning established (and proven!) standards in favor of trying to bond their customers to WD-specific cables. Although I was usually very staisfied with WD my personal consequences in this matter are to not buy any more WD products until the issue is resolved or there is an option to decide between products with regular Mini USB and WD-USB plug & cable. Let the market decide.

And we all know where this is headed. Thanks for reading.

I just had to let off some steam. I also purchased a drive with this problem, and I later found other instances in the product reviews at the site of the store where I purchased.

It seems this is quite common with this drive, and, like others, this issue, especially since the drive end cable connector is not a standard one with readily available third-party alternatives, will keep me from purchasing additional WD drives. Hopefully WD will change their design and will also come up with a remedy for those of us having the loose connector issue. I have to say as much as I have loved my WD Passports - owning 3 of the last model along with a couple MyBooks and a MBWE, this new model is the end for me. The engineer on this cable design needs to go back to school and take a few more dynamics classes and the usability testers should all be fired, seriously, they didn’t do their job.

Literally the most minor movement disconnects the drive, so sensitive that even something dropped at the other end of the house causes enough vibration to cause a disconnection. Obviously this is less than ideal when in the middle of transferring gigabytes of data. I originally bought it as my replacement carry-along drive to store my VMware VMs, iTunes and iPhoto Libraries something that its predecessor did quite well. Because of its sensitivity I still carry the older one and this one sits plugged in to my iMac largely unused. Sorry WD you lost this fan of your products. I guess I have the same problem.

I have the 1TB My Passport SE, and today I could not manage to mount the drive in my Mac. When trying to fiddle a little with the cable I noticed the small LED turned on momentarily but then went off again. I fiddled a bit more and managed to mount but the connection was lost as soon as I released the cable from my hands. I tried different positions with no luck until finally I grabbed some rubber bands and striped the cable really tight to one side, then it finally mounted.

Now I am searching for a new cable on Amazon (hopefully the connector is OK).