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back to article WD pitches Firewire pocket HDD

Western Digital has released a Mac-friendly version of its My Passport Studio portable external hard drive, fitting the unit with a Firewire 400 port and pre-formatting it with Mac OS X's HFS+ file system. Sure to please Mac fans? Well, possibly not. While WD was quick to tout the external drive's ability to be powered by the …

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  1. bluesxman
    Coat

    RE: Tar Dead

    as title

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  2. Hywel Thomas
    Thumb Down

    Absolutely bonkers.

    Might well get a USB only one and save a few quid.

    I've been switching to these small drives lately, since ditching the desktop. I'd be quite happy to pay a bit extra for firewire, but no point if it means having USB too.

    Recently got a Toshiba USB that needs the juice from two USB ports. Seems to work well enough off one though (at least on the left side of the MBP, though not on the right side).

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  3. Malcolm Hall

    For PowerBook booting

    I think the old PowerPC laptops like the PowerBook were only able to boot off firewire and not usb. Maybe WD just wanted to cover all the bases.

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  4. Daniel Beardsall
    Stop

    Ridiculous

    Well, count me out then. That's really not very well thought out, is it?

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  5. Andrew Bush
    Pirate

    Dollar gaining strength?

    And check out the Dollar/Pound conversion.

    Do WD know something about the future of exchange rates we don't?

    Jolly Roger for piracy across the high seas of the Atlantic.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Hywel Thomas

    That's simply because 2.5" drives should beable to be powered from USB ports, but in some case's there just isn't neough power, specially in certain laptops. Dell are (or were, not sure now?) bad for this.

    I had one that couldn't power 2.5" drives... what sucks, is I have a cable with 2 usb ends, but only 1 usb port!

    The above, sounds like lazy/cheap manufacturing to me.

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  7. eddiewrenn

    no thx

    Wow they produce a drive that maybe 9/10 people would like, then cripple it in a way that will turn off 9/10 of potential buyers. In today's mature portable hard-drive markets, it sounds a waste of shelf space.

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  8. Repo
    Thumb Down

    DOH!

    Another product developed by the marketingtards and not by people who have a clue (and are probably paid less!)

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  9. Carl
    Thumb Down

    Stick with Iomega

    I have a portable Iomega HD which is equally happy being powered by the Firewire port, a single USB port when plugged into a USB 2.0 port, two ports on the off chance that you need to plug it into a USB 1.1 port, or a 5V DC power adapter.

    It also came with all those cables in the box, unlike my recently-acquired Epson printer which came with a power lead but no USB cable. Thinking it was a mistake, I looked at the bit of paper showing the package contents, and sure enough there was no USB cable shown.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @simon

    The USB specs limit the current a device can request to a max of 500mA. This sets an upper limit on the power a USB port can supply. Its not a bug to only output this.

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