Passport Essential 2.5" 320GB USB Hard Drive
by Western Digital Retail
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List Price: Our Price: $64.99 You Save: $115.00 (64%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Passport Essential 2.5" 320GB USB Hard Drive
Customer Review: WD 2.5 inch External HDD 320GB
Summary: 3 Stars
First of all, the product arrived quickly. So I am very pleased with it. The size is very suitable to carry in a pocket, and the USB 2.0 interface made this HDD my "passport size" friend. It has power management mechanism, and after some idle time it turns off to save energy, and my laptop battery life.
All in all - an excellent product.
UPDATE:
Started to click and hammer inside within the first year. I don't use it heavily, neither I leave it on when not in use.
It goes idle when left alone for a certain period of time, and it seems the only way to bring it alive is to replug it.
Tried to backup my PC to change the system, the process wouldn't go beyond 39%. The drive would click at random percentages and switch off.
Also, when I try to gently change its place on the desk when data transfer is in progress, it clicks and stops working - some weird overactive protection feature, I suppose.
I lowered my rating to 3 points as reliability and seamless usage comes first for me.
Customer Review: perfect for simple backup solution
Summary: 4 Stars
This product is perfect for simple backup solution. I have been looking for a backup drive, researching models from the simple external USB to NAS drives. All I really wanted is something reliable enough for me to make a copy of my data every so often. Many of the existing external drives seem to have reliability problems based on user reviews. Then I found this product. I love its simplicity of single USB-powered wire and the small form factor. I don't care so much for performance as for convenience since I use it for backup every few months. If you are running Windows, I recommend reformatting the drive to NTFS right out of the box so to store large-size files. If you just want to occasionally make a copy of your data as backup, ditch the included software (I didn't even bother peek at it before reformatting it away) and just use freely downloadable SyncToy from Microsoft. I have been copying files continuously to MyPassport for the past 2 hours and the drive is only mildly warm and completely silent. Great product!!Customer Review: WD Passport Faster than by Previous Harddrive
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm happy about this product and its performance.
The style matches my black laptop, too.
The LED Activity Indicator is just white (it becomes bright white when active). I prefer that it displays Green for Inactive and then Orange for Active. Right now, it's hard to differentiate.
The WD Software that comes with it is pretty much useless because it not at par with Sandisk's U3 technology that lets you "Login" the encrypted drive and display a menu showing portable apps. So I ended up removing the the bundled software altogether, and stuck with simple Windows Shortcuts at the root of the drive to launch portable apps.
WD should license the U3 technology for its drives!
I benchmarked this hard drive VS my previous one,
and results show that it's faster for read, write, copy, read+write.
Glad that it has better speed!
For the hardware per se, I am content, and I hope they make more high-capacity drives with lower prices and high quality.
Customer Review: Solid Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
I have always used Western Digital for my Hard Drives in the computers I make. I have only had 1 fail out of dozens and some are still going strong after many many years. I am currently using some WD Raptors personally and Western Digital is top notch. I got this item to do backup and to hold data in case I was swapping hard drives or moving files around from laptop to laptop or desktop to laptop. I plugged it into my desktop and it automatically detected it. I then messed around with the software installed and I can honestly say I skipped using it; I do everything manually.
The capacity is decent and the thing is small and does not take up a lot of room. I put it into a drawer when it is not in use and is only a couple inches high inside the case.
There is only one drawback. I wish the usb cord that came with it was a little bit longer, I plug it in and it does not go that far so I have to leave it on top of the computer instead of putting it on my desk, but other than that the drive is awesome.
Customer Review: Serves the purpose
Summary: 3 Stars
I got the drive, plugged it in an it worked. Hurray! However, When I tried to copy onto it my first folder, I continuously got an error. I looked up the error in many places, but could not find an answer. Nothing in the manual. Nothing in the KB. So I had to call tech support and waste my free 30 days of support from that first call. The problem...the drive is formatted for FAT when shipped which allows Windows and Mac to use it. You need to reformat it to NTFS in order to have large files copied onto it. You think that the troubleshooting section or instructions might say something, huh? Tech support knew the problem the second that I started to speak - which means that they get many phone calls with this problem. Since then, no more problems. It would be nice if they offered a 7,200 RPM version. I expected it to run a little faster as I decided to use this instead of REV drives for take home backups from the business. The great thing about it is the 320GB which REV won't have for long time yet.