Western Digital 160GB 2.5-inch Passport USB Portable Hard Drive
by Western Digital
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital 160GB 2.5-inch Passport USB Portable Hard Drive
Customer Review: Requires Powered Hub with MacBook Pro
Summary: 3 Stars
As others have noted, WD should be faulted (and loudly!) for failing to provide a Y-cable or at least warn about this issue in their packaging. What looks like a tidy little backup appliance (which fits in a safe deposit box) ended up causing a few heart-stopping moments of panic when I first plugged it in. It instantly shut down my MacBook Pro, then failed to mount or even appear in the USB hierarchy when plugged into a Belkin powered hub. It finally mounted on the third attempt... plugged into a Targus ChillHub.
I'm now torn between actually trusting it with my backup, or returning it. Requiring a powered hub (and apparently not just ANY powered hub) is unfortunate for an otherwise nifty laptop-oriented product, especially when the only hint of this in the documentation is a comment in "optional accessories" that says a special cable may be needed for computers with limited bus power. A big warning on the retail packaging would be more appropriate. Their website also mentions this as a footnote:
Powered by the USB bus. No separate power supply is needed.*
* An optional cable is available for the few computers that limit bus power.
Other than that, it's sleek, small, quiet, and comes in a very nice neoprene case.
ADDED NOTE: It gets worse. Disk Utility refused to create an encrypted disk image on the Passport, and during a copy of about 65,000 items it decided to start over about halfway (in fairness, that last one may have nothing to do with this drive, but it has not happened with Lacie firewire products).
Customer Review: Not even a very good paper weight....
Summary: 1 Stars
The Short version: you have the better odds of getting struck by lightning, than you do of getting this thing to work.
Long Version:
My father bought 6 of these drives, 1 for himself, and 1 for me and each my siblings. Everyone one of us has more than the minimum requirements to use this hunk of trash, WinXP + USB 2.0, all very new computers. 4 out of 6 of these paper weights are already on the way back. Some of them worked 1 time, 1 even let me transfer 70gb of information onto it. I "safely removed" it from the winxp computer, and sent it on its way with my brother. When he got home(several states away), and plugged it into his brand new computer, it told him the drive was not formatted and needed to be formatted. My own personal 1, I copied a DVD onto my regular hard drive, then tried to copy into onto this drive. It got about half way and gave me some weird message, then filled my drive with over 200,000 files and folders with names like this "¥'ae'''''". THese files couldn't be deleted, viewed, couldn't enter any of the folders. This drive has pretty much been toasted, it will not allow me to re-format using any of WDigital's utilities. And the best part is WDigitals diagnostics tools find absolutely no problems with the drive. In My Computer the drive shows 149gb total size, with 148gb Free. When i open the drive an select all these weird files and folders > right click > properties, it says there's over 200k files, and somehow its 189gb worth of information. Mind you this is a 160gb drive. Buy Maxtor or Seagate !!! My 300gb Seagate external has never had 1 problem!!
Customer Review: Works great for me
Summary: 5 Stars
Buying this, I was a little skeptical since there were so many people with complaints...but why not?
So far I haven't had any problems, I pluged it in to my Dell Inspirion 9300 (about 2 yrs old) and it started up like a champ. I did try all six usb ports and they all work so no problems with the power issues that other people have had.
I've also plugged it into another laptop and desktop and all of them recognized and powered the drive with out any problems at all.
It writes fast and transfers fast for a 5400rpm hard drive, so I can't complain about that. It also looks great and is small enough to throw in my backpack for travel. I did get the logitech case to go with it to help prevent any unnessary wear/tear.
I also own a WD Pro Edition 500gb hard drive and haven't had any problems at all. So all those complaining about the cheap quality of WD, either they don't know what they're talking about or had one bad experience. WD has always been a reliable company...
And for that person out there complaining about his hard drive not working after he dropped it from chest height...what did you expect? I looked all over the WD warranty and stupidity isn't covered by them. I dare you to drop any computer, XBox, PS2, PSP, TV (get the idea yet?) from chest height and see if it works. Unless you're only 6-9in tall, I'm not suprised that it stopped working. Don't blame the company...
All in all, depending on how old your computer is or what gen your WD Passport is, I think it works just fine.
Customer Review: Great back drive, with a couple of things to watch for
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this product because backing up and synchronizing my data between multiple machines was getting too difficult. This drive solves my problem better than I had hoped. It's fast, small, and has plenty of storage. It also does not require a power source. I especially like the ability to create multiple profiles, so I can back up portions of a specific drive as well as multiple drives separately. I can also launch files from the drive if I need to.
A couple of complaints, though. If you do not check "all files," anything that is not a run of the mill format won't get backed up. The check list of what gets excluded is not precise when you check your selections. Careful! You could lose some significant data without knowing it! Test your results carefully.
The documentation is practically non-existent. If it has been decent, I'd have avoided the confusion with the previous issue. I discovered the multiple profile option almost by accident.
There's an annoying dialog that asks me to update everytime I launch the synch. program. It neither updates nor let's me prevent the dialog at launch.
I wish I could create a profile that would synch between two or more machines. This is not possible even if I maintain the same directory structure on both machines. This forces me to perform some work-arounds that are a bit of a pain.
If I had actually lost my data, I'd have returned it and rated this <0 stars. However, since I am careful and a bit lucky, that didn't happen. Now that I've figured out all the work-arounds, I'm very happy.
Customer Review: Great option!
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this product 5 months ago and I must say it was a great choice. I didn't particularly care about the looks of the hard drive when I bought it, but I now find it's really great to have an elegant and modern looking hard drive on my desk. The drive is fast and very easy to use. It has never given me any problems while trying to disconnect it (some hard drives I've used in the past have the problem of giving an error message when trying to close them via the windows "safely remove hardware" assistant). Also, the blue indicator light is not only stylish, but very useful for seeing if the disk is working or stopped. Another great thing is that the drive is noiseless! Even when working at full speed (while transfering files or importing CD's...or when left downloading large files all night) the drive is silent. Considering the competition, I have two criticisms for this drive: its terrible software and the lack of a quick synchronization button. The backup software is hard to use, confusing, and not powerful at all. It takes ages to encrypt your files and then it is impossible to navigate through them (for example, it doesn't show thumbnails for photo files, so you have to open them one by one to find them!). Maxtor's One-Touch drives are much better at backup because the software is much more comprehensible and the button allows for instant synch. If you don't mind synchronizing manually, or if you don't want to use this drive to make a mirror copy of your computer's internal drive, then it is a great choice!