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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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital 160GB 2.5-inch Passport USB Portable Hard Drive
Customer Review: nice backup drive
Summary: 4 Stars
I use this drive and a seagate 100 gig drive (I also reviewed that one) to back up our office p.c. It works great and I'm very happy with it. The reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because there is NO ventilation in this drive (unlike the seagate) so I'm a little worried about it over-heating at some point (which is usually what fries these little externals). It may well be that there is no heating problem though in which case I give this a 5 star rating. It's very compact (about the size of an ipod I think). I haven't used it with a notebook p.c. yet, so I don't know if the average notebook will provide enough juice to power it. There is no a/c adapter option, so you are forced to use the usb port to power this. This isn't a problem with desktops. If you are using a notebook, I would probably get the Seagate, which has the option of getting an a/c adapter. It is slightly bigger and bulkier than the WD though (it's a little bigger than a deck of cards). I alternate between these two drives just in case one of them burns out. I bought another one of these WDs to back up my home pc...Customer Review: Easy to transport storage
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very good hard drive I'm just going to make a few bullet points for the pros and cons. Just note that if you can get this drive for $99 or less then you should buy it. Buying the thing at whatever the full price is or for more than $99 is a rip off!
Pros:
Light, compact and easy to transport
No power adapter required (powered via USB)
Fairly inexpensive
Reliable
Takes up little room on desk
Cons:
Will not work with non-powered USB hubs, the hub doesn't draw enough juice to power the drive
Cable is short
Fingerprints show easily
Other than those few cons this is a pretty good drive. The data transfers are snappy and reading information off the drive is quick. I was able to use the drive to store all of my PC games and run them from there rather than my laptop's meager hard drive. Another review noted it but I'll say it again since it's important: the drive comes formatted with the FAT32 file system. Windows XP doesn't use FAT32! So make sure before putting any data on the drive that you format for NTFS!
Customer Review: This one got me hooked
Summary: 5 Stars
This was my first passport drive.
Before the passport drives came out, external drives were big, heavy, clumsy devices that were hard to install and required separate power supplies.
Passport changed this. These drives are 2.5" tiny, super quiet, USB 2.0 drives that draw their power directly from the computer themselves. They're in one word fantastic and they're beautiful too.
Quite frankly the 160GB model is out of date and you should consider getting the Western Digital 320 GB Passport 2.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive or Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDME5000TN (Midnight Black) models which are cheaper than this hard to find hard drive which is overly expensive now.
I thought I'd review it because I reviewed the 500gb model and thought that I should write down the entire history.
Customer Review: Answer to backkup prayers
Summary: 5 Stars
I've backed up PCs (and small business networks) since 1980 - before there was an IBM PC - using 5.25-inch floppies, then 3.5-inch floppies; followed by Zip disks, QIC tape, DAT tape, CDs, and now, at long last, a hard disk. I recently bought a new laptop and thought I'd use the DVD writer in it for backing up. Har har, it was old home week with the same error problems I've faced all too often for years. ("Bad byte on disk xxx," "cannot verify file xxxx," and the like.)
It is a pleasure to at last get a reasonably fast backup that consists of executable FILES, not proprietary code format files (albeit ziped files) without errors in the media causing a fubar, snafu, or blivet well into the process, requiring a start over.
The physical size of this pocket portable in combination with its capacity mean you would easily spend multiples of its price on any other medium - and take a chance every backup with them, of a failure. And if your time means anything to you, acquiring one of these units today should be an absolute no-brainer.
Customer Review: Got Two, Both Failed
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased two of these Western Digital 160GB 2.5" Passport drives on February of 2008. One gave me trouble right out of the box with with the software not wanting to communicate well with my computer, so I reformatted that one and it worked just fine. I left the original software on the second drive, though I found it of little use.
My computer had a very small hard drive and was unable to hold my software and all of my files. I purchased two of these so that if anything happened to one, I would have a backup of all of my important files.
As of mid-April, both hard drives just simply died at the same time and I have now lost years of important files with absolutely no warning. Now, it is too late to return the drives for a refund and I also have to pay out additional funds to make the attempt to recover the files.
I have tried both drives on multiple computers. One now reads as corrupt and the other simply will not read at all. I am extremely upset and I do not recommend this product at all.