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 Electronics : Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDME3200TN (Midnight Black) |
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Rating:  - Works Great.
Does what its supposed to. Cheap, fast, and small. I have 3 of these little drives. Dropped one in sink of water. Dried it out and it still works fine. A fine example of form and function melded together perfectly.
A very well engineered product.
Rating: - an amazing hard drive
I have never owned an external hard drive before, and though this one was not instantly accessible (i had to change the drive over to ntfs, and click and drag a crapload of itunes files over to it) these days it works great. I only have a 70 GB drive in my home computer, and i would be sitting at 0 usuable bytes if it wasn't for this thing. It is cool. Thanks. Another reviewer mentioned that the package it arrives in is impenetrable. I agree, you have to use hedge clippers to cut through the plastic! Anyways this product is great and i would suggest it to anyone.
Rating: - Worth it
I purchased the Western Digital Passport when my Simple Tech failed. At the same time I purchased an Iomega . Both 250GB. I had to reformat the Iomega unit to work with my PC but that was no problem. I have only been using the two for about 2 months but so far the only complaint I have is the Iomega runs hot. This unit runs cool and is easy to transport because it is so small.
Rating:  - Not fully portable
I bought this drive to sync files between my office and home computers, so I find it very mediocre for that purpose.
And the Western Digital support was even worse.
The drive requires the USB cable that comes with it in order to get enough power to work. I tried several cables I already had without success. Thus, you have to carry the supplied cable with you, reducing its portability but significantly increasing its hassle factor.
I contacted Western Digital support, and they emailed me: "The drive maximum power draw is 1000 Ma. If the drive cannot draw this much power from the USB port the drive will not be recognized. To resolve the power issue we would recommend the power boost cable. The power boost cable connects to the drive and is connected to 2 USB ports. The drive will draw power from both of the USB ports. The power boost cable can be purchased from the phone support."
This "power boost cable" requires TWO USB ports to work and would cost almost $17 with shipping, effectively increasing the price of the drive about 15%.
I emailed back, saying "it is deceptive to promote something as self-powered when you know that it does not work on some computers."
Their response? "Our drive is guarantee to work with the provided USB cable, since a greater length of a USB cable does attenuate the power strength causing malfunctioning of the drive. The drive is, as advertised, self-powered but in order to use it with longer cable you need to make sure that it will have the necessary power to operate."
My advice: Buy a drive from another manufacturer.
Rating: - works like a charm
I bought this product to back up our old PC knowing that it will die one of these days - perhaps before we have a chance to replace it with a new MAC. So I had to buy the Y cable with it so that it had enough power and transfer speed. It worked fine. We do backups only on occasion, so this hard drive is not getting a workout too often.
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