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: Good, but could be better
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this drive after needing to upgrade from my old 160 gig drive. It was also a Western Digital, which worked great and I loved it. I've given it to my mom who doesn't need as big of a drive as I do, and it still works. This one does the job too, but it could be better.
I followed the instructions of the other users and deleted the included software and converted it to NTFS. I didn't use the software from my old hard drive, so I didn't feel the need to keep it. As for converting, it took me forever. I followed the instructions on the other reviews, and it wouldn't work. I googled the problem I was having, found the answer, and ran into another snag. This went on for a couple of hours. Eventually with the power of google searches I figured it out.
However, converting the drive to NTFS isn't necessary, but supposedly it makes the file transfers faster. Which brings me to my next point: the transfer rates are slow.
Overall, the product works. It is just that the functionaliy could be better.
Cons
- Converting to NTFS was a pain, but this isn't necessary to use the product.
- Converting to NTFS uses up a gig (it should have been formatted as NTFS already).
- The transfer speed is slow, even after converting to NTFS.
- My old WD came with a case. This one does not.
Pros
+ USB plug 'n' play.
+ Sleek design
Customer Review: Excelent choice
Summary: 5 Stars
<EN>
This is an excellent product if you're looking for some small, nice and useful portable drive. It's very tiny and slim. Materials are good, with shiny cover. The cable is just one USB, so you don't need any other connection or AC adapter. It doesn't need additional power than the Pc one (via USB). It came with a software to manage your folders in computer, so you can copy them with that software and carry with you all your mail and documents. I also bought a CaseLogic case to protect the hard drive and together was very cheap, compared to another memory options.
<ES>
El cable es uno solo USB, así que no necesitas ninguna otra conexión o adaptador de corriente. No necesita más corriente que la de la pc (vía USB). Viene con un software para organizar tus carpetas de la computadora, así que puedes copiarlas con ese software y llevarlos contigo todo tus correos y documentos. Yo también compré un estuche CaseLogic para proteger el disco duro y juntos fueron muy baratos, comparado con otras opciones de memoria.
Este es un excelente producto si estás buscando algun pequeño, bonito y útil disco duro portable. Es muy pequeño y delgado. Los materiales son buenos, con una cubierta brillante.
Customer Review: Great for Airdisk & Time Machine on Mac
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this external drive to connect to the USB 2.0 port on the back of Apple's Airport Extreme router for purposes of using the router's Airdisk feature and use OS X 10.5.3 to treat that volume as a Time Machine vault (this feature was disabled before 10.5.3). I chose this particular drive because it did not require an additional power source, which was a big plus for me since I am running out of outlets where my router is located. It's also one less wire to have to deal with. I also chose this item because it seemed small, and I was happy when I first saw it because it was smaller and lighter than I expected.
Before I connected it to my Airport Extreme, I connected directly to my MacBook's USB port and formatted it as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) disk with Disk Utility. This also removed the Windows applications that were preloaded onto the disk. After setting up the disk with the Airport Extreme and Time Machine, I was up and running beautifully.
My only complaint about this product is the packaging. The drive comes in one of those difficult to open plastic packages that you'll spend 10 minutes trying to open. If I had a strong razor blade or box cutter around, it would have been no problem.
Customer Review: Great Portable Hard Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
I did not reformat like most others seem to do to NTFS. It fits my needs for back up of my laptop perfectly. I have been very pleased with its operation. I cannot hear it, it only gets slightly warm (hardly noticeably). Access times are fine, I actually play mp3's and read e-Books from it.
This is very easy to install and use. Just connect the drive to your USB port with the provided cable and it is plug-n-play. I just drag the files I want onto the portable drive icon. It comes with software that will allow back ups and sync files. But I never even tried the provided software. I am happy with the way I use it so I cannot talk to how well the provided software works. I would rather continue to just drag files onto the icon of the drive, delete that software and use the extra space.
I have a five-year-old Toshiba Satellite with a speaker system that includes a USB hub. I tired connecting the cable to the hub, but noting happened. But when I directly connected to a USB on the laptop everything worked perfect. There was no need for any additional purchase. The drive worked well with single USB connector supplied. I am very happy with this and it easily stores in one of the pockets of my laptop case.
Customer Review: Works as it is supposed to.
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, it works very well. The software that it comes with ... well, it is not needed on many of the modern OSes like Windows XP onwards, Linux or MAC. I always remove such preloaded software using Linux first. Some USB pendrives are worse -- you simply cannot delete the loaded software because the gadget presents itself as 2 USB devices -- one as read-only drive with an auto-executioble file (INF) in it and the other is the pre-partitioned space for you. Once you insert this pendrive in Windows XP, before you know it that read-only drive is already executing god knows what in your PC!
This Passport has none of that BS other than just some loaded software and a FAT32 filesystem. Max speed of transfer while copying a set of 300 MB+ files from this to the PC was about 30 MB/Sec on Linux 2.6 kernel based os. That rate will obviously go down for a mix of smaller sized files.
Care in handling is advised because hard disks are fragile no matter what the laptop makers say. This Passport uses a laptop hard disk inside with a good USB 2.0 USB-IDE controller.