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: Awesome!
Summary: 5 Stars
I received this as a gift, and initially was disappointed. I wanted one of those huge 500 GB WD external HD, but my sister frets over the load I carry in my backpack, and she decided that I was going for compact, light and practical.
Well, I was undoubtedly the envy of my graphics class. It is compact, AND light, AND oh-so-practical. No extra wires, no worrying about transporting in bomb-proof cases, no using valuable desk-top space and worrying about outlets and power sources.
At the time I received the product, I had a Dell at home, and worked on Macs in the lab at school. I had no problems with saving my work-in-progress and working on it at home on the PC. (Of course, I had corresponding software on both, don't take that to mean that you can use it on different machines if you don't have the software) At the time, I had a USB 1.0 hub, and had no problems with that either.
I have to admit, it works like a dream, I have had no problems what-so-ever with the WD 160 GB Passport External HD. I have been using it since January 2007, during the semester that amounted to approximately 5 day/ week at anywhere from 3 to 10 hours a day. (that is plugging and unplugging from class to lab, and back and forth from school to home) This did not limit me to the amount of work I could take home to work on like the thumb drives did, and for it's physical dimensions, 160 GB seems perfect!
By the end of the semester, over half my class had purchased their own. BTW, I DO have larger external HDs now, on my desktop for more permanant storage of my work. But, for school and on-the-go, this smaller, lighter HD can't be beat!
I most heartily recommend this hard-drive!
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: Couldn't possibly ask for more
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw the negative reviews only after I'd bought this drive, so I was a bit nervous. I might not have bought it if I'd read the reviews first, but I'm sure glad I did buy it.
I got the drive for an important project, so I was a bit concerned. I reformatted the drive to NTFS and spent a lot of time copying data to and from it just to make sure it was solid. It worked flawlessly on my Dell desktop and my HP laptop. It worked fine when I defragmented it on Windows XP, and I also successfully ran a disk error check or two. The drive performed flawlessly for the use I'd purchased it; I backed up several XP systems prior to rebuilding them from scratch.
At the end of May I bought a 17" MacBook Pro, and it had no problems reading data from the drive (OS X won't write to NTFS drives).
I then reformatted the drive as a Mac disk (using the standard Mac disk utility), and used Parallels 3.0 to install a full Windows XP Pro virtual machine on it. I successfully installed the 100 or so Windows updates that have come out since XP SP2, and I get excellent performance while running XP from the drive. When I switch to full scree mode, you'd never know you weren't on a Windows PC. I've used more than one pure Windows machine that isn't as fast as the VM I'm running from this disk, and I can unplug the drive from my Mac and stick it in my shirt pocket. What more could anyone ask from such a small USB powered drive???
Customer Review: like a rock
Summary: 5 Stars
I have owned this particular WD drive for over a year now. It's starting to get full and I'm looking to buy another one, maybe a little larger capacity, but definitely the same brand and model.
I have dropped this thing countless times (I always seem to forget I have it hooked up to the back of my laptop) and it has survived each drop. These were not small drops either, they were drops from a good 3 feet from the ground, and onto solid ceramic tiles. One time the drop was so severe that the casing of the drive came apart, but I was able to easily press it back into place and the best part is that all my data was intact!
Some advice if you're going to buy this:
-Make sure you format it to NTFS before using it, or else you will only be able to transfer files to it that are smaller than 4GB a piece. I didn't realize it until I had already put about 80GB worth of files on to it.
-This, like any other hard drive, will have a smaller capacity than what's listed. It has to do with how different manufacturers measure memory differently.
-Be sure your computer has USB ports that can handle powering the device (I'm sure most newer computers won't have a problem). Otherwise you can buy the little adapter that lets you use two USB ports to power it.
Customer Review: Working well, so far...now it is being returned
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading of all the problems, I bought this drive with some trepidation.
As soon as it arrived I plugged it in and ran the Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. This gave the drive a clean bill of health.
I then ran the XP chkdsk utility with the /R switch. This turned up 128 KB of bad sectors, and dealt with them.
I seems that the quality control is not what it should be, but that chkdsk can help. I'll post another review if anything changes...
...I can't post another review - this one should be reduced to one star.
In my previous review, I stated that chkdsk had found 128 KB of bad sectors. I was running chkdsk in a loop, and this number was stable.
I unplugged the device for a few hours, plugged it back in, and started the chkdsk runs again. On the very first run the bad sector total increased to 320 KB, and then remained stable at that number.
I then reformatted the drive as NTFS with no bad blocks detected.
I unplugged the drive for 30 minutes, and then plugged it back in and ran chkdsk again. This gave 192 KB of bad sectors.
Something is definitely wrong, and the unit is being returned. I don't plan on buying another.