Customer Reviews

160GB 5400 USB 2.0 PASSPORT ESSENTIAL HD

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I really like the stylistic aspects of this hard drive. It is small enough to take anywhere you want to take it. The drive itself is very easy to use. It does have a significant weakness and that is the fact that it solely depends on the usb port for its power source. My laptop could not actually handle the power that the passport hard drive required and I kept getting an error message about a power surge. I fixed that problem by buying a powered usb hub to plug into my computer and then connected the portable hard drive to my laptop that way. That is my one complaint about the portable hard drive, but it was a simple fix that added about $25 dollars to what I spent on the hard drive itself.

The WD Passport Essential is a fine portable hard drive, but it does NOT work on the Mac PowerBook G4, regardless of the stated specs.

To all Mac PowerBook G4 Users: The G4 doesn't have enough power in the USB port to power an external hard drive. You must purchase an external hard drive that connects through FireWire or has an external power source. I prefer the LaCie Little Disk with FireWire.

Thank you, Amazon, for the easy return.

This product is ok the biggest disappointment for me is the fact you can only download 4gb at a time. I bought it to back computer would have been much easier if could have backup the whole computer a one time instead of piece mealing it in.

The reason why I got this item was because I needed to backup my PS3 data, since I'm upgrading the hard drive on the system. As soon as I opened it, I just plugged it in and that's all. No need to install software or anything. I was surprised at how small and light this drive is and it was nice to have something so simple to use. Perfect for what I needed it. This thing took about 30min to copy about 20G of data which, and I'll be honest, I'm not sure if its good or bad, but there you go.

I have been using this device for two weeks with out any problem, Small, easy to install to a laptop, and have plenty of capacity I would recomend this portable to any who need to back up its files.

I could not figure out how to get this device to work. It kept freezing up with partial page views visible. When the device was frozen, my computer ran very slow. I left it running over night and in the morning it was still frozen. I also had difficulty getting the device to stop. The "Safely Remove Hardware" icon also seemed to be frozen. Very frustrating.

Regrettably, this initially nice little drive has eventually proven frustratingly untrustworthy for its intended purpose - back-ups and file transfers.

When first purchased a year ago, the Passport 160s seemed wonderfully reliable and dependable for doing both back-ups and transporting sizeable files from computers not sharing a common net. The access was trouble-free and easy, allowing non-geeks the ability to copy and transfer files reliably and easily.

Although so far my Passports have never lost a file once loaded, now a year after purchasing two of them, it is not unusual to take numerous attempts for Passport to be recognized while it runs its little inventory program, over and over, incessantly ignoring keystrokes and attempts at intervention. While one can almost always load files, eventually, attempts to get the Passport drive recognized on numerous computers seem to far take longer than transferring files.

My Passports have always been transported gently in their padded cases and as far as I know never subjected to knocks or hits of any kind; however, they now regularly behave like an adolescent throwing a temper tantrum. Once a file is loaded, it is generally there on the Passport drive, but it may not be available at the next computer - maddeningly, one can read the file from the Passport drive, but not transfer it... Leaving the only other option which is to load, then "save as..." one file at a time.

Regrettably, after purchasing two of these on other recommendation and despite high-hopes, cannot recommend them where reliability is a fundamental criteria.

THe WD Passport external hard drive is light weight, compact, and easy to carry around. I have other external hard drives but I find myself using this one the most because it is easy.

Thus far I've not had a problem with it getting power through the USB cable but my laptop batteries rarely get run down below 50% reserve. Most of the time my laptop is plugged into an AC outlet.

This is great to store pictures, movies, or any data you don't wish to put on your hard drive or comes from another machine.

This is another great product from Western Digital. It is very small and looks sharp. I would recommend getting a case for it because it looks like it would scratch easily. The software looks like it is easy to use for syncing data between PC's. I am only using it for storage right now. I like not needing an external power source. Good value hard drive.

This is a great little backup drive. I use the older MacOS 10.3.9 on a 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4. The drive is (all but) completely compatible! I recommend reformatting the drive for Mac users; the PC filter hic-cups on special characters and other Mac eccentricities! No power cord, no transformer, just a USB 2.0 plug. A great little drive for the money!