Customer Reviews

Passport Essential 2.5" 320GB USB Hard Drive

5 star:		(243)
4 star:		(98)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(53)

 

 

The Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive (Midnight Black) is the largest capacity in the portable essentials line-up. This comes in a variety of colors including Pink, Real Red, Artic White and Intense Blue. They say that this is the update to the regular Western Digital 320 GB Passport Hard Drive and I own both of them. In fact I also own many other portable hard drives in the Western Digital passport lineup and so far I couldn't be happier. All of these are great for mobile backups of data, though slower to copy large backups than their A/C powered MyBook big-brothers.

Some will be considering the Western Digital My Passport Essential 250GB and the Western Digital My Passport Essential 160 GB sizes of these drives. I started with the 160 GB and have owned multiple versions in all sizes, and capacity aside these drives are basically the same. If you are on the fence between a smaller or larger size, the decision will come down to what you really need most. If you need a drive for complete backups, don't box yourself in purchasing a 160 GB model when your hard drive is 120 GB. Give yourself some room and go with the 320 if you can.

For those with backup needs of 80 GB or smaller, look into the other capacities. Periodic specials are being run on some of the smaller sizes, making them very attractive. Plus a 500 GB model should be on the way soon. So if you need the largest size, then by all means get the 320 GB version. But if you can make do with the smaller size, then the value pricing may entice you. Weigh your options but whatever size you pick now make sure it's enough to meet your needs right now and for at least the next 6 months. In fact, some people who are extremely picky like me are going to want to buy at least 2 drives so that they can have 2 copies of their backups, just in case.

Pros
+ Great capacity options at good prices available in this line of products
+ Nice portable form factor that easily connects via USB
+ USB powered, no A/C required, which is great for portability
+ Works well on Windows Vista, XP and Mac OS X
+ Easy to set up disk encryption for security and privacy
+ Nice looks, and cool color options for those that care about that
+ Turns on and off with your computer or easily ejected via system tray
+ Easy plug-and-play installation
+ Integrates nicely with my growing stable of WD MyBook drives
+ Included software may be useful for some novices
+ Drives are sufficiently durable holding up to normal use over time
+ 320 GB capacity is just about right for most users

Cons
- Somewhat slow file transfer speeds for larger backups
- Included software not useful for power users
- Shiny body attracts scratch, fingerprints and dust
- Only USB, so look to the LaCie 250 GB Rugged Hard Disk if you need fire-wire ports too
- Only up to 320 GB right now, so look to the LaCie 500 GB Rugged Hard Disk with FireWire and USB if you need more capacity in a portable drive
- Have to spend your cash to get a case that should have been included

The Looks

The drive has a nice shiny exterior. The case can scratch in transit and the surface also attracts fingerprints and dust. But the look is still nice and you can easily purchase a case or holder for the drive if it bothers you. Most versions don't ship with the case included, but you can pick up the CaseLogic Small External Hard Drive Case (Black) for $10 or $15.

The Features

I had no problem connecting this drive to any computer, including Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X. Keep in mind this is a USB 2.0 device so ancient computers may not yield the same results.

Transfer speeds are ok but definitely slower than the A/C powered MyBooks. This guy is still limited by the 480 Mbs connection speed of USB 2.0, but performs somewhat slower than this when performing large backups. The USB 2.0 speed rating can not really be achieved in production and you will get a fraction of that. But it's a trade-off that's worth it since it's USB-powered. Check out the LaCie 250 GB Rugged hard disk if you need fire-wire ports too. Or try the LaCie 500 GB Rugged hard disk if you need more portable capacity.

The software utilities included with this device will be most useful for beginners. I tested the backup software in particular but found it to be slow and impractical. I mean REALLY slow. It works, but cutting and pasting is better. Take my advice: don't use these utilities and just do cut and paste backups and saves to this drive.

Reliability

I've had good luck with the passport line of drives. They seem to have lower failure rates than many MyBook drives, though I also own those and haven't had issues there either. Maybe my gentle care has helped me to get lucky with these guys so far. Maybe it's because these drives are generally off when in transit. Regardless, these guys have held up fine.

Conclusion

This drive is great or those who want a portable drive for backups on the run. It's nice getting the 320GB capacity in one drive. There are smaller drives but other than capacity there is no real difference between them. Watch the price changes and choose the sized drive that's right for you.

Enjoy!

This product is indeed excellent for its intended purpose, other than the data transfer rate. I realized that this review is listed as most helpful *critical* review. Although I urge the manufacturer to improve the data transfer rate to match that achieved by some competitors, I don't mean to discourage potential buyers.

One improvement made compared to an older version of Passport is that this drive spins down during inactivity. The previous ones (mine is 120GB in silver color case) didn't spin down, even when the host computer was in the sleep mode. Another improvement is the power requirement. This product worked fine with a MacBook on a single USB port, even when the Macbook is operated on the battery, not the AC power.

For Mac users, like any external hard drive, I recommend to format this drive in MacOS Extended filesystem with journaling option. You can do this with Disk Utility of MacOS X, found in /Applications/Utilities.

Between the old 120GB model (silver) and this 320GB model (Passport Essential series), I also noticed that this model is slightly smaller and thinner. Sure, it is easier to slide into a briefcase, but I will have to see how well it takes the normal shocks from daily transportation.

Now, the data transfer rate issue.

This drive ships formatted in FAT32. In that format, I get a benchmark of 16.8MB/s transfer rate when I write a single 2.0GB file into this drive. I formatted this disk in MacOS Extended (Journaled), which is a lot more modern file system, and run the identical benchmark. The result is 18.0MB/s. Both of the tests were performed when the drive is empty (hard drive slows down when the filesystem is nearing full capacity). My computer is an 8-core Mac Pro, and the speed of the host computer is not the limiting factor. This is a hugely disappointing result, indicating that they used a cheap chipset to interface the drive to the USB 2.0 port.

In comparison, my Western Digital SATA 2.5" 320GB laptop hard drive (which is in this product) achieves 35-50MB/s with the same benchmark when installed directly in a MacBook. Also, this same hard drive in a different USB interface case delivered 22-27MB/s in the same benchmark.

I would give this product 4.5 stars if the product delivered 35MB/s.

Also as a comparison, Passport 120GB drive delivered only 8MB/s while an average laptop HDD of that size delivered 25MB/s.

I routinely copy a lot of data in and out of my portable hard drives every day, and any slight improvement in the data transfer rate can save minutes every time I use it, and to me, this difference is worth paying extra few dollars to use a faster interface chip. I truly wish that the manufacturers print the actual data transfer rate rather than the 480Mbit/s nonsense for USB 2.0 interface, which no one expects to see.

As I had just spent hours transferring about 300GB of Data into the new drive, It just stopped working and stopped being recognized by both my MacBook, which is brand new, and my PC. Ok, this stuff happens from time to time, but Western Digital has by far the worst customer service I have ever experienced as an owner of tons of different electronics. After bugging me on the phone for about an hour with stupid questions and requests (plug it and try this and that, etc...), they finally accepted the obvious fact that the product was defective, and told me to ship it to them AT MY OWN expense to send me back a REFURBISHED one. Conclusion, I ended up paying more than the cost of a new drive and ended up with a refurbished one. It works fine but I will question the reliability every time I use it and ended up keeping my old (non-portable) hard drive as a back up of my back up. Rock on, WD!

-software package prevents me from giving this a 5 star review.

The drive comes in a shiny black plastic case which appears to be very vulnerable to scratches. The drive has a small connectivity/activity LED light at the back of the unit so you can tell if it is on and functioning. Included with the drive is a couple of nearly useless programs. Seagate's Free agent software included with their drive is a bit more useful then this although if you are really serious about backing up your system you will need to invest in some decent backup and imaging software like Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image.

The drive is Formated FAT32 which really won't do this day and age. This will limit the max file size to 4 GB. The very first thing that I needed to do was format the drive to NTFS. This allowed me to comfortably backup my laptop using Norton Ghost without worrying about file size limitations. Ok lets move to the pros and cons

Pros- This hard drive provides a great deal of space and is very quiet. It is very lightweight and compact. USB powered is a nice plus. Overall a very nice piece of hardware.

Cons- Poor software package with drive. Does anyone really use this stuff? Small USB cable. Scratchable plastic case. A front mounted LED conectivity/activity light would have been nice. The rear mount light is just awkward to use.

With the right backup software this is great for backing up your laptop!

I have been purchasing WD passports since 2005. Earlier models were made of metal and had a sturdy rubber base. Working in both a mac and pc platforms I could easily switch their plug and play platforms between systems easily. The drives were rugged, reliable and just the right size.

However I found this model to be far below the WD passport standards I have become accustom to. From its cheap all plastic and poorly constructed casing to running hot and finally failing five days out of the box, this product was a major disappointment.

For the price, you can't beat the capacity and portability of these Western Digital My Passport Essential Portable Hard Drives.

Western Digital has a long history of producing dependable drives.ss

The housings are well designed and, with a bit of care, you can dissemble them should the need or desire arise. The drives themselves are workhorses. They are not the fastest, but they are more than adequate for most purposes.

I generally don't comment on other reviews of the same product, but there seem to be a number of misconceptions about this product thst should be clarified.

First, these portable hard drives are for usse only with USB 2.0 ports. Period. Machines three years old and older may not have USB 2.0 ports.

Second, hard drives are electro-mechanical devices. Hard drives do fail unexpectedly whether they are a day or year or more old. Hard drive failure is not predictable. So it you plan on using this or any hard drive to back up your precious family photos, financial records or doctoral thesis, make sure you have a second or third backup!



A couple of minor criticisms of the product. The supplied USB cable is on the short side. On the other hand, how long a cable do you need with a portable drive? In any event, USB cables are readily available and relatively inexpensive. A bigger and more important criticism is that Western Digital does not provide a cable with a second USB connector for use on those computers where a single USB port doesn't provide enough power. Finally, WD doesn't include a carrying case. Small things, to be sure, that wouldn't cost Western Digital a lot of money to include, but they don't.

You won't find any competent network administrator who doesn't have multiple backups and the reason for this is that hard drives do fail!

So if you entrust your valuable data to a single hard drive, you are making a big mistake. Always have at least two and preferably three backups that you update frequently. And don't assume that your backups are reliable. Test recovering data from them from time to time.

You might be able to recover some or all the data from a failed hard drive, but it can be a very expensive or troublesome process.

Just remember: if it's worth backing up, it's worth backing up at least twice. That's what the IT pros do - and it's what you should do with your valuable data as well.

Sorry for the digression, but I just wanted to correct the misimpressions that some people have left about these drives.

The Western Digital My Passport Essentials are solid, inexpensive, portable and very useful hard drives.

Jerry

This is my second WD portable drive and it's apaprently disappointing. My first one is a 70 or 80 GB WD portable drive which has been running almost perfectly except you have to select the new folders created for later syncronization. This 320GB drive is MUCH slower and I am running out of my patience in the early morning. It took >1Hr to sync 20GB data. This will be my last WD portable drive.

In comparison, the Maxtor model (170GB?) I have is much much faster. I will probably try another Maxtor in the future.

Nice little drive. No set-up required. I would give it a 5 out of 5 BUT. . . WD bills it as Mac OS compatible. Strictly speaking, this is true. What they don't tell you and you don't find out until you're trying to back up your files is that this drive has the same restrictive naming conventions as PCs. The result is that unless you restrict your name length and don't use characters such as dash or backslash when labeling your files, the process stalls out and you have to rename each file individually. It's a serious PIA. I would recommend that anyone using Mac look elsewhere.

I purchased Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB USB 2 Portable Hard Drive and when i tried to register at western digital website with the serial number it started saying me Out of Region Warranty. This means that the item with the serial number was meant for use in European/Asian countries and the warranty was not valid.

When i called WD customer service they asked me to send the proof of purchase and changed the region in their records so that the 3 year warranty is valid in US also.

So before you destroying your purchase proof, make sure you register with WD website. Not sure how could Amazon ship such items which are meant for sale in non-US country.

I bought this hard drive for Media Storage (Mac + Win) and also as a backup disc for Time Machine. The good news is that it comes in FAT32 format, which OS X can read/write. The bad news is that Time Machine requires the backup disc to be in HFS+ format (FAT32 or NTFS won't work).

However, this is easy enough to fix. I launched Disk Utility in OS X and partitioned the drive into 240 GB as FAT32 (or as MS-DOS format, as Disk Util calls it), and 80 GB as HFS+. Took less than 5 minutes for the whole thing. So now, I've got one partition for time machine, and another for my media.

Fine Print :

1. In partitioning the drive, it formats the drive first. So any free utils that come with the hard disk are erased. Not an issue for me as I didn't intend to use any of the free software. But anyone trying this should be aware of it.

2. For anyone thinking about doing the same thing, note that FAT32 does allow both Windows and OSX to read/write without the need for a 3rd party software. But the downside of FAT32 is that it doesn't allow a file size larger than 4 GB. This isn't an issue for me (I don't expect to come across many files that are larger than 4 GB each). To avoid this issue, you could create one partition in NTFS (instead of FAT32). Once you do this, you'll need a 3rd party software so that OS X can read and write to the NTFS partition. I've heard good things about MacFuse (though I haven't tried it myself).

Other thoughts...
- Nice and compact
- Fairly silent
- Pretty short USB cable (can be irritating for some. I prefer this to having a long cable dangling around).
- Wish it came with a soft case/cover (that's what I'm looking to pick up next).