Western Digital 160GB 2.5-inch Passport USB Portable Hard Drive by Western Digital
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Digital camera reviews of Western Digital 160GB 2.5-inch Passport USB Portable Hard Drive
Digital camera Review: 160GB WD harddrive portable
Summary: 4 Stars
nice little hard drive. hasn't failed on me yet so I'm thankful.
pricey at the time I bought it. I'd recommend it.
Digital camera Review: 160GB of data in your pocket
Summary: 5 Stars
I chose this product as an add-on drive for my laptop. I have not kept this out ever since I bought this. Its worth the money.
Pros: size, speed and of course 160 GB of storage space.
Cons: expensive, would have been good if this comes with a carrying case
Digital camera Review: 2 failed WD drives within 6 months.
Summary: 1 Stars
DO NOT BUY -- I had two WD drives fail within 6 months. I'd give this zero stars if it were an option.
RUN from this company.
Digital camera Review: A Very Attractive Piece of Junk--Updated
Summary: 1 Stars
I got a good price on this drive and the piano black finish exactly matched my new HP Laptop, so I thought, why not? Usually I'm more careful -- I should have checked here first.
When I plugged it in, the drive was recognized and all seemed well. But it's pre-formatted for FAT32, and I run NTFS files system, so I went to the Western Digital site to find out how to re-format it. I CAREFULLY followed the directions, and after that the drive was recognized in Windows, but showed it wasn't formatted. Every format attempt in Windows, even low-level, failed.
So I downloaded the Western Digital utilities, which tested the drive and found no problems. Then I used the WD utilities to format the drive. It said the drive was successfully formatted, but again, when I tried to use it in Windows, no luck. Windows called it an unformatted drive and continued to give an unhelpful error message when I tried to format it. I even tried the "long format" method and that came up with the same "Drive could not be formatted" error, but only after two hours of seemingly formatting correctly.
I returned it to the store and bought a Maxtor-mini III which I plugged in and it recognized my file system immediately. I'm not sure whether it was pre-formatted in NFTS or re-formatted during the quick setup, but it works very well.
Western Digital used to make excellent products. The Western Digital 160 GB USB 2.0 Passport is a mess.
Update: (4-15-07)In reviewing my reviews I notice that many recent reviews have been more positive. I am thus willing to concede that the some early models may have fallen victim to startup production problems. If you note the review arc for the Passport, you'll see a steady climb in the ratings. Still I would caution against trying to re-format the drive to NTFS, even though WD claims you can do it. Even if I could change my rating now, I wouldn't. Following WD's instructions explicitly, the drive failed for me and could not be recovered. As always, YMMV.
Digital camera Review: A nice portable hard drive
Summary: 4 Stars
I have used this portable hard drive for one month. It works very well, and easy to take. But the USB cable is too short, so you must put it very closed to your laptop.