- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 20 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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20 out of 21 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Great Value, no hassle, nice features - a spectacular hard drive"
Pros: large size, not too pricey, rubber covering a great idea
Cons: unless you like stress and hassle, none
Summary: A great hard drive for the money. I unpacked mine recently, and I expected what I have gotten from every other peripheral I have ever gotten - doesn't work out of the box, tons of hassle, getting new drivers - you know the drill. But I was VERY pleasantly surprised when this baby was plugged in. WinXPpro recognized it in seconds, and in about 15 seconds it had a drive letter and was even recognized as 'western digital passport 80Gb HD". Impressive.
I bought mine on the recomendation of the previous user (great review by the way) and I am not dissapointed. I bought mine primarily to back up files and hold my digital media - music, photos, videos, etc. What I also like is the price. I live in Paris and good, cheap peripherals are hard to come by. But this little marvel was sitting right on the shelf of my FNAC for me. I paid 200 with VAT, so in the US it would cost about 20% less. The mgb / centimes ratio is the best I saw.
The sturdy housing and clever rubber covering for the usb connection is a must, as I travel frequently for business. I find that not having to plug in the hard drive separetly saves me a lot of hassle in the field - I only have to carry one connector for my laptop (a dell inspiron) instead of two. The larger size (about half of a dvd box) can be an issue, as I do not have a case (to remain inconspicuous - it can get a little awkward - but not 'I want to pay 60 euro more' awkard.
It comes formatted with FAT32, which makes its size on disk a little over 75 Gbs. I briefly considered reformatting, but decided not to for the sake of interoperability of older / mac computers.
The lowdown: A great product made for the frequent traveller with large data needs. The fast seek time makes large files a breeze, but smaller ones, like documents, take longer. It is very quiet and rather chic looking I think as well.
- 1 reply to this review
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The Western Digital Passport Drive is no bargain or technologically equivalent to market leaders like Seagate's 2.5" Portable Drives!
1) It is only 80GB (Seagate's is 100GB for the same price).
2) It only has a low technology 2MB Cache! (Seagate has a 8MB cache) Cache is VERY important in running video or audio files right from any HDD!
3) It comes with NO BACKUP SOFTWARE! (Seagate's comes with BounceBack Express by CMS, well know for their automatic Notebook backup software.)
4) if you've EVER delt with Western Digitals incompetant Customer Support for warranty repair, you'd never buy from WD again!
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