Product Description

The My Passport Essential is small, lightweight and fits easily into your pocket. This portable storage unit designed by Western Digital will enable you to organise your files and take thousands of songs, photos and videos with you everywhere. The My Passport Essential doesn&rsquot require a power adapter it&rsquos self-powered through your computer&rsquos USB port.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDME2500TE
• Released on: 2008-02-13
• Dimensions: 19.68" h x 19.68" w x 19.68" l, .40 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Simply Elegant - Combine a beautiful new gloss-black case that fits smoothly in your hand and pocket with mega-capacity for all your digital content and the world's most popular portable drive just got better than ever;Easy - Installation is a snap because you don't really "install" this drive; you just plug it in and it's ready to use. There is no CD to install; the included software loads from the drive the first time you plug it in;Smart - Powered by the USB bus. No separate power supply is needed;Big capacity that fits in your pocket - This compact drive fits easily in your pocket or purse, weighs only a few ounces and with capacities up to 320 GB, you can take tons of photos, videos, files and music with you wherever you go;Synchronized and secure - WD Sync synchronization and encryption software lets you take your critical data with you. Plug My Passport into any PC, edit files, read e-mail, and view photos. Then sync all of your changes back to your home or office computer. Your data is protected with 128-bit encryption. (Windows only);Includes Google software - Search your drive, manage your photos, and simplify Web searches with included Google software. (Windows only);Compatible - Use with Windows and Macintosh computers;

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Don't use this with Apple Powerbook
I bought one of these for using with my Apple Powerbook notebook, after checking that my USB's were high speed, although I was unable to ascertain the output power from them. Although the hard drive worked fine with my husbands Toshiba laptop, mine didn't. It is a lovely small size, and the operation was quiet. I though about trying to find a split cable to go into both USB ports, (one each side on the mac), but then still didn't know if it would actually work. So I have returned the item for refund. Still it is a good make, a really compact size and great value for the money and storage capacity is amazing. Still only 4 stars, because the technical blurb doesn't make it clear regarding the requirements for running it.

Unreliable on older equipment
I have two VAIO laptops, a newer one with Vista and USB2.0 and an older one with WIN XP Pro SP2 and USB1.1 ports. Both laptops provide sufficient current to spin-up the WD250GB from a single USB connection, though I bought the Lindy Dual Power USB cable as a precaution. On the advice of others, I changed the WD250GB file system from FAT32 to NTFS.

The WD250GB appears to work OK with the newer laptop, but I have had no end of trouble on the older machine, due to a frequently occurring error message: "Windows-Delayed Write Failed". Further attempts to access the drive results in: "File or Directory is corrupted and unreadable". When this happens the drive can be neither accessed nor disconnected, and a reboot is necessary. More seriously, on one occasion, the file format mysteriously changed from NTFS to RAW, due to corruption of the system volume information. I was unable to resolve this, even on the newer VAIO, and had to reformat the drive, losing all the data contained on it. I then tried using the WD250GB with two Win XP Home desktop PCs (Athlon XP3200+ and a P4), but neither even managed to spin up the drive. I then tried using the Lindy Dual Power USB cable, but that didn't work either.

I had intended to use the WD250GB for transferring files between new and old machines but the drive cannot be relied on for that task. Altogether a very disappointing buy, as I was formerly a great fan of WD products. If you are using the WD250GB exclusively with state-of-the-art laptop designs, then you may be luckier than me and find it meets your needs.

Post script: Have now ascertained that this is simply a power issue. The problems I encountered on older Win XP PCs have been overcome by using an externally powered USB hub. Had I known this previously, I would have raised rating to 4 stars. (The Lindy Dual Power USB cable was useless).

Lovely Little Thing!
Had to get this quickly as my wife's laptop started acting up. She backed up her entire 40gb easily and I added some of my stuff from my laptop no problems. The beauty for me was when I opened an after effects (video effects software = memory/system intensive) file from the drive (not something one should do normally), it worked brilliantly, didn't notice any drop in performance or speed.

I would gladly recommend this little beauty to anyone looking for a pocket sized external harddrive.