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Western Digital My Book Passport Essential 250GB USB Portable Hard Drive | 
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| Brand: Western Digital
Category: CE
Buy New: £55.00
New (17) from £55.00
Rating:  15 reviews
Media: Electronics
Fragile: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 1.9 x 1.9 x 1.9
MPN: WDME2500TE
Model: WDME2500TE
UPC: 718037729602
EAN: 0718037729602
ASIN: B0012IOHVM
Release Date: February 13, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW-SAME OR NEXT DAY DISPATCH!!!
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| Features:
| • | • Simple to use portable drive that are light and easy to carry• No power adapter required as they are powered directly through the USB cable• Works with Windows and Mac• Synchronize and encrypt files between home and office for |
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| Customer Reviews:
 Unreliable on older equipment April 10, 2008
D. Brown (Edinburgh)
13 out of 18 found this review helpful
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! March 31, 2008
ocube (London, UK)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
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.
 Useful as a drive but avoid the sync software May 31, 2008
Andrew Hunt (London, England)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
This drive is cheap and small. Used as a spare external drive to backup your stuff, it's perfect.
The software that it comes with self installs when you first plug it in. It sets up passwords, encryption and 'syncs' your drive. The software is clunky, non-intuitive and installs stuff you might not want like google desktop. Also, it's not clear how the encryption works so retrieval is a worry.
I deleted all that stuff and simply use it as a drive.
this is the smallest portable drive yet !! March 19, 2008
i.pod (London)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I have the old V2 version which was fantastic - This drive has the same capacity yet it is sooo much smaller and yes this is really a pocket drive now ! - these were 139.99 in the high street so @ 79.99 its a real bargain - Good work Amazon !!!
Don't use this with Apple Powerbook April 21, 2008
Gill loves archaeology (UK)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
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.
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