Home > Consumer Reviews > Western Digital My Passport Essential 160 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDMEPN1600TN (Vibrant Pink)

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).

This USB drive is exactly what I was looking for, large capacity (500 GB), feels durable, compact and light, and simple to use on my Dell or Mac. Requires no electric power, and is so compact that it doesn't feel like I have anything else in my brief bag.

I bought in combination with the rubber skin (Premium Silicone Sleeve Case for Western Digital WD Passport Essential Elements Portable 2.5" Hard Drive - (Hard Drive NOT included!!)) - which added no "bulk" - only protection.

All of my work colleagues loved the combination....

Highest rating!

I recieved the WD Passport Essential 400gb drive as a Christmas gift. I had done a lot of research and found most reviews complain about the software, WDSync. The directions are a joke, it has three steps that tell nothing about how to use the drive after plugging the thing into the USB port. I found and started the software with no issues, but I quickly found that it was not very intuitive.

I had to create a user profile, cool I thought. Then I sync'd my stuff to the drive. I opened Win Explorer to see my files, and because it encrypted it, all the files are unrecongnizable and useless. Useless that is until you send it back to the PC, a function in the WDSync software that I was unable to figure out how to use. There is no option to put files on the drive without encrypting them.

I tried to sync a specific file to the drive. It does not have the ability to sync specific files, you have to select folders. So I selected everything in my Win Vista user profile and sync'd it to the drive. It tood 45 minutes to sync 40gb through a USB 2 connection. Very slow I thought. I then made a change to one file that had been sync'd, and selected just the folder that this file was in and sync'd it. It erased everything I had put on the drive from my user profile, and put just the files in the folder that I selected this last time. So it seems that it will make the drive the same as only what you are synching at any one time. Anthing that is on the drive will be erased, and copied over by the new data. So that means that if I want all the stuff on my Win Vista profile backed up by this drive, I have to sync the whole profile every time. Well I already found that that is 40gb and takes the better part of an hour to do! That's no good.

Now here's the kicker. Every time you plug this drive in and start the WDSync software, it syncs the drive whether you want it to or not. That means, every time I turn on my computer, plug this drive in and start WDSync to back up a few files that I've added or changed, it takes almost an hour to do this and I have no control over it.

Sooooo.....I went looking for better software. I found Allway Sync. This does what I want it to do, it's untuitive, and it just works the way we all think that it should. You can sync a single file or a folder, It does not use encryption, so it's very fast, about twice as fast as WDSync while moving the same data. When it does a sync, it only overwrites the files that it is told to sync. If there is not a change in the file's date stamp compared to the file on your PC, it makes no changes to it.

Over all, I like the drive. It's small, with big capacity. It does not get very warm at all, is quiet, and works very well. I accidentally deleted everything that came on the drive (thanks to WDSync), so now I only have the folders of the PC's that I backed up, and the .exe file for Allway Sync. I would recommend deleting everything off of this drive as soon as you get it, then download Allway Sync to the drive and use that. The drive is great, but Western Digital has totally blown it with it's crappy software though.

In the short time that I have had mine it has broken twice inexplicably, the first time the warranty replaced the defective product, but this time I do not even care to return it seeing as I cannot trust it to work for over a month.

I would defiantly warn any shoppers that Western Digital's low prices are the result of poor quality manufacturing.

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.