Dr Gadget - Gadget Shop - Western Digital My Book Passport Essential 250GB USB Portable Hard Drive

	List Price: Our Price: £69.99 Your Save: £ ( % ) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Manufacturer: Western Digital
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Batteries Included: 0 Binding: Electronics Brand: Western Digital EAN: 0718037729602 Is Fragile: 0 Label: Western Digital Manufacturer: Western Digital Model: WDME2500TE Publisher: Western Digital Release Date: 2008-02-13 Studio: Western Digital
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Don't use this with Apple Powerbook Comment: 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. Customer Rating: Summary: Unreliable on older equipment Comment: 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). Customer Rating: Summary: Lovely Little Thing! Comment: 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. Customer Rating: Summary: Brilliant lil' HDD Comment: It's a nifty little HDD, it's smart, compact and efficient. It's absolutely brilliant plus it works like a charm as well. Customer Rating: Summary: this is the smallest portable drive yet !! Comment: 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 !!! More Reviews
Editorial Reviews: DW525045908GBThese elegant portable drives are simple to use light and easy to carry and require no power adapter -- they are powered directly through the USB cable. Comes with sync & encryption and Google software. Specifications Model Specifications Internal / External External Performance Specifications Transfer Rate 480 Mbits/s (Max) Physical Specifications Formatted Capacity 250 GB Interfaces/Controllers USB USB 2.0 Dimensions Width 79.5 mm Height 15 mm Depth 126.15 mm Weight 0.1048 kg System Requirements OS Windows 2000/XP/Vista Mac OS X 10.4.8+