Rating: - Works great with MacBook
I bought this to use as a temporary place to store my wife's data when her hard drive went bad and for her to use to backup her files. I was too late to save her data but the drive works great on my MacBook-no power problems that other Mac owners have mentioned (maybe the new Macs have more power through their USB ports). I had to reformat the drive with the disk utilities that comes with every new Mac and trash all the software that comes with the drive but I couldn't use that windows stuff anyway. We'll see if it works with her Mac when it comes back from the repair shop (its an older model). So far, it a great little drive.
Rating: - I am pretty happy with the drive
good:
- small
- quite
- fast (at least for my use)
- user-friendly installation
- price
- design
potential improvements:
- could come with little pouch or case to avoid scratches of surface when carrying it in a bag
- back-up program doesn't start automatically
- encryption only available within back-up program, not for data stored normally
- back-up program only allows for mirroring of existing content, doesn't store different versions of backed up data
Rating: - Great option!
I bought this product 5 months ago and I must say it was a great choice. I didn't particularly care about the looks of the hard drive when I bought it, but I now find it's really great to have an elegant and modern looking hard drive on my desk. The drive is fast and very easy to use. It has never given me any problems while trying to disconnect it (some hard drives I've used in the past have the problem of giving an error message when trying to close them via the windows "safely remove hardware" assistant). Also, the blue indicator light is not only stylish, but very useful for seeing if the disk is working or stopped. Another great thing is that the drive is noiseless! Even when working at full speed (while transfering files or importing CD's...or when left downloading large files all night) the drive is silent. Considering the competition, I have two criticisms for this drive: its terrible software and the lack of a quick synchronization button. The backup software is hard to use, confusing, and not powerful at all. It takes ages to encrypt your files and then it is impossible to navigate through them (for example, it doesn't show thumbnails for photo files, so you have to open them one by one to find them!). Maxtor's One-Touch drives are much better at backup because the software is much more comprehensible and the button allows for instant synch. If you don't mind synchronizing manually, or if you don't want to use this drive to make a mirror copy of your computer's internal drive, then it is a great choice!
Rating: - Great back drive, with a couple of things to watch for
I bought this product because backing up and synchronizing my data between multiple machines was getting too difficult. This drive solves my problem better than I had hoped. It's fast, small, and has plenty of storage. It also does not require a power source. I especially like the ability to create multiple profiles, so I can back up portions of a specific drive as well as multiple drives separately. I can also launch files from the drive if I need to.
A couple of complaints, though. If you do not check "all files," anything that is not a run of the mill format won't get backed up. The check list of what gets excluded is not precise when you check your selections. Careful! You could lose some significant data without knowing it! Test your results carefully.
The documentation is practically non-existent. If it has been decent, I'd have avoided the confusion with the previous issue. I discovered the multiple profile option almost by accident.
There's an annoying dialog that asks me to update everytime I launch the synch. program. It neither updates nor let's me prevent the dialog at launch.
I wish I could create a profile that would synch between two or more machines. This is not possible even if I maintain the same directory structure on both machines. This forces me to perform some work-arounds that are a bit of a pain.
If I had actually lost my data, I'd have returned it and rated this <0 stars. However, since I am careful and a bit lucky, that didn't happen. Now that I've figured out all the work-arounds, I'm very happy.
Western Digital 160GB 2.5-inch Passport USB Portable Hard Drive Reviews
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