Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive (Midnight Black) | 
| Brand: Western Digital
List Price: $199.99
Buy New: $123.99
You Save: $76.00 (38%)
New (29) from $123.99
Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 8
Media: Personal Computers
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
System Memory: 2
Hard Drive Size: 320
Clothing Size: 320 GB
Size: 320 GB
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5 x 3.1 x 0.6
nv:Capacity (GB): 320
Interface: USB 2.0
Spindle Speed (RPM): 5400
Average Seek (msec): <12
Track-to-Track Seek Time (typical read, ms): 2.0
Access Time: 5.0 ms
Data Transfer Rate on USB 2.0: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Warranty: 3 years warranty
MPN: WDME3200TN
Model: WDME3200TN
UPC: 718037729374
EAN: 0718037729374
ASIN: B0012GQZZU
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Box Contents - My Passport Essential 320GB Portable USB Hard Drive, USB 2.0 cable, Quick Install guide | | • | 320GB Hard Drive Capacity | | • | 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 | | • | Powered by the USB bus. No separate power supply is needed | | • | This ultra-portable drive fits easily in your pocket or purse, weighs only a few ounces, and holds tons of valuable data |
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Product Description
Pack up your office files and take them home. Carry thousands of songs or pictures. Synchronize files between home and office and encrypt everything on the drive for added security with the Western Digital WDME3200TN.re simple to use, light and easy to carry, and require no power adapter - they are powered directly through the USB cable.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 Western Digital Passport 320 GB - Nice Looking Portable External HD May 8, 2008
Mark (NY, NJ, CT USA)
68 out of 69 found this review helpful
The Western Digital 320GB Passport Essential WDME3200TN is the largest capacity in the portable essentials line-up. They say that this is the update to the regular Western Digital 320 GB Passport 2.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive and I own both of them. In fact I also own several other portable hard drives in the Western Digital passport lineup and so far I couldn't be happier. All of these are great for mobile backups of data, though slower to copy large backups than their A/C powered MyBook big-brothers.
Pros
+ Largest current capacity available in this line of products
+ Nice portable form factor that easily connects via USB
+ USB powered, no A/C required, which is great for portability
+ Works well on Windows Vista, XP and Mac OS X
+ Easy to set up disk encryption for security and privacy
+ Nice looks, in my opinion better looking than the new essentials version
+ Turns on and off with your computer or easily ejected via system tray
+ Easy plug-and-play installation
+ Integrates nicely with my growing stable of WD MyBook drives
+ Included software may be useful for some novices
+ 320 GB capacity is just about right for most users
Cons
- Somewhat slow file transfer speeds for larger backups
- Included software not useful for power users
- Shiny body attracts scratch, fingerprints and dust
- Have to spend your cash to get a case that should have been included
The Looks
The drive has a nice shiny exterior. The case can scratch in transit and the surface also attracts fingerprints and dust. But the look is still nice and you can easily purchase a case or holder for the drive if it bothers you. Most versions don't ship with the included case, but you can pick it up for $10 or $15. CaseLogic Small External Hard Drive Case (Black)
The Features
I had no problem connecting this drive to any computer, including Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X. Keep in mind this is a USB 2.0 device so ancient computers may not yield the same results.
Transfer speeds are ok but definitely slower than the A/C powered MyBooks. This guy is still limited by the 480 Mps connection speed of USB 2.0, but performs somewhat slower than this when performing large backups. The USB2.0 speed rating can not really be achieved in production and you will get a fraction of that. But it's a trade-off that's worth it since it's USB-powered.
The software utilities included with this device will be most useful for beginners. I tested the backup software in particular but found it to be slow and impractical. I mean REALLY slow. It works, but cutting and pasting is better. Take my advice: don't use these utilities and just do cut and paste backups and saves to this drive.
Reliability
I've had good luck with the passport line of drives. They seem to have lower failure rates than many MyBook drives, though I also own those and haven't had issues there either. Maybe my gentle care has helped me to get lucky with these guys so far. Maybe it's because these drives are generally off when in transit. Regardless, these guys have held up fine.
Conclusion
This drive is great or those who want a portable drive for backups on the run. It's nice getting the 320GB capacity in one drive. There are smaller drives but other than capacity there is no real difference between them. Watch the price changes and choose the sized drive that's right for you.
Enjoy!
Only four stars from a techie April 30, 2008
Tom Carpenter (Marysville, OH)
26 out of 35 found this review helpful
Here's the problem from a techie's perspective: the drive loads software automatically. This is not what most techies (understood as Information Technology geek) want. We like to plug in the drive and then use our tools to work with it. However, the fix is simple - you just have to delete the files off the drive when you first connect it.
This is probably not an issued for the average user and the drive is fast, quiet, and small. Perfect for connecting to my laptop at the front of a training or seminar room when I'm teaching a class. The portability is great since I travel a lot. Great device once the software is removed ;-)
 Awesome portable hard drive April 7, 2008
PS3MyLuv (NY - USA)
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is my second WD Passport drive as the first (160GB) has been very reliable. I bought the 320GB to back up and share files between my home and office PCs. The speed is a bit lacking, but this is a portable drive and it doesn't require external AC, so I can forgive its slowness. Its convenience factor is just great, and 320GB (~=298GB as reported by Windows) is lots of storage for on-the-go needs. I recommend this highly as a portable storage solution -- and the drive is quite stylish.
 Disappointing data transfer rate, although improved from the older generation Passport HDD June 18, 2008
Ryuji Suzuki (Cambridge, MA USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
This product is indeed excellent for its intended purpose, other than the data transfer rate. I realized that this review is listed as most helpful *critical* review. Although I urge the manufacturer to improve the data transfer rate to match that achieved by some competitors, I don't mean to discourage potential buyers.
One improvement made compared to an older version of Passport is that this drive spins down during inactivity. The previous ones (mine is 120GB in silver color case) didn't spin down, even when the host computer was in the sleep mode. Another improvement is the power requirement. This product worked fine with a MacBook on a single USB port, even when the Macbook is operated on the battery, not the AC power.
For Mac users, like any external hard drive, I recommend to format this drive in MacOS Extended filesystem with journaling option. You can do this with Disk Utility of MacOS X, found in /Applications/Utilities.
Between the old 120GB model (silver) and this 320GB model (Passport Essential series), I also noticed that this model is slightly smaller and thinner. Sure, it is easier to slide into a briefcase, but I will have to see how well it takes the normal shocks from daily transportation.
Now, the data transfer rate issue.
This drive ships formatted in FAT32. In that format, I get a benchmark of 16.8MB/s transfer rate when I write a single 2.0GB file into this drive. I formatted this disk in MacOS Extended (Journaled), which is a lot more modern file system, and run the identical benchmark. The result is 18.0MB/s. Both of the tests were performed when the drive is empty (hard drive slows down when the filesystem is nearing full capacity). My computer is an 8-core Mac Pro, and the speed of the host computer is not the limiting factor. This is a hugely disappointing result, indicating that they used a cheap chipset to interface the drive to the USB 2.0 port.
In comparison, my Western Digital SATA 2.5" 320GB laptop hard drive (which is in this product) achieves 35-50MB/s with the same benchmark when installed directly in a MacBook. Also, this same hard drive in a different USB interface case delivered 22-27MB/s in the same benchmark.
I would give this product 4.5 stars if the product delivered 35MB/s.
Also as a comparison, Passport 120GB drive delivered only 8MB/s while an average laptop HDD of that size delivered 25MB/s.
I routinely copy a lot of data in and out of my portable hard drives every day, and any slight improvement in the data transfer rate can save minutes every time I use it, and to me, this difference is worth paying extra few dollars to use a faster interface chip. I truly wish that the manufacturers print the actual data transfer rate rather than the 480Mbit/s nonsense for USB 2.0 interface, which no one expects to see.
A good looking, slow transferring, extremelly portable hard drive March 12, 2008
Dan Gold (Philadelphia, PA USA)
10 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is my third external portable hard drive. This is a very light and good looking drive. I really love its look. Once it was plugged in my laptop pc, it was recognized right away. It works constantly well with one of my three usb ports of my T60 laptop. But for the other two ports, it lost the connection very frequently. I guess this is a power issue. I bet this drive will be super fast if it uses a line using two usb ports as my the other one. This is why I rate it as 4 instead of 5 stars. The transferring speed of this drive is way slower than my Seagate free agent desk external hard drive, as well as my old hard drive with Macally PHR-250CC FireWire enclosure (it requires two usb ports or one 6pin firewire port). It took more than half hours to move 30G media file from Seagate external drive to this one while it took less than 10 minutes easily for my other two drives to move these big files. But it is acceptable as long as you don't want to copy big files from one to this one urgently. I also run a Warcraft computer game from this drive. It works smoothly.
It should be noted that the blue light indicator on the back of the old version passort disappears on this new version. Instead, A usb white light indicator is placed right besides the usb connection port.
Overall, I think this is good drive with large enough capacity. I wish some day usb port can provide more power though.
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