Customer Reviews
I made it function with help from a Belkin PCMCIA card 
2008-08-17
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I purchased two of these at once; one as a gift. Neither worked because they were made for USB ports that supply more power than my Gateway or my friend's Dell put forth. Western Digital, I discovered later, states that they don't work in "some" laptops.
WD sells some affordable accessories that are supposed to boost power in the unit, (for those laptops that need more USB power to make these work.) One of the suggested items they sell is a Y-connector so you can utilize the power from two USB ports at once. This would seem to be a nuisance unplugging my USB mouse, and I had problems with WD delivering the items anyway (after ordering them twice.) Also, WD informed me by email I couldn't obtain the power boosters anywhere else except from them.
Okay... that aside for now. Let's consider the purpose of these drives and whether that purpose matches what you want it to do.
I wanted a simple mass storage device, like a flash stick only bigger. That's not exactly what these were designed for. They are cleverly designed to mimick your own hard drive so when you travel you just unplug the drive and take it to any computer and that remote computer becomes, magically, your home computer. Your email, your documents, everything appears on the remote computer as if you had brought your home computer with you... even your wallpaper is duplicated.
This seems very clever indeed but not what I wanted. So I deleted the software I found on it as my first order of business-- that stopped it from automatically filling itself with the contents of my computer.
Then I used my my computer to reformat the whole drive in NTFS. Right click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management (and... um... do be sure to format the right drive-- not your C: drive.)
Now it was clean and ready to be used as a big removable storage device-- which was what I wanted.
I had to invest $54 to solve the power problem but did so without dealing with WD. I purchased a Belkin PCMCIA 2.0 2-port USB card, which created two additional USB slots on my computer that both worked even better than the original ones. This card pluged easily into my previously unused PCMCIA slot. It came with a power cord so there is no power deficit issue.
If you use this method, do please read the instructions and don't just plug in the card. It comes with a driver to install first from a disc.
The WD Passport works fine in there now and has for three days, and I can put my flash drive in the open USB slot next to it. I'm getting fast data transfers. The WD Passport does what I wanted it to do now.
Other reviews I've read elsewhere indicate that after a short time the drive ceased to work for a few people, so read more reviews. The Belkin card was a good purchase nevertheless, I can imagine many uses for a more powerful and faster USB port, and the card doubled the number of USB ports I have. If the WD Passport fails... well... it will have worked for awhile and that's better than I had expected after I first got it home.
Oh... and I purchased a Belkin card for my friend as well. As of today I don't see this particular Belkin item on Amazon or I'd paste a link to it. I bought mine at Staples.
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WD 160GB portable hard drive 
2008-07-29
Product was great slim size, portable and works well. It was
delivered in a timely manner.
Warning "You will lose all your Data" Corrupted everything 
2008-07-09
I transfered all my data and it lasted about two months before I noticed a performance issue (slow response). Then files started to become corrupted. Attempted to transfer to a know good drive, but already lost a large portion of my data.
WRONG VERSION: DO NOT BUY 2008-07-02
This product is an outdated model. It is MORE expensive than newer versions with double the capacity--available on Amazon. Why in God's name is this still for sale at this price? Why in God's name would anyone pay it?
Incidentally I own one and it's a good product.
Died after 6 months 2008-06-16
If you use any kind of external harddrive BACK UP DAILY! I cannot stress this enough. This is my third portable hard drive from 3 different companies. WD Passport 160 GB died after 6 months.
Great external hard drive 2008-05-20
This sleek compact drive connects to your PC's USB port for quick and easy data transfers. The drive draws power from the USB port; you won't even need the power adapter. WD Sync synchronization and encryption software lets you save your critical data, and take it with you. Plug your drive into any PC, edit files, read e-mail and view photos. Then sync all of your changes back to your home or office computer. Dimensions (LengthxWidthxHeight) - 5.110 x 3.14 x 0.590 Inches / Weight - 0.23 Pounds
Lasted less than 24 hours 
2008-05-19
I bought this drive. It installed ok, was recognized, and then within 24 hours became corrupted and useful as only a smallish paper weight. Western Digital's tech support was reasonably helpful, but the speed of its demise worries me, a lot.
Peace of mind 2008-05-17
This is a great backup system. Take it out of the package and connect to the computer. Works on my Mac and my PC. Both computers recognized the drive immediately. It does not get any better than this. So now I have peace of mind that I can back up my work and take it with me in a small format that fits in my jacket pocket.
It broke, I lost 140GB of data, and the company will not be help responsible for their product's inability to perform. 2008-05-17
DON'T BUY THIS. I have lost al my family photos, business photos, business invoices, family important documents ..... get the picture? They are selling an item which we TRUST ... we use it to PROTECT important things. But the company WILL give you a replacement! HA! FOR WHAT? To lose it again? Oh, and if you like, you can pay between $500 and $2000 to see if maybe someone can save ANY of your data.
Western Digital is in the wrong business.
Great Product 2008-05-14
I bought this hard drive with some uncertainty about whether or not it would have enough power to work with my macbooks usb ports. It turned out to work completely fine and has worked great with several other computers as well. I would recommend this to anyone seeking an extremely portable (about 2*3*.5 inches) and good looking hard drive. I personally use the drive to store my itunes library, but it could also be used as a back up drive, or an additional storage location for media.
