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Excellent Product
Great transfer rate! Perfect for storage or even use as external hard disk with the performance of internal disk. Great buy

Buy it... flawless silent and tiny, elegant solution!
This thing fired up and *bang* loaded ALL 300 gig off my friend's external hard drive... took a couple of hours... now I have dozens of movies and tens of thousands of songs... for a song... greatest purchase in 08, thats saying a lot...

Western Digital Passport 320 GB - Nice Looking Portable External HD
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!

Portable, convenient, and silent
After thorough research, this is the portable external hard drive that I decided on. I'm confident that I made the right decision. The Passport is small enough to fit into my pocket (men's pants pockets, of course, tend to be larger than women's), yet large enough to hold my Time Machine backups, movies, and Seinfeld episodes. I love the simplicity of having only one cable and no buttons or switches. The drive I was using before was a 500gb Iomega, the one that Apple started selling cheaply after Leopard came out. I got what I payed for: excessive heat and noise. I have to hold my ear up to the Passport to hear its tiny whir. It does get warm if left on for long enough, but nothing like my other drive. My only complaint is that the case feels a little bit flimsy around the sides.

Only four stars from a techie
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 ;-)