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Old 16th February 2009
Beastie Beastie is offline
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Default WD Passport Portable external drive

Hello,

I'd like to buy a WD Passport 2.5 inch Portable external harddrive but I saw many reviews with people having power problems. It seems it needs 650 mA to power up.

Some of you, like Carpetsmoker in this post, have used such a drive without any problem.

So here are my questions:

1. Are you using it on a desktop or laptop computer?

2. How many milliamps do each of your USB ports provide (500 mA?)

3. Do you plug the drive directly in the USB port or in an external self-powered hub?

4. Do you use a single USB port or two (with a Y cable) to power it?

Thanks for your replies.
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Last edited by Beastie; 16th February 2009 at 10:21 AM.
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Old 16th February 2009
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vermaden vermaden is offline
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@Beastie

Why not just get some new/used 2.5" hard drive and a custom SATA <--> USB2.0 enclosure, its about $5 for such enclosure, I use something like that myself and it works very good, buying WD Passport you are just paying extra cash just for the Brand, I do not own a WD Passport, so I will not help you with that
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Old 16th February 2009
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Quote:
Some of you, like Carpetsmoker in this post, have used such a drive without any problem.
Please note that I do not have a Passport drive, (we used to sell them though), I just tested one because maxrussell was having so much trouble with it.

In any case, you're right about the 650mA, this is why a password drive comes with two USB connectors.
Some mainboards/laptops may be able to provide 650mA on just one USB connector, but I would not count on it.

Quote:
Why not just get some new/used 2.5" hard drive and a custom SATA <--> USB2.0 enclosure, its about $5 for such enclosure, I use something like that myself and it works very good, buying WD Passport you are just paying extra cash just for the Brand
A 250GB 2.5″ disk is 69EUR.
A Iomega 250GB 2.5″ disk 79EUR, this is with casing.

We don't sell Passport drives anymore, but the price was about the same as the Iomega ...
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Old 16th February 2009
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vermaden vermaden is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post
A 250GB 2.5″ disk is 69EUR.
A Iomega 250GB 2.5″ disk 79EUR, this is with casing.

We don't sell Passport drives anymore, but the price was about the same as the Iomega ...
Quite nice, in Poland WD's are much more pricey then making your own "passport", also what about you laptop, did you got one?
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Old 16th February 2009
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No, I haven't looked at it, I'm still working on getting my money back actually.
I think I will buy a secondhand T61 or something, I'm not sure yet ... Kind of busy with work and moving at the moment ...
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Old 16th February 2009
Beastie Beastie is offline
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I was weighting the benefits and costs associated with both alternatives, and I had already thought about using an IDE/SATA to USB enclosure.

It's not that I'm in love with Western Digital or any other manufacturer, but I heard about bad enclosures causing bad heat dissipation, overheating and shortened HDD life.

Besides there are many limits to what you can buy here. Many products are not available and many cost way too much. A SATA-USB enclosure cost quite more than 5$. It's more like 20-25$.

Unfortunately, I found out a few hours ago that the Passport isn't available anymore.

Anyway, thanks for your time.
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Old 17th February 2009
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I have a Toshiba HDDR320E03X and have been very satisfied with it. It is 320 GB, 5400 rpm, 8MB cache. It only uses one USB 2.0 port for power and is extremely quiet. For some reason the actual power consumption does not show up, but it works with my 500 mA USB ports (fortunately my laptop also has two 1A USB ports). It may be more than you want to spend on a drive, but I thought I would recommend it anyways.
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Old 25th April 2009
maxrussell maxrussell is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post
Please note that I do not have a Passport drive, (we used to sell them though), I just tested one because maxrussell was having so much trouble with it.
I've taken the rather circuituous routeof creating a share on the USB drive in question when plugged into a Vista laptop, then mounting and copying files wirelessly over. Not ideal, but a backup via any route is a backup.

Interesting what you mention about power though. I have a single USB cable for my drive. I'm wondering if it doesn't draw enough from the USB at the front of my tower (FreeBSD box)...

Anyway, I'm going to get this backup done, upgrade to 7.1 and try and get k3b to 'see' growisofs, thus avoiding some of the need for the USB drive.
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