I bought this to upgrade from a Western Digital 250 GB portable hard drive that I've had for a year and a half and had very little trouble with. I had that drive attached with Velcro to the top of my laptop, and it worked great (much safer than having it bang around in my travel bag separately). It eventually got touchy about the cable connection; sometimes disconnecting when the cable is bumped. (Manufacturers: please make a snap-in mini-USB connector instead of letting the contacts take the abuse.)
However, this new drive is not reliable. It sometimes can't be found by Windows XP, and I have to disconnect it and reconnect it for it to be recognized. It's also a bit noisier than the previous one, which together make me suspicious that it's a bad drive that will fail on me at any time. As a result, I constantly back up to the old drive, which I had intended to use as an archive (and do occasional backups of new files to an external drive; my important work is done on the laptop drive and backed up daily to the portable drive). But since the old drive is only half the size, that won't last.
I will probably buy another portable drive from a different manufacturer to try to get one that I feel I can trust. Then I'll just use this as a portable backup drive that I'll occasionally sync. Not completely worthless, but certainly disappointing.Get more detail about Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDME5000TN (Midnight Black).
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