Is this USB drive travel-friendly? Does the cover protect the drive? I need drive that can be left in bag and plugged/unplugged from computers often
86203
Yeah it's good for everything you listed. Travel friendly well it's kind of good for that but be aware. It's kind of easy to lose it and for computers it's great so I recommend this!
86204
I put this USB drive thru a lot of abuses. I use it mainly for game and profile saves for my son's 2 Xbox 360. It is plugged and unplugged often. we haven't had a problem yet
86205
As long as there isn't a lot of lint/crumbs in the bag... the connector retracts into the plastic bit.
86206
I leave mine in a bookbag and transport it every day, as well as plug into separate computers multiple times, and after a month or so, no issues so far.
86207
Here's what I do for the drives that have no covers anymore ... I use a nice small empty pill or vitamin bottle with a screw on lid ... the bottle is smallish and can hold 1 to 4 drives (depending on the flash drive size and thickness) and the drives are "sealed" from dust and moisture (humidity). The plastic bottle collects dust that you can wipe or rinse off. This works at home or for travel ... my bottle is a dark green so it stands out. At home all my other drives are stored in an nice looking rectangular Country Crock butter container ... I hate dust getting into those drives.
86208
SORRY I as long there isn't any lint /or dirt and what kind of cover you will use it i let my plug in the computer all the time but there is no cover
86209
Yes, is the short answer. I travel to and within the Middle East, I use the drive often to avoid placing data on my PC's hard drive, it is subjected to harsh environments, and it is both User/Travel-friendly and durable. I prefer SanDisk's Titanium series drives but they are expensive and no longer manufactured. For the money, the SanDisk Cruzer is hard to beat.
86210
It is sturdy enough. But you will not be able to attach it to your key chain unless you get on of those, "Stromboli things."
1690709
Alex, you asked "Is this drive fully portable, or does it need a power cord?" This external drive is fully portable and needs no external power source. You have one USB to USB connection to your PC or laptop, etcetera, which when connected is assigned a driver by Windows and power is supplied by that one connection in addition to communicating with your PC as an external drive.
1339936
I am looking for an external hard drive to back up my entire lap top hard drive, in case of failure. Is the Passport Essential the unit I am looking for?
2222796
I've only had this HD drive for a short while so my comments are limited by that experience. I have not felt any heat build up while transferring large files for long periods of time. I can't specifically address the issue of keeping this HD plugged in all the time, but like any HD, it's only active when called upon. I think it's a great cost value when balancing the 500GB capacity and the ease of use with my MacBook Pro.
962536
I've used this drive for back-ups for all of my files (about 350-40 GB), and I haven't noticed any heat issues. You should be ok.
1207442
Hi Tran, I have been bringing this HD to & for office and while traveling I leave it in my bag, I am rather rough with placing down and carrying my bag and as of to date, there are no issue with the function of the HD. My kids did ever took out the HD and dropped it twice on the floor from their baby high chair, well I must said the HD is still surviving. It is definitely a well worth purchase HD. Trust me, you will not regret. I have previously had Iomega HD but the connection joint between the hard disk and cable got loosen and the whole HD just dies off. Can you imagine that! Anyway I would recommend you to get this.
2031088
Kind of. The USB cable coming out of the drive splits into two USB plugs. One for power and one for data. That means you don't need to have it plugged into the wall, but you will need two USB ports available.
1756981
Like it's been said if your drive has a plug you should be fine, but the longer a USB cable is, the less amount of power there is that GETS to a device. Like the rep said I doubt this would charge / power ANYTHING, not even a tiny mp3 player. Let alone a usb hard drive like a WD passport.
1040920
Corinne, I use this portable hard for my laptop, uses a USB cable and the program Seagate provides works fine and is user friendly. I hope I helped>
809744
I have both the 256gb and the 1tb USB drives. So far I am quite impressed by the transfer speed and reliability of them. So much that I carry a great deal of information to include pictures and songs. So far neither one of them failed on me. You need to verify that the drive is a legitimate one by checking that on the USB port connector has the serial number engraved. I understand that there are some cheap ones on the market with a much lesser performance and capacity from what is described! I hope this may help!
305394
1. no protective cover. It's well constructed enough to be quite resilient, but there is the little problem of pocket lint front time to time.2. there is a loop in the clear plastic on the end where a lanyard can be attached. It's easier than most flash drives in that respect. It's also easier to get the lanyard out of the way compared to most flash drives.
103520
Yes, treat it as a standard removable usb drive, don't run the "backup" software.
1210305
I have not had any trouble at all with mine. However, I will admit that I only use it as a backup drive and it is only on about once a month for the length of time it takes to back up the drive it is linked to.
368781
Tested with a WD Passport USB 3.0 2TB 2.5" drive. It seems to power it, though it turned off after 6 or 8 seconds the first time. After powering off, it came back on, my device said it detected mass USB storage, but there are no new mount points created, probably because the drive is formatted in NTFS and not exFAT or whatever it needs to be.
973627
So far, for me, when the computer sleeps, it disconnects the drive. When it wakes, it mounts it again. Sometimes, it just disconnects and reconnects for me while I am working. :(
730632
The enclosure does not have any power management features, just an on-off power switch. If your operating system supports it, it can spin down the drive.
1085868
It all depends whether you need a drive that will last well with repeated use - from my experience, the SATA card which links the hard drive to the power/data transfer port that your USB lead plugs into is poor quality and too flimsy, meaning that it fails reasonably quickly if you're using it on a daily basis like myself. The unit looks great and the case is very robust, but functionality-wise, and as recommended earlier, I'd go for the Buffalo Mini Station Extreme which is proving far more reliable for regular use.