I purchased my Passport at Costco. It was several months before I opened the package and plugged it in. It worked fine, however, the next time I plugged it in there was no power to the unit and my computer didn’t recognize it. I kept playing with the power cord where it plugged into the computer and finally the light came on and it was working again. I examined the power cord and it does not look good where it plugs into the computer, it is at an angle as if it hasn’t been installed correctly. I took it back today to Costco without a receipt. They pulled up my purchase and wouldn’t let me do an even exchange. They refunded my money and when I went to get another one, it was 20 dollars more so I didn’t purchase it. I checked at BestBuy and it was even more. I came home and got on the computer and read all of the postings. I’ll bet that most of the problems that people are reporting here are due to a defective power cable. Even so, I am going to look at reviews on other brands and see what to buy.
I had mine almost over a year. works great. got mine from best buy brand new. I have 995GB used up. I plug it into my PS3/X-Box 360/Laptop/Desktop works great. I bought another one 1 month later becuase i loved it. Still both works great. easy to use.beautiful design.easy to move. i plug it into almost anything that i can use it on. never messed up on me not once. I dropped mine.my son plays with it. I dont let him play with it, he Rips it out of my PS3 when im not looking. It still works. Both of mine works so great. sorry if people got broken ones. i got mine brand new and still works like its brand new.
After putting all of my data onto one of the drives I discovered that when I hooked up a second drive it was not recognized in Windows 7 64bit. Only one drive would be recognized at a time, defeating my desire to use one external drive and have another as a backup to it (these are for a laptop PC). I also discovered that the cable connections are indeed loose as others have commented on, which made data connection inconsistent if the portable drive was bumped in any way, which defeats the portability factor somewhat. I wish I had paid closer attention to those reviews here.
I have used Western digital 250gb and 500gb passport drives with no problem. I do not know if the connectivity issue of two drives on a powered USB hub is a Windows 7 limitation or a USB 3.0 issue or combination of the two. I was not running these drives from my laptop USB port but rather a powered USB hub. Both drives light up ok, but Windows 7 only reconized one at a time (except when the loose cable issue came up).
I was hoping these drives would work for me but they did not. Maybe a single drive by itself would be fine for other users, but to have two or more to backup one of the drives to another of the drives did not work for me.
This harrdive is working fine. Doing exactly what it needs to do. Store information and allow for playback. I recommend, before you start uploading stuff to it, to get it reformatted to play all types of media from different sources. Other than that, the price is $60 cheaper than they wanted to sell it at the store. It was also $25 cheaper than I the 750GB Western Digital that I bought from that same store 3 weeks prior to this one. I payed less money and got free shipping. Win, win situation for me.
