My Western Digital Passport Drive failed after six months. I think it was the drive just getting knocked around. I've upgraded the macbook internals to a 320 gigger and opened up the passport drive enclosure and shoved the old 80 gigger in. Works a treat

Also got a WD Passport 320gb, works fine but I've put it in a spare PDA case I had lying around which protects it. Those FW ones posted in this thread look nice though.

ClockWork, the follow-up question is:

Does the same apply to FW400 / USB 2.0 enclosures re: quality chipset? Or only to Fw800 & e-SATA enclosures?

That's a hard one to answer, as the Enclosures designed by MacPower and Stardom are using A1 chip sets, yet China can mass produce extremely cheap and crappy FireWire Oxford Chip sets too - and because they're cheap, WD / Maxtor / LaCie will certainly buy into that.

WD Enclosures appear to be everyone's favourite, and yet, so many threads come back with: It failed after 6 months.

This, I've never understood... as the prices are around the same.

It kinda just looks like a case of peer group pressure round these parts... or impulse buying.

Sorry to hijack this thread but I have a quick question. Does anyone know where I can procure a dual-head USB2.0 cable??? (i.e. one for data/power and the other for power only)

The reason I ask is that I recently installed a 160Gb Seagate 2.5" IDE HDD into a Clearlight 400+ enclosure and cannot run the enclosure without the power brick on USB (works fine using Firewire on equipped PCs). Hopefully somebody can point me in the right direction...

I hate Western Digital drives, over my entire IT Career, I've seen so many Western Digital hard drives fail, and I'm only up to 1 Seagate failure.

Maxtor are very close behind Western Digital in failures.

I've got one of the Vantec caddies with USB and Firewire 400, and you just buy a laptop hard drive and whack it in there, comes with a nice little zip sleeve too. It's probably one of the most handiest things I've got.

I've also got a 32GB Corsair flash drive which I got for free, so I carry that around everywhere because it's nice and small, otherwise I use the Laptop drive. They are great because you don't need power either, unlike the bigger 3.5" caddies.

One can purchase a power cable that leads to a small power brick, that plugs straight into the wall, especially for the Clearlight or Daisycutter 2.5" Portable External Drives.

According to MacPower, some PCs simply do not see these 2.5" portables via USB 2.0, so that little power cable is an optional for an extra $30.00.
The problem is usually, but not always, down to how fast its 2.5" HDD spins.

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And to Finch, I have seen the opposite, yet concur with Maxtor Drives being problematic.

I suppose a lot of it all depends on whose eyes all this is viewed through.

I've see many failures in Maxtor and Samsung.

Western Digitals have proven themselves pretty gosh darn swell, for a mid-range price, yet the very best, such as Seagate Enterprise and Hitachi, are often just way too pricey.

Have seen no problems with Western Digital Green Power - and they're tops if they come with a 3 Year or a 5 Year Warranty.

Seagates would appear to be hard to beat though, with a 32MB Buffer - less wear and tear over time.