We want to get a portable hard drive to take with us to back up clients data. What brands /models do you recommend? We were thinking of WD My Passport Essential buy I see many negative reviews on this one. We use a WD MY Book but it larger and we would like a smaller one to carry with us on our service calls. Suggestions?

Only ever had one hard drive die through no fault of my own within a few months (had plenty break where it was my fault) and it was a very expensive western digital wouldnt touch them from now on, not really got any suggestions but theres loads on ebay very reasonably priced.

You can't go wrong with one of those portable HDs from newegg

<take a gander at these>

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=portable+external+hard+drive

If you want something smaller go with a memory stick or a flash drive. They range from 1-64 GBs

Are you just backing up data, documents, etc? yeah go with a flashdrive then. They have all types. They even have the ones on keychains...take a look>>>

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=379

Any brand would be okay in my opinion, except walmart brands. Get your stuff at <http://www.newegg.com/>, <http://www.tigerdirect.com/>, <http://www.thenerds.net/> I also have a WD(bad reviews I know, but my WD "My Book" has worked for several months w/o a problem. Those little flash drives are pretty sweet though for running back & forth with data, doc's, music, pix, and whatever else you had in mind. Good Luck!

Think walmart own asda in uk, here they sell maxell 8gb usb memory sticks for about £12, if they get any cheaper im going to stop sending the local toe-rags in to shoplift, and just go and buy them instead.