Since I'd complained here before about the difficulty in finding a portable USB drive for BIAB that I could power off just about any USB port with a single, one-port cable, I thought I'd mention that I've found one I like: WD's latest Passport Essential SE come in sizes up to 1TB; it seems fast enough, and will run off any single USB port on my laptop, when other drives including those from PG (that apparently draw more power) won't. No, I don't work for WD, and in fact I've had problems with other drives from WD (including the Passport series) in the past. But this seems like a nice little drive, and it’s also the lightest, smallest drive I've ever used -- only wish it was 1.5TB, to hold the Audiophile version, but nobody's got an ultra portable that size as far as I know.

On the mildly negative side: the 1TB Windows version comes in a glossy black finish that tends to show scratches and fingermarks; the comparable 1TB Mac version is grey and looks nicer in my opinion. Both the Win and Mac versions force you to deal with an extra icon on your desktop for a VCD partition that includes WD's Smartware software -- I hate that -- and reformatting the drive doesn't get rid of this feature, though you can download a firmware update that at least turns off the icon. And the drive also uses a USB cable with a micro B plug on one end, a less common connection, though its the same kind that's used on Blackberrys. But this can be a pain if you forget to pack the right cable. These quibbles aside, this drive has solved a lot of problems, and allows me to have both the Mac and Win versions of BIAB on the same device, while setting the PG-supplied drives aside for safe keeping. So far so good.