The WD Passport uses a 2.5" hard drive which are mainly used for laptops. They are a bit slower than traditional hard drives at only 5400 RPM, but they are way smaller than your traditional 3.5" external hard drives. These 2.5" external hard drives are also only powered by the USB of your computer. It does not need it's own power supply, making the Passport very easy to take along with your laptop, or over to a friend's house to transfer or store data.

Western Digital has now released 3 different models for their Passport line. The Studio for Apple, the Elite for added security and features, and the basic Essential. My review is on the previous model.

The Western Digital Passport comes in the following storage capacities: 120 GB, 160 GB, and 250 GB. It also comes in a silver or a glossy black. The newer generation passports come in also a 320 GB capacity and in many more colors: (Midnight Black, Real Red, Intense Blue, Vibrant Pink, Brilliant Orange, Super Sunny Yellow, Raindrop Blue, Arctic White, Viola, Cherry Red, and Ultra Mint).

The external hard drive uses a USB2.0 cable for transfer of data, and also power. Sadly, USB 2.0 is not very good for tranferring large amounts of data at a time. It says it can write at 480Mb/s, but does so in bursts. Firewire is a lot better at 400 Mb/s constant, or even 800 Mb/s. But of course, most Windows computer's only have USB2.0 ports. Be also on the look out for eSATA which is even better.

The Passport is very small and light weight as it's only 3.1" x 4.7" x 0.6" and weighs only 0.40 pounds. The hard drive also comes with a little neoprene pouch for you to store your harddrive and USB cable.

Why would you want this hard drive? It's fairly cheap, starting at about $100, and you have a sufficent amount of portable data storage that you can bring with you almost anywhere. Honestly, I would use a larger 3.5" external hard drive for use on my desktop or at home, where it would most likely stay. But, if you want something portable and lightweight that you can bring on your business trips, you should definately look into a smaller 2.5" external hard drive. It doesn't require a power supply, which is a great asset.

One of the features that the Western Digital Passport comes with is a synchronizing feature. So you can sync specific folders on your computer to the external hard drive.

The Passport works on both Windows and Macs.

I've personally got the chance to use two of these. A 60 GB silver Western Digital Passport from 2 years ago, and also a 120 GB black Western Digital Passport from last year. I must say I was very happy with them. They connected to my Macbook instantly, and appeared on my desktop. No problems what so ever. It also worked just as fine when connecting a Windows computer Neither of them, have lost any data or crashed either. It really is a very lightweight way to have extra storage.

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