Western Digital My Book Passport Essential hard drive review

Full Review

Western Digital has aggressively been attacking the mobile external storage market in recent months, constantly adding more capacity while dropping the price. This makes the 320GB capacity of this latest My Book Passport even more compelling.

The design is simple but effective. The 2.5-inch notebook hard drive is encased in a two-tone plastic case that measures 125 x 80 x 15mm and looks like a Moleskine notepad. It’s compact and we really like how easy it in to just drop it in to a pocket of your bag.

To keep things simple, you’ll find a single Mini-USB connection and a small LED light that shows you it’s connected and running. Our review unit was blue but there is a range of 11 colours on offer, so you can choose one that matches your notebook if you wish, or you can opt for a plain silver one.

Being the Essential and not the Elite drive we weren’t expecting it to pack a speed punch but our standard 1GB test was handled in 64 seconds, which is impressive.

Where this drive excels is in the bundled software as WD has thought how you’re most likely to use such a drive as this, so created a synchronisation tool that allows you to effortlessly share files between your notebook and the drive.

Then there is 128-bit encryption, so you can safely lock down all your files and folders.

Verdict

The Western Digital My Book Passport Essential manages to mix business with pleasure, as it’s a great little device to carry around but when you need it to perform it more than delivers and for that, it gets our recommendation.

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