Review of Western Digital's Passport External Hard Drives

If you're looking to buy an external hard drive for data backup or to move files from computer to computer, you might want to take a look at Western Digital's Passport series, a fleet of physically small drives that provide a great solution for home and business users.

I was able to take a Western Digital Passport out for a spin (pun intended), and I found it to be a reliable and sleek product. My review is below.

Size Options

The Western Digital Passport comes in several different sizes from 60GB to 120GB, all a cool sleek black, powered directly from your computer, meaning that there's no need for additional power cables. This makes moving the drive from computer to computer simple and uncomplicated, but users should be careful to make sure their USB ports are set up correctly, as an improperly powered port could cause problems with the Western Digital Passport.

The drives are fast and seemed to read and write information without any error. Some users might wish for a bit more size, but that's nitpicking; pretty much any drive that's powered from a USB port isn't going to be massive, and Western Digital does offer larger externals for users that don't mind a power plug.

WDSync Software

Overall, the included WDSync software was decent, though the interface wasn't exactly perfect; it looks a bit dated, but gets the job done. I backed up my entire computer, leaving out files that weren't important to me like mp3s and programs, and moved them to a new computer with Windows Vista freshly installed. It took a while to copy everything back off of the drive, but once everything was finished all of my files were in the right place. The WD drive even loaded my Microsoft Outlook emails for me, saving me a lot of time.

With 128 bit encryption, don't plan on losing your password; as it will be almost impossible to recover and Western Digital doesn't provide any sort of security question feature. Plus, the password isn't saved in a separate file as it is in many other data backup programs. However, if you've got a concern about your data's security, these are great features; my advice would be to pick a password you use fairly regularly.