The 'WD Passport' series of portable hard-drives are a solid option for anyone. They look good, they are small and robust, and have good capacities that read and write at an acceptable speed. Connecting via USB they should pose no problem for people running a modern machine, and are overall just extremely useful for transfering large amounts of files between two computers, or otherwise backing up data or maybe a music collection.
The Passport looks great. It is a smooth shiny black slab, with opposite edges curved in opposite directions, making it seem very slick indeed. The top face has an embossed WD logo which is unintrusive, and is otherwise featureless. The underside is matte black and has 4 small rubber stands so that the hard-drive won't slip around the surface it is placed on. The rear edge houses the USB connections which can be covered up by a removable plastic cap when out of use, ensuring they stay clean and aesthetically pleasing. The side edge features a small ring-shaped light that glows blue when the hard-drive is connected to your PC. Overall the Passport is just small enough to fit into one hand and has a comfortable weight.
Some users will have problems connecting the drive to older PCs such as those running Windows 98, which will not be able to easily handle the installing of drivers. However WD does seem to provide some support for this from its website. For people running Windows XP or Vista however, the drive is a complete breeze to use. Simply plugging it in will cause it to install on the first time, and it will be ready for use within a minute. After this anytime you plug it in a removable hard-drive will be added to your My Computer view which can be opened for file-access in the normal way.
Unfortunately the Passport doesn't seem to support any advanced syncing features. It doesn't appear that you can create a sync partnership to backup files automatically - you will have to copy and paste them across to the drive by hand. Likewise it doesn't appear to support Windows Media Player music library synchronisation. Both of these are not too much of a problem, because WD offers a fully-featured synchronisation application for free download from its website, which is perfectly capable of doing all of these common tasks. But it's a shame that the Passport doesn't work immediately with the in-built Windows sync applications.
Overall the WD Passport is a worthwhile buy: it is highly versatile and nothing beats it for carting large files about. Syncing capabilities could be improved but if you can deal with WD's own sync application then there are no flaws at all.
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Jan 25th, 2008
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