WD Passport Portable WDXMS2500 250 GB

This hard drive is very similar in look and feel to the other Passport versions that Western Digital has, in particular the Book with a glowing yellow circle that is very nice to look at and quite heavy to boot.

I needed an external harddrive as my desktops space was almost gone from storing far too many games as you can imagine! I had the dreaded 'low on disk space' warning on my computer for a good while before i found a hard drive ...
...handy little black box.

Design

Its presented in a big box, and I was very relieved (and also surprised) to see how small it actually is! At 8cm in width, by 1.5 in height and 13 cm in depth, the passport fails to take up much space on your desk or on top of your pc tower. Its a miniscule 105 gs which means i can hold it in one palm quite easily. The black enclosure case is attractive and i hardly notice the sounds ... more

This hard drive is very similar in look and feel to the other Passport versions that Western Digital has, in particular the Book with a glowing yellow circle that is very nice to look at and quite heavy to boot.

I needed an external harddrive as my desktops space was almost gone from storing far too many games as you can imagine! I had the dreaded 'low on disk space' warning on my computer for a good while before i found a hard drive that i liked that offered my requirements in a nice handy little black box.

Design

Its presented in a big box, and I was very relieved (and also surprised) to see how small it actually is! At 8cm in width, by 1.5 in height and 13 cm in depth, the passport fails to take up much space on your desk or on top of your pc tower. Its a miniscule 105 gs which means i can hold it in one palm quite easily. The black enclosure case is attractive and i hardly notice the sounds it makes when transferring files, thats how quiet this black box is!

Instructions

The instructions were straight forward to plug it in, and watch it go. I inserted the USB canle and within a minute of plugging it in I received the software had been recognised and it was well on its way to fulfilling its purpose.
Moments later the software was automatically installed, and it was ready for use. Its recommended for use on Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Apple MacOS X 10.1.5 or later, Microsoft Windows Vista. I moved all of my games and some music files to the hard disk, along with backups of university work, and photos (the 3 rules of computing are back up, back up, back up!).

Performance

It transfers at a rate of 480 Mbps which in practise turned out to be surprisingly fast. Access time was very quick, 12ms per second seek time, so within the hour i had backed up and transferred my files!. I have had no trouble streaming games and movies from my hard disk, with access to files within the disk is as instant as a normal hard disk drive.

It can be stored on it's side, or standing up right. They can also be stacked, if 250gb isn't enough for you! There is a circular light around the on/off button to indicate that the device is on, and also that disk access is being made. During powerdown of your computer, the hard disk will automatically turn off, so there is no need to turn it off yourself.
They can be easily knocked over, so if you're untidy like me, then clean up your work area or you'll continually keep turning the thing on.

I would thoroughly recommend this product due to its great reliability and very good value for money, though you could get a similar 250GB external hard drive from Western Digital at half the price.
Anyway, those are my two cents, go and buy this little black box. 

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