Western Digital 320GB and 250GB Passport Elite External HDD Review

Impressive features of Western Digital’s Passport Elite are the large capacity options (320GB and 250GB), compact form factor (0.6 x 5 x 3.1 inches HxWxD*), included synchronization and automatic backup software and the long, market leading 5 year warranty. The Passport Elite models come with a brushed aluminum look in titanium, bronze, Westminster blue and cherry red. *(15 x 126 x 79 mm)

Western Digital Passport Elite External Hard Drive

The Western Digital Passport Elite a well suited solution if you need to take important files with you to work or on travels while keeping them in sync or share large files online. With USB 2.0 you can quickly transfer files at 480Mbits/s (max). The units are ready to use out of the box with software loading from the drive as soon as you plug them in for the first time.

Software for Western Digital Passport Elite Portable External Hard Disk Drive

Software provided is for Windows only however, the drive will work with Macs as it is formatted to FAT32.

Drive Manager software installed to see the capacity lights as well as the activity and power/sleep lights. Various combinations of four white LED lights show power/sleep (1 light), drive capacity and drive activity (4 light sweeping).

WD Sync (includes 128-bit encryption security) lets you synchronize a PC Document folder and Outlook files with those on another PC.

Elite models come with a free “life of the drive” subscription to MioNet , an online remote access package. MioNet allows remote access from your home PC’s drive once MioNet’s Key utility software utility is installed on your home PC. So, there is no need to upload to be able to share. MioNet made it into PC World’s 100 Best Products List of 2006.

Automatic backup is provided by WD Anywhere Backup (through a partner program with Memo – see Memeo AutoBackup . Your data is automatically backed up every time you plug your My Passport Elite into your PC - an important feature as it excludes the sometimes fallible human memory from the equation.