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| Western Digital My Book Passport 250GB Review |
| Page 2 - Appearance and Performance |
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The My Book passport from Western Digital isn’t anything revolutionary, but it
certainly is outstanding value wrapped up in an attractive and convenient package, as we’ve come to expect from Western Digital.
The My Book Passport we have in our possession today is the top of the range 250GB model, there are smaller sizes available, 120GB and 160GB, but what’s the point in looking at second best? The My Book Passport is an ultra portable version of Western Digital’s My Book range that utilises a 2.5” notebook drive to give it an ultra slim form factor and make it ultra light weight (weighs just 100grams) unlike other Western Digital My Books which all use desktop drives and are more for external storage rather than portability. The fact the My Book Passport uses a notebook drive also means that no power adapter is required, the 5Volts @ 0.5Amps that comes from a single USB port is enough to fully power the unit as well as handle data transfer.
Before we go any further there’s one point I want to talk about, and that is the value you get from this thing. It retails at around AU$260 and if you tried to put together a 250GB notebook drive and portable USB2.0 case yourself, you’d be paying around AU$275 for a 250GB notebook hard drive on its own, then you still have to add the price of the case on top. So this My Book really is outstanding value, and if you wanted a 250GB drive for your notebook, it’d be cheaper to buy one of these and rip the drive out of it than it would be to buy a drive on its own. The lower models - 120 and 160GB are priced right in line with their bare drive counterparts at AU$155 and AU$175 respectively.
Anyway, getting back on track - when you connect the drive to your PC or laptop, it is instantly installed with no need for any drivers, and it is already formatted with the FAT32 file system, so it is compatible with Windows as well as MAC OSX operating systems straight out of the box. There is no software CD included with the My Book, instead the bundled software is installed on the drive itself and will autorun when you first plug the drive in. The software bundle includes Western Digital Sync software, which allows you to configure a backup of some or all the data on your PC/Notebook, or arrange for certain folders to always be mirrored onto the Passport drive.
Any backups performed through this software are automatically encrypted using a software 128-Bit encryption and only accessible through that software package which you password protected in its first run, so your data is nice and secure. There are also some Google applications included (desktop search, photo software etc...) to help manage your files, these programs are available for anyone to download freely from Google, but I suppose it’s convenient to have them already there for you if you want them. All the software included is Windows only, so there’s nothing included for MAC users, however the drive will still function fine on a MAC as a basic external drive.
The casing of the drive has glossy polished black plastic on the top and two of the sides, with a subtle WD logo placed in the centre. The base and remaining two sides of the case are basic matt black plastic which seems a lot more scratch resistant than the top of the drive (our demo unit had aquired quite a few very fine scratch marks on the top part of the unit). At one end of the drive is a small rubber flap which hides the USB port, there are no other buttons or ports anywhere on the drive besides a small blue circle on the side which acts as a power LED and an activity LED (flashes a brighter blue for activity). So overall a very sleek looking unit that’s not overdone at all, and as it’s such a basic device it really doesn’t need to be.
Performance of the My Book Passport is about as good as can be expected from a USB2.0 device, with a SiSoft Sandra performance benchmark coming in at 30MB/s, which is exactly the same as my own portable hard drive (Seagate 80GB 2.5” Notebook drive in external USB2.0 case), which shows that how fast the drive is inside doesn’t matter at all, because they’ll always be faster than a USB2.0 connection is able to deliver anyway. In a more real world test, it took the My Book Passport around 1minute flat to transfer a 1.4GB movie, which isn’t too shabby.
Performance of the drive does suffer a bit when using the Western Digital Sync software due to the built-in data encryption, however as it’s a software encryption the more processing power your PC has, the smaller this reduction in performance is going to be.
There aren’t too many extras included with the My Book Passport, most likely in an effort to keep the price down, however you do get a nice WD branded semi-hard protective case to store the drive, and keep track of your USB cable, a standard Type-A to Mini-B cable that is nice and short, only about 55cm long, great for notebook computers.
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Conclusion:
The Western Digital My Book Passport 250GB is a great little unit, it performs as well as you could hope for from a USB2.0 device, is very easy to install and comes with a very simple but useful backup software package. That being said it’s not a whole lot different to every other small, portable, notebook hard drive based storage device out there, until you consider than this whole unit is cheaper than buying a 250GB notebook drive on its own, so it’s outstanding value. There’s nothing on the market that comes close to the Passport, the nearest competitor is LaCie, who’s ‘Porsche Mobile 250GB’ drive sells for around AU$40 more than the Western Digital, so for AU$260 the Passport is the best choice for your portable storage.
OzHardware Rating – 10/10 – Perfect!
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
