WD My Passport Essential Portable 320GB review

Page 3 - Tests

Now lets dispatch the subjective opinions first. The main advantage of this product is its size. The mere fact that it is based on 2.5” drive, makes it very suitable for being carried around. It is also very light. The capacity it has is quite substantial and does allow you to constantly move with you significant amounts of data. And it only gets better, by using standard mini USB connector and not depending on external power supply it gives you unparalleled freedom, since this type of cable is very common and you will rarely need to drag one along with the drive. And the cherry on top? It's truly Plug’n’Play and works wit all kinds of OS.

And following that train of thought let's talk about the data encryption software included in the bundle. It is of course quite useful at helping you protect vital information from being accessed by undesirable sources, but know this – to be able to read it the software must be installed on the computer from you try to access it. The other thing about it that it is for only MS Windows. So, though Linux and Mac OS software for the same purpose exists, the task of obtaining it is entirely up to you.

The WD My Passport Essential Portable design is simple and stylish, consisting of mostly black, polished surface, as you can see from the photos. The case is made from plastic and that rose the question about one rather important factor – cooling. Well, with our tests we managed to warm it up after copying 90 GB data, but that's exactly it - it was warm, not hot, so no reason to worry, apparently. Actually, considering the low speed it works on, there is just no way it will heat up too much.

And since we mentioned work speed, looks like its time to measure it. For comparison we used the following devices:

• WD My Passport Essential Portable;
• Revoltec Alu Book II + Western Digital Raptor 360ADFD, 10k rpm, SATA 1 (USB 2.0 + SATA;
• Revoltec Alu Book II + Maxtor 6V250F0, 7200 rpm, SATA 2;
• Vizo Luxon Advanced + Samsung HD642JJ, 7200 rpm, 16M, SATA 2 (USB 2.0 + SATA);
• Cyber Snipa Dog Tag flash drive, 4GB;
• PQI Intelligent Stick, 1GB;
• CBM Flash Disk, 2GB.

As you can see, the WD My Passport Essential Portable performance is rather pleasing and cannot be compared to mere flash drives in terms of transfer speed (heck! it even laughs in the face of its 3.5” brethren). The only advantage of flash drives seems to be their access time (apparently the Cyber Snipa ain't the best of them either). Also you can clearly see that My Passport's USB controller is better suited for USB than the competition's.