Our current poll asks about how much portable storage people carry around nowadays. I didn’t realize I needed more than 4GB USB drive until my old laptop ran out of disk space from all the photos I’ve taken recently.
I still have the Western Digital MyBook 500GB that I got from Singapore last year, with about 200GB space left. It sits beside my desktop PC at home and serves as some sort of a network backup.
Now that I am shooting in raw (7 to 10MB per file), my laptop’s 80GB isn’t enough. I decided I needed a portable HDD to go along with me on out of town trips when I could not transfer files to the backup network drive.

The WD Passport Portable Hard Drive was my first choice and looks much like its older brother, the MyBook. The 160GB model (5400 rpm) I got cost Php5,800 while the lower capacity 120GB is only Php4,850. Running USB 2.0 the max transfer rate is 480Mbits/s or about 60MB/s. The USB port is inconspicuously hidden at one side with a rubber cap.
It’s a fairly lightweight device too at only 105g with dimensions of 15mm x 130mm x 80mm. Compare that to my iPod Touch which is 8mm x 110mm x 62mm and weighs 120g. So, even if the WD Passport is bigger in size than the iPod Touch, it’s still a bit on the lighter end.
The black and shiny casing is cool but that makes it prone to dust and smudges. There’s a Sync and Encryption software that comes with it so you can choose which file formats and directories you want synchronized with your laptop. It doesn’t do full backups though so you can’t do disaster-recovery of your OS. It doesn’t matter to me since all I wanted it for was to store extra digital photos for my camera.


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