Western Digital just announced a storage capacity increase in its line of external storage devices, the Passport range of products that now comes with a maximum of 250GB, a serious boost from the previous 160GB capability. While there are hardware producing companies out there that are taking the design and finish of the external storage devices to a whole new level, Western Digital decided to go for a little more conservative line of products, while splashing lots of colors on its entire product offerings.

The new portable external storage devices from Western Digital's Passport lineup come with data storage capacities of 160 or 250GB and they are offering a mix of portability, ease of installation and use as well as a rugged casing that protects the internal hard disk drive from shocks. As the entire drive family is plug and play compliant, users need no software drivers to make it work; just by plugging the connecting cable into a USB port from the host computer system, the external storage device is ready to be used.

In order to easily connect to a great number of personal computer systems and at the same time be cross platform compatible, the latest drives from the Western Digital Passport lineup come equipped with a high speed USB 2.0 port that doubles as a powering solution, so the external storage device can be used even by laptop users on the move. As the entire drive is very light, it is also extremely portable and thanks to its smart casing it can withstand many shocks as well as a wide range of operating temperatures.

Western Digital also includes a number of useful software applications with its latest Passport external storage devices, like the WD Sync that allows users to easily synchronize and encrypt information on the fly, while keeping private data secure by using a 128-bit encryption key. The new lineup of external storage devices is compatible with just about any operating system including Windows, Linux and Mac OS as well as being compatible with every computer platform that has at least a USB connector.

The USB 2.0 compatibility makes the Passport line of external hard disk drives able to reach data transferring speeds of 480Mb per second, while also being backward compatible with older interfaces like the USB 1.0 and USB 1.1.