14 DAY TRIAL // Western Digital is one of the most important and well established hardware companies that are in the business of providing reliable and top of the line data storage solutions. While other similar companies like Seagate and LaCie are already well known and appreciated for their families of portable storage hard disk drives, for Western Digital this is still somewhat of a new market, as the company has just a few products aimed at mobile consumers.
As the mobile computer systems are becoming more and more popular and price-attractive for the average computer user, a brand-new market is emerging. This market is aimed at providing those mobile computer users with some serious storage capabilities because, unfortunately, most laptops and notebooks are equipped with hard disk drives optimized and manufactured for reliability and low power consumption and not high performance and huge data-storing capacities.
The new line of portable storage hard disk drives from Western Digital, My Passport Elite Portable USB, is more like a refinement and continuation of the previous series of mobile data storing systems, than a brand-new concept and product. Even so, these new Western Digital products are coming with an all new external finish that makes them easy to handle while giving them a luxurious appearance. Like all portable data storing devices, the new My Passport Elite drives are light, small and durable, while packing as much as 320GB of data. Weighing as little as 150grams, they are also very easy to carry around, easily fitting inside a pocket or a notebook bag. Another distinct advantage of these data storage devices is that they are using only a single cord for both data transfer and power, that translates into a very small energy footprint and also eliminates the need of an external power source.
"Your digital content is as personal today as photos in shoeboxes and racks of CDs were yesterday," said Jim Welsh, vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. "The device that securely holds your content should be just as personal. Having listened to our customers, we are expanding the options available on our WD Passport family of personal storage devices with more features, content management functions and fashionable design."
The new My Passport Elite Portable USB hard disk drives from Western Digital come with a few goodies that make them even more valuable, while also enabling users to experience a more pleasant computing session. As a capacity gauge is fitted on their external casing, My Passport Elite Portable USB drives do not even need to be connected to a computer in order to know how much space there is available. Like all high-end hardware products, these too come backed up by a software solution, in this case automatic backup software that is able to perform automatic and continuous backup for files and folders marked by users.
As data security becomes more and more a concern for users, Western Digital also equipped this new line of portable devices with software capable of 128-bit encryption while also keeping files and folders in sync with a host computer system.
While the whole computer manufacturing industry is now aimed at providing the end user with the best possible experience, Western Digital also picked up this trend and now the company presents the My Passport Elite USB hard disk drives painted in nice living colors like bronze, titanium, westminster blue and cherry red. Another nice feature of this line of portable hard disk drives is that they are truly and fully Plug and Play capable, as they are intended to be used not only with x86 compatible systems, but also with game consoles, making them the best tool for storing multimedia content without the need of a PC compatible system and thus allowing users to enjoy their multimedia files on a simple TV.