Western Digital My Passport Elite 500GB

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Western Digital My Passport Elite 500GB

Jayesh Limaye, Feb 16, 2010 1725 hrs IST

My Passport in an even smaller form factor

Sleeker and streamlined design, capacity gauge, Windows as well as Mac software

Expensive, slower performance

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Portable hard drives were never as popular as they are now and the reason is that there are so many available and that too at considerably low prices. To compete with each other, manufacturers try to include something extra to make their portable hard drive better than the others. Western Digital is a well-known name in the hard drive business and the My Passport drive is one of the most popular portable drives currently available. WD has sent us the new My Passport Elite 500GB with a dock to take care of multiple PCs.

This is the smallest portable hard drive from WD and is considerably smaller than its predecessor. The finish is rich and the drive seems to be rugged. Armed with the SmartWare software, the drive is capable of taking secured backups with 256-bit AES encryption using a password.

We have reviewed this USB 2.0 hard drive, so read on to find out if it is any better than the ones already available.

The first thing that we noticed on opening the box is that drive comes securely packaged in the box with plastic damping material to protect it from shock damage. This reduces the chances of you getting a dead-on-arrival drive.

Bundle

WD My Passport Elite 500GB
Dock
USB 2.0 cable
Power Adapter
Quick Install Guide

WD has provided all the necessary cables required to be used with this drive. However, conspicuous by its absence, is the software disc. But, as we later learnt, it is available on the drive itself. While the drive can work well with any PC with a USB 2.0 port, there is always a chance that it may not work because of insufficient power. This problem has been addressed by providing a dock with Y-type USB cable where one end is split for two USB plugs - one for data and one for power. The Recovery CD is there to assist in recovering a crashed computer system.