X-bit labs

Passport from Western Digital: Portable USB Hard Disk Drive Review

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 04/06/2005 | 04:38 PM ]

One more external portable solution supporting USB 2.0 interface has been reviewed in our labs. This time we are offering you a detailed performance analysis for the WD Passport hard drive with 5,400rpm spindle rotation speed and 40GB storage capacity.

Table of contents:

• Closer Look: WD Passport Portable USB Drive (WDXML400UE)
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance in Intel IOMeter: Sequential Read & Write Patterns
  
• Performance in WinBench 99
  
• Performance in FC-Test
  
• Conclusion
  

Not so long ago there appeared a new compact storage solution based on a hard disk drive. It came from a well-known HDD developer Western Digital. The solution was officially announced on November 9, 2004, but it got into our lab only in the beginning of this year, and we immediately tested it, of course.

Please welcome a new external USB portable hard disk drive from WD!

Closer Look: WD Passport Portable USB Drive (WDXML400UE)

Of course, the starting point for the external hard disk drive solution development was the release of the WD Scorpio HDD of the 2.5” form-factor (for more details see our article called Western Digital Scorpio 2.5” HDD: Better Late Than Never).

And we would like to start our story about WD Passport from its exterior appearance. It looks like there can hardly be anything new invented in terms of the exterior case design already, but Western Digital managed to suggest something pretty original nevertheless. By rounding the corners and sides of the silver HDD case and designing the bottom part of the case from dark-blue gummy plastic material, the developers managed to achieve several goals at a time. They created an elegant case with attractive color design, managed to make it sit highly stably on any working surfaces, and at the same time reduced the level of vibrations and noise generated during work. The hard drive is relatively small in size and will easily fit into your coat or jacket pocket, thus you will have it on you any time. But to be fair we should still point out that the case of WD Passport is anyway larger than that of a Transcend or ZIV drives.

There are a USB port and a power connector on one of the sides. The latter can be used on those rare occasions when the devices lacks power fed along the USB interface for stable operation.

There are three drive models in the Passport family: 40GB (our today’s hero), 60GB and 80GB. The technical characteristics of the drives are determined by the specifications of WD Scorpio HDDs used inside them (for more details see our article called Western Digital Scorpio 2.5” HDD: Better Late Than Never). The spindle rotation speed of the drive is 5,400rpm. The drive features a 2MB buffer and boasts 12ms average seek time and 5.5ms average sector latency is 5.5ms. Besides that the drive provides track-to-track seek time of 2s and supports USB 2.0 interface.

This is not a very big solution, as we have already said. Its size is 21.1x144.3x89.1mm. The solution also supports WD’s brand name data Life Guard technology, which is intended to ensure higher security of the data stored on this drive. Besides, it also supports special power-saving technology, which should extend the battery life of the notebook, if the drive is connected to it.

As for the package, the device goes with a USB cable and a brief installation manual.

The approximate retail price of the device is around $170 for a 40GB model.