X-bit labs

Passport from Western Digital: Portable USB Hard Disk Drive Review (page 7)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

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

Conclusion

The external portable solution from Western Digital aka Passport is a very logical occasion for this market. In fact, we would expect it to happen right after mass production of Scorpio drives had started. To be fair, we would like to stress from the very beginning that this drive didn’t surprise us with any superior speeds. The results of our test session showed that it yields in many performance aspects to the competitor, external hard drive from Lacie with even lower spindle rotation speed. It looks like NTFS file system would be a better choice for WD Passport drive, and it demonstrated its best performance during file copy tests, which seems to be caused by its lower access time.

Nevertheless, the design and construction of WD Passport left the most favorable impression. It will be very convenient for transportation of large data packs. And finally, one more competitive solution in this market segment gives us, users, some hope that the prices will go down and these solutions become even more affordable for potential buyers.