Portable hard drives are quickly becoming a must need device to have wherever you go. The much desirable options are of course the fast transfer speeds and gigabytes upon gigabytes of storage right at your fingertips. With that said, the cost isn’t all that wishing at the moment, but other than that these drives could be what you are looking for in terms of portability and storage.

According to Western Digital, you can "Instantly add portable storage for all your business files, music, video, and games with a WD Passport Portable USB 2.0 Drive. This high-performance, 5400-RPM drive is simple to use, light and easy to carry. WD understands the importance of the information on your drive so we’ve designed a cool, rugged, shock-absorbing case to protect the 2.5-inch WD hard drive and the data on it."

The aforementioned blurb pretty much overviews the drive. However, to add just a bit more to what’s suggested above, Western Digital offers the Passport in 40GB, 60GB and 80GB capacities, respectively. The buffer size and average latency is 2MB and 5.50ms, which is decent for portable drives.

Initial Thoughts: The Western Digital Passport is clearly a portable solution for those of you that prefer the capacity. Even though the performance aspects of the drive aren’t all that impressive compared to mobile and desktop drives, they are certainly comparable to similar solutions. The average price for the Passport for 40GB to 80GB versions is between $110.00 and $140.00, thereby making them slightly expensive, but if the performance is superior, price shouldn’t matter for the portable enthusiast.