Western Digitals new My PAssport Essential usb drive

Western Digital (WD) have today introduced their "My Passport Essential" portable USB drives. These new drives are designed to complement WD's 'My Book' family of external drives. They introduce a sleek new form that WD claims feels good in your hand, as well as fits neatly into your pocket or purse. "My Passport Essential" portable drives sport a glossy black finish, and put nearly a third of a terabyte of digital storage into the palm of your hand.

At less than five ounces of weight, the drives are truly light and portable; they also don't need an external power adapter as they're bus-powered. They come equipped with Windows only-compatible sync and encryption software. Despite their dimunitive size, they are capable of securely carrying thousands of songs, videos, and photos, WD claims. With WD sync software, consumers can carry desktop content along with them by way of simplified synchronization of essential personal files and Microsoft Outlook data on PCs. In the event drives are misplaced, data remains protected with 128-bit encryption. The drives have Google software allowing users to quickly locate files with Google Desktop Search, manage photos with Picasa photo organizer software, and simplify Web searches with Google Toolbar search bar. Speaking at the launch, Sharad Srivastava, director sales (India and South Asia) of Western Digital, said, "The newly designed 'My Passport Essential' drives are the perfect travel-friendly storage device to hold the rich media content generated by higher resolution photos and HD videos and music."