Holiday Buyer's Guide 2006, Part 3: Components & Peripherals

Portable Storage

Western Digital Passport Portable Drive 120 GB

If the 512 MB to 8 GB capacity of ultra-portable storage devices isn't enough for your needs, you should consider a full-featured mobile hard drive. There are plenty of different products on the market, of which the Passport by Western Digital is one possible choice - a fast and attractive one.

The Passport is available at 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 and 160 GB. As you can imagine, these products are based on Western Digital's 2.5" hard drive family, called Scorpio. The hard drives spin at 5,400 RPM, which makes them pretty good performers, even when crammed into the 2.5" enclosure. There are silver and black versions available.

You're looking at a price range of $75 for the 40 GB version, and up to $160 for the top 160 GB model. Once again, we recommend that you keep the golden mean: if you choose 120 GB you will get the product at $120; the 60, 80 and 100 GB versions currently seem to be at a higher cost per gigabyte.