However, the other two drives include a bulky USB Y-cable as older computers don't have enough juice on one USB port to power the entire drive and must be plugged into two USB ports. Like the other two drives, the Passport is bus-powered meaning it gets its powered from the USB bus on your computer.
For me it came down to looks and simplicity. The most popular of which being the Maxtor OneTouch III Mini and the Seagate FreeAgent Go. There are many, many competitors for the Western Digital Passport in the portable hard drive market. My use for this Passport drive is different than that of my main backup drive in that the Passport is simply for convenient, on-the-move file transfers. When it comes to storing your data reliably, you should definitely spring for the 3.5-inch based external hard drives if possible. But Paul, didn't you tell us to avoid generally fragile, death-prone 2.5-inch hard drives in your back to school post? That I did. Today I'll be taking a look at Western Digital's recently upgraded Passport series of portable hard drives in particular, the 120GB bus-powered Passport.
