Western Digital 500GB External Hard Drive Review

Before I get onto my thoughts on Western Digital’s My Passport Enterprise, its worth making a note on Windows To Go. Whilst I get a chance to read quite a lot with regards to new tech (as you can imagine), The WTG feature of Windows 8 Enterprise is one that, to be honest, I knew very little about. For those that don’t know and to save me trying to explain in a long winded fashion, I’ve inserted a demo video that will mention everything you need to know.

As shown above, whilst Windows To Go is aimed at a very specific target audience and it requires the ownership of Win 8 Enterprise in the first instance to get it set up and running, one the My Passport Enterprise has been setup, it is a very simple case of plugging the hard drive into the desired host system and rebooting it. The BitLocker software ensures that the data on your WTG image is kept secure and at the same time it locks down the host systems drives so that they appear off-line when the Windows To Go install is in use. There is one particular feature of Windows To Go that I found exceptionally clever and this where Windows will effectively put itself on pause for 60 seconds just in case the drive is accidentally removed from the host system. Should the drive be unplugged, you have 60 seconds in which to reinsert the drive and once powered up, Windows returns to full operation, however if this is not possible then Windows To Go will shut down and restart the system to keep everything secure.

Moving over to the My Passport drive itself, I love the extra compact build that Western Digital have chosen here with the simple yet very stylish pattern on the drives upper face. The overall performance through the USB3.0 interface is pretty good as well with a comfortable >100MB/s read rate in virtually all my test areas with a write performance that was not overly far behind.

For users that are not after the enterprise feature of Windows To Go, fear not as Western Digital have a mainstream user version of the My Passport that instead of the Windows To Go support, has WD’s Smartware software and automatic backup included as well as a variety of drives that span from 500GB like this drive, right up to 2TB in a variety of colours including white, black, red, blue and grey. This version also features USB3.0 as well as compatibility with the rugged case and most of all is as equally small and light.

Overall I’m very impressed with not only Western Digital’s My Passport line of drives, but their certification on the enterprise level for Windows To Go, whilst the enterprise drive is a little more pricey that a standard My Passport drive, its use with Windows To Go soon pays off, giving users the flexibility and convenience to take their work wherever they go. The only think I can think of as a suggestion is for a small sleeve type case for the drive as well as the optional rugged case – this could be used to not only protect the drive but also store the USB 3.0 cable as well.