What good is an external drive for backups if there isn't any good backup software to go along with it? Western Digital's My Passport Essential SE comes with a bevy of utilities to help users more easily protect their important files, photos, and videos.

Well-designed software; Easy to back up and restore files; Includes diagnostic tools

Poor transfer times; Plastic housing feels flimsy; Relatively pricey

The WD My Passport has always been very stylish – yet surprisingly small – devices and the all new refreshed version of the Essential model is no exception. While it does come in many color options, mine was the silver and white version. To be blunt, this color scheme looks like a million bucks.

The Western Digital My Passport Essential SE ($159.99 list) is a compact, portable 1TB drive that doesn't require an external AC adapter. It's convenient enough to pop this drive into your travel bag, especially if you need a copy of all your files, but don't want to bring your whole desktop or...

Requires reformat for Mac

WDC is making waves on all fronts. Today Chris looks at their new portable USB 3.0 HDD that makes taking your data with you even easier.

Western Digital's My Passport Essential SE is currently the only portable external hard drive to boast a whopping 1TB of storage space. Despite this, it is one of the smallest hard drives around and is quite speedy, too.

Western Digital's My Passport Essential USB 3.0 1TB is a perfectly serviceable drive with a decent price point. At the time of writing, however, the key reason to pick up a USB 3.0 drive at what are still early adopter prices is to get the best speed possible, and in the key area of file writing to...

Sleek design; Includes backup and password protection software; USB 3.0 is markedly faster than USB 2.0

Not the quickest USB 3.0 drive available

The My Passport Edge for Mac is the newest member of Western Digital's portable hard drive family. It's not wildly different from previous My Passport models, but the Edge does have USB 3.0 connectivity, and has slimmed down to an ultra-thin 4.40 by 0.43 inch enclosure.

Pre-formatted for Mac and Time Machine compatible; Backwards compatible with USB 2.0

Single USB 3.0 interface only

The company also recently released the My Passport Edge , an even slimmer drive that offers better portability. We'll review one of those as soon as we can get our hands on one.

Extreme portability; No external power supplies or power cables required; You can set up password protection and hardware encryption

Fast enough for everyday use; but not the fastest.

Ever-tumbling prices of solid-state disks (SSDs) make them tasty propositions for users looking to speed up their systems by installing an SSD as a boot drive. The 2.5in form factor of most consumer SSDs also make them eminently suitable for portable-storage purposes, given the innate shockproof...

Huge capacity for a portable-storage drive; Well-built; Can average over 100MB/s for both read and write operations; Solid supporting software

Not the thinnest or lightest

Last week WD announced the latest generation of their popular My Passport portable hard drives. The newly redesigned enclosures surround a 2.5" 15mm Western Digital hard drive that uses four platters to offer capacities up to 2TB, making it the highest capacity drive available in this form factor.

Massive 2TB of storage from a single 2.5-inch hard drive; USB 3.0 interface for transfer speeds averaging 110MB/s; Helpful and intuitive supplied software

Metal-alloy case would have been preferred