I
t’s USB day here in the storage review sec-
tion of Maximum PC. Both of the enclo-
sures we’re testing this month are light on
connection opportunities, but they more than
make up for it with speedy data transfers!
—DAVID MURPHYWESTERN DIGITAL PASSPORT
Pink is our new obsession, and we have
Western Digital to blame. Its pink, portable
Passport hard drive (try saying that fast) is
small enough to fi t in Steven Tyler’s mouth,
yet it comes with two of our most favorite fea-
tures in the world: sweet speeds and snazzy
backup software. And to top it off, you have
to carry only a single USB cable alongside the
little sweetheart, as there’s no accompanying
power brick or annoying connector.
You get a crisp 250GB of storage with the
pink Passport drive; accompanying programs
soak up 60MB of that space. We have no
objection to this, save for Western Digital’s
continued insistence on bundling Google
spam alongside every external hard drive it
sells. At least the autorun/installer application
is less intrusive about slapping a toolbar, desk-
top search, and Picasa on your machine than
previous Western Digital products—you can
now choose whether to install those items.
The Passport is one of the speediestportable hard drives in
the size-of-your-hand cat-
egory, pulling in a wonder-
ful 34.7MB/s average read
speed during our synthetic
HD Tach benchmark test.
OWC’s 160GB, 7,200RPM
Mercury On-the-Go (reviewed
August 2007) just overtakes
the Passport’s average read
speed by 1MB/s; the OWC
device loses the overall
matchup, however, by being
90GB smaller and costing
$50 more.
Included with the Passport
is the ever-awesome WD
Sync software. It’s a staple
of Western Digital’s portable
drive line, and it’s easy to
see why—the synchronized
backup is simple and clutter-free, and the
fully functioning mobile Outlook client turns
our cheeks pink with delight.MAXTOR ONETOUCH 4
We were about to lead off this review with
a Nelson Muntz-style “ha-ha” at Seagate,
whose 750GB FreeAgent Pro ( http://tinyurl.
com/28y9dg ) has now fallen from the top
of our external storage rankings thanks
to Maxtor’s OneTouch 4. And then we
remembered that Seagate now owns
Maxtor. Whoops.
The OneTouch 4 is easily the fastestnon-RAID, USB-based external device we’ve
tested. That’s a lot of modifi ers, but we don’t
want to give credit where it isn’t due. Yes,
there are bigger enclosures—Western Digital
has terabyte-size external storage devices.
And, yes, there are enclosures with more than
just a USB connection—just look at Seagate’s
own FreeAgent Pro.
But if you don’t have eSATA or FireWire,
the OneTouch 4 represents the pinnacle of
speedy portable storage. The device comes
with included backup software that sucks
up nearly 60MB of space on the drive, but
it’s space well utilized—the software lets you
perform backups and synchronizations in a
very unobtrusive manner.
A few design fl aws—like the absence of
a power switch–keep the OneTouch 4 out of
the Storage Hall of Fame, but while we can
critique the nitty-gritty, we can’t overlook the
speed or software. Coupled together, they
make for a great storage device.reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
Portable Drive Paso Doble
Two drives tango to fulfill our on-the-go storage desires
$270, http://www.maxtorsolutions.comMAXTOR ONETOUCH 4KANG
One of the fastest USB-con-
nected devices we’ve tested;
quiet as a dead mouse.
KODOS^9
No other connection options,
save for USB; no power switch.$200, http://www.wdc.comWESTERN DIGITAL PASSPORTTRAIN KEPT A-ROLLIN’
It’s fast, it’s light, it requires
only one cord!DROPS OF JUPITER^8
Google advertising/software is
unnecessary; the black 320GB
variant is only $20 more.The ultra-lightweight Passport is beauti-
ful, and almost rivals the portability of a
USB key—almost.We would trade an arm, if not a leg as well, for a tera-
byte model in the OneTouch line.78 MAXIMUMPC | FEB 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
Best scores are bolded in each connection category. All benchmarks taken using HD Tach 3.0.4.0.BENCHMARKS
WESTERN DIGITAL MAXTOR SEAGATE FREEAGENT
PASSPORT ONETOUCH 4 PRO (USB)
BURST (MB/s) 36.2 37.5 26.3
RANDOM ACCESS (MS) 17.5 14.1 21.5
AVERAGE READ (MB/s) 34.7 37.2 25.55.1"3.14
"5.88"6.75"