The Western Digital My Passport 1 TB External Hard Drive is one of my favorites. Looking back just a decade it is amazing just how much we can store in such a small drive. I like the Passport for the simple reason that it is the right size to stick in your pocket. I use it to backup the hours and hours of movies of my daughter doing something very exciting (ok – we find her singing with a stick as a microphone exciting but I do suspect – although cannot confirm – that others may not be as excited as we are).  Given the value of such records we keep at least 2 copies of each photo and movie and that does add up to many gigabytes of data.

With latest windows machines the drive works out of the box. Plug in one of the computer’s USB ports, wait a few seconds for the driver to automatically install and you will soon see a window popping up asking you how you would like to view the content of the drive. You can use the “explore” option and use it just as another “drive” (similar to your C drive) – where you can create new directories and drag and drop files from your computer directories. Or you can start the included software to have it manage your backup for you.

Personally I find the backup software that comes with the drive unhelpful – but this is really a personal choice and depends on your comfort level with backing up by yourself. As with any backup, it is only useful if you know how to retrieve the files if you need to – so be sure you have a “restoration” plan before you start your backup routine (this can be as simple as copying them back from the drive to the computer).

It is also important to remember that drives do “die”. Expect them to last 3-5 years – sometimes more sometimes less. Once they break, recovery, if at all possible,  is likely to be more expensive than simply keeping 2 copies. So I recommend doing just that: keep at least 2 copies of everything.

I find that the Passport is especially useful on the road when I need to back up our cameras. Downloading the pics to the computer is not enough (since computers tend to break on the road and I am running out of disk space on my laptop as well) and the Passport external drive is easy to bring along for that extra copy. Of course the same argument holds for less important data (such as work stuff and household records) so you can use that to make yourself feel better about the purchase and your addictive need to document every second of your child’s life (but enough about me…).

In summary, love it and recommend it.