Western Digital 250GB My Passport Hard Drive

By Bill

On my most recent photo adventure, I found myself shooting 32 gigabytes of photos in a single day!

I was at The Bass Rock photographing Gannets. I love Gannets.

And, I just could not stop shooting. Shot after shot after shot. And each shot was taking up about 22 Megabytes because I was using my Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera.

So, at the end of the day, and after already accumulating nearly 80 gigabytes of photos from the week before at the Isle of Arran, I was faced with the issue of how I was going to get all this data home safely. Fortunately I had with me a Western Digital Portable Hard Drive. Not an issue, I just offloaded my shots to my Acer Aspire One netbook and from there to the Hard Drive.  BTW, you can read my review of the Acer Aspire One.  I dearly love the little beast.  And with lots of open source software, I am able to view my RAW files easily using Irfanview.  A fabulous free photo software package.

What I love about the Western Digital Portable Hard Drive is that I don’t have to carry a passel of electrical cords to charge it, it powers itself via the USA port on the Acer.  And it is small, it fits easily in a coat pocket.

I make two copies of every shot I take.  Yep.  Two.  Why? Because I just spent nearly $5,000 on an international photo seminar and I want to be absolutely certain that I get home with my images.  That’s why.  And at $79 the drive is a bargain! It holds 250GB of data. Even for me that is a grateful plenty.

I have used the drive on five photographic holidays and it has never failed me.  Yes, all hard drives will fail eventually, but this one is well made and very reliable.

That’s why I can get home feeling good about the fact that this shot made it safely. I highly recommend this drive. The price is right and it is among my essential gear. You can get it at B+H Photo Video for $79. I won’t leave home without it. In fact, I have two of them. Yep. Two. Always make two copies, you never know if a fellow airline passenger might spill a glass of cheap wine on your drive.

Click on Photo for a larger version.