WD Shrinks MyBook Down to Passport Essentials Proportions

Western Digital has done quite well for itself with their MyBook line of external hard drives, but you can possibly consider lugging those tomes around for everyday use. In order to address our increasing needs for portability, Western Digital has launched a new line of My Passport Essential Portable USB drive. Seeing how this is WD, there is a hard drive inside and not flash-based memory.

The idea is that this portable hard drive should be no larger than a regular passport, hence its name, weighing in at less than five ounces and measuring 15 x 126 x 79mm. Because of its minute size, there’s no need for external power either, because it gets its draw from the USB cable. Bundled in with the drive are Google Desktop Search, Picasa, and Google Toolbar. And yes, it’s got WD Sync encryption software too, complete with 128-bit encryption.

The 320GB model is available now with an asking price of $199.99.