Western Digital offers yet another pocket-sized HDD

Western Digital today introduced a new series of portable USB hard drives with capacities as high as 320 GB in a package comparable in size to a Nintendo DS Lite.

The My Passport USB drive series was redesigned to complement WD's line of My Book external drives, and have a footprint of 5.1" x 3.14" x .6" and weigh only 5 ounces. They range in capacity from 60-320 GB.

These 2.5-inch 5400 RPM hard drives are bus powered and promise the USB 2.0 transfer speed of 480 Mb/sec. Obviously, speed of transfer is not this device's strong point among a field of many competitors. However, the unit's small size, coupled with its large capacity narrow down the competition slightly.

With solid state memory becoming more spacious as well as affordable, we will likely see solutions like WD's USB HDD becoming even cheaper. Currently, these units retail for as little as $79.99 for the 80 GB unit (the 60 GB mysteriously costs $89) and as much as $229.99 for the 320 GB model.