How to Transfer Pictures Into a Western Digital Passport

By Dan Ketchum

Laptop hard drive enclosures allow smaller drives to be used.
i Thomas Northcut/Photodisc/Getty Images

Western Digital's Passport series of external hard drives -- which includes more than 20 different models as of 2013 -- varies in storage specs and transfer speeds, but each device shares some common factors. The Passport line focuses on portability, offers out-of-the-box compatibility with the Windows operating system and uses a USB interface, making it easy to transfer digital photo files from your computer's internal hard drive to the external drive. The actual process for transferring is just the same for the Passport series as it is for virtually any type of external USB drive.

Step 1

Locate the pictures on your computer. Digital image files come in JPG, GIF, TIFF, BMP and PNG formats. In addition to small photo icons, you'll see these letters at the end of the file name -- “BeachVacation.jpg,” for instance.

Step 2

Select the picture or pictures you'd like to transfer to your Western Digital external hard drive, which should be connected to your computer via its USB 2.0 or 3.0 port, depending on the Passport model. To select a single picture, simply hover your cursor over the file and right-click. Left-click and drag the mouse over multiple pictures or hold down the “Ctrl” key as you left-click on each item to select more than one. Once you've selected all the photos you'd like to transfer, right-click and from the context menu, select “Copy” if you'd like to transfer the photos to your Passport while leaving the original copies in-tact on your computer's hard drive; select “Cut” if you want to remove the photos from your computer when you transfer them to your external drive.

Step 3

Open the “Computer” or “My Computer” File Explorer window, located on your desktop or Start Menu. Under “Computer,” you'll see a list of storage options such as “Local Disk (C:)” or “Recovery (D:).” Click on the Western Digital Passport external hard drive icon. If you've named the hard drive, it will appear under its given name. Otherwise, it will appear as some variation of “My Passport (F:).”

Step 4

Click on the Passport folder you wish to transfer the photos to, or right-click a blank area and select “New,” then “Folder” to create a new folder. Right-click a blank space within the folder and select “Paste” from the context menu. This transfers the photos onto your Passport. Transfer speeds vary depending on how many photos you're transferring and the specific Passport model you have.

×