Western Digital has introduced its new My Passport Elite portable USB drives that it describes as "top of the line".

With a luxurious, soft-touch finish designed to make the drives easy to grip, comfortable to hold, and "fashionable to carry", they weight less than 5 ounces and are available in capacities of 320 and 250GB.

Small enough to fit in a pocket for consumers on-the-go, they are USB-bus powered which adds to the portability as it means no external power adapter is needed.

Features of the new My Passport Elite range includes a capacity gauge that enables users to know at-a-glance how much space is available, auto back-up and sync software that can be tailored to user's needs, and plug-and-play capability with gaming consoles to make it easy to play music and view photos and video files on a TV.

WD's My Passport Elite USB drives are available in four soft-touch colours - bronze, titanium, Westminster blue and cherry red - the 250GB model is £113.99 and the Elite 320GB is £136.99.