External HDDs
WD’s Passport and My Book Lineup Go Through a Major Redesign
Reporting from Prague, Czech Republic: Western Digital Corporation has today introduced modern and innovative redesigns of its My Passport, My Passport for Mac, and My Book hard drive lines. In partnership with fuseproject, an award-winning industrial design and branding firm, the reimagined products were built with the customer in mind.
“As the storage landscape continues to rapidly evolve, and the bars for design and user-experience have increased, the team focused on the design and user experience to catapult My Passport and My Book to the next level,” said Jim Welsh, senior vice president, Content Solutions Business Unit, Western Digital. “Through the reimagined design language, we want to engage consumers in a conversation about how storage is core to their lives and how they feel more empowered by the real benefits of capturing, protecting and enjoying life’s precious memories.”
As part of the reimagined design, the My Passport drives will come in six colours – Black, Yellow, Red, White, Orange and Blue – while still providing reliable portable storage that perfectly complements an on-the-go lifestyle. The My Passport for Mac drive is available in a stylish Black color. The My Book combines personal style with a massive amount of storage space, up to 8 TB, so users can keep their photos, videos, music, and documents. Each storage device comes with an automatic backup solution for a seamless, user-friendly process, as well as password protection to keep your precious data safe.
“The way we use data is changing; it’s becoming much more of a personal commodity, something we value,” says Yves Béhar, founder and Principal Designer at fuseproject. “Western Digital lies at the intersection of our physical life and the digital world, and we wanted to create a quality aesthetic that symbolizes this intersection.”
The new WD My Passport portable hard drives come with a new attractive design with textured bottom. It features password protection with 256-bit AES hardware encryption and offers automatic backup with included WD Backup software. The drives are available in capacities of up to 4TB.
The My Passport for Mac drives also offer password protection with 256-bit AES hardware encryption and are formatted for Mac OS X. These are also Time Machine ready for easy backup and offer storage capacities of up to 4TB. The My Book desktop hard drive lets you backup data on both PC and Mac. It also comes with password protection with hardware encryption, automatic backup with included WD Backup software and storage capacities of up to 8TB.
My Passport and My Passport for Mac portable hard drives are protected by a 2-year limited warranty and are available from wd.com and at select retailers and distributors around the world. My Passport drives have a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) starting at $79.99 and the My Passport for Mac drive has a starting MSRP of $79.99.
My Book desktop hard drives are protected by a 2-year limited warranty and are available from the WD store at wd.com and at select retailers and distributors. My Book drives have a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) starting at $129.99.
External HDDs
Review: WD My Passport SSD (1TB)
WD’s new My Passport SSD is a gorgeous-looking external SSD storage device that offers storage capacities ranging between 256GB to 2TB. The variant we have reviewed here is the 1TB version that comes in very distinct greyish-silver and black colour tones. While the drive is USB Type-C and USB 3.1 Gen 2 read, it is also compatible with USB 3.0, USB 2.0, and USB-A ports.
Inside the box, you get the WD My Passport SSD drive, a USB Type-C to Type-C cable, a Type-C to Type-A adapter, a quick start guide, and the warranty info. Outside the box, the drive comes preformatted with exFAT, for compatibility with Windows and Mac. On paper, the drive offers fast read speeds of up to 540 MB/s, thanks to the USB 3.1 Gen 2 bus, which is also known as USB 3.1.
The drive measures 8.89-by-4.57-by-0.99 cm in dimension and weighs around 40.82-gms. The drive also offers hardware encryption. So, you can set a password to help keep it protected with built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption with WD Security software. In addition, it can also withstand drops from a height of up to 6.5-feet.
On paper, the drive offers data transfer speeds of up to 540 MB/s. In order to test its performance, we ran two benchmarks on it – CrystalDiskMark 8 and ATTO Disk Benchmark 4.0.1. On CrystalDiskMark, we were able to clock a sequential read speed of 462 MB/s and a write speed of 461 MB/s. On ATTO Disk Benchmark, we clocked a read speed of 432 MB/s and a write speed of 440 MB/s.
Since it is an SSD drive, there are no moving parts and hence it is less susceptible to over-heating and data corruption issues.
For a price of AED 700, the WD My Passport SSD (1TB) is a very lightweight external storage device that does its job as advertised.
Price: AED 700
WD My Passport SSD (1TB) AED 700
Summary
On paper, the drive offers data transfer speeds of up to 540 MB/s. In order to test its performance, we ran two benchmarks on it – CrystalDiskMark 8 and ATTO Disk Benchmark 4.0.1. On CrystalDiskMark, we were able to clock a sequential read speed of 462 MB/s and a write speed of 461 MB/s. On ATTO Disk Benchmark, we clocked a read speed of 432 MB/s and a write speed of 440 MB/s.
User Review
( votes)External HDDs
Video: How the Toshiba Canvio Gaming Drive Can Help Gamers of Today!
In the fourth of a series of videos, we speak to an Arabic gamer to understand how he overcomes data storage challenges:
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*** Special Thanks ***
Hazem Hesham Abed: https://www.instagram.com/hazemheshamabed/
External HDDs
Transcend Adds Two Slim Rugged Models to its StoreJet Lineup
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