#1 WD MyPassport (For Mac) Many of you might have a MacBook or MacBook Pro with a ridiculously small hard drive. Check out the MyPassport (For Mac) from WD to expand the size of your hard drive. The My Passport portable drive is trusted to store the massive amounts of photos, videos and music you love. Available in an array of vibrant, fun colors, the sleek style fits comfortably in the palm of your hand, so you can easily take your treasured content everywhere you go.
The My Passport Slim is the next step up from WD's previous My Passport Ultra portable drive, which came out in March. The new external storage device is slightly thinner, and comes in a metal enclosure. It also offers all the goodies found in the previous model, inlcuding WD SmartWare Pro data protection software, up to 2TB of storage space, and very good performance. Most importantly, the Slim is more affordable, with a suggested retail price of just $100 for 1TB, the same as that of the 500GB Ultra at launch. The 2TB version of the Slim will cost just $150 when it's available later this year.
You can expect the street pricing of the drive to be even lower. If you already have a USB 3.0 portable drive, there's no need to upgrade, but if you're looking for one, the My Passport Slim will make a great storage device for travelers looking to carry lots of data in a limited space, or perform backups on the go. In all, I recommend it. For more great portable storage device options,. Drive type 2.5-inch external USB hard drive Connector options USB 3.0, USB 2.0 Available capacities 1GB, 2TB Capacity of test unit 1TB Dimensions (LWH) 4.33 inches by 3.14 inches by 0.48 inch (1TB) or 0.7 inch (2TB) Weight 5.6 ounces (1TB) OSes supported Windows 2000 or later, Mac OS 10.4 or later Software included WD SmartWare Pro, WD Utility, WD Security Design and features Measuring 4.33 inches by 3.14 inches by 0.48 inches, the new 1TB My Passport Slim isn't exactly slim. In fact, it's just.02 inch thinner than the previous model of the same capacity and is about exactly the same size as the.
And at 0.7 inch thick the 2TB version of the new drive is not slim at all. Though not as slim as the name suggests, the new My Passport Slim is compact and handsome. Dong Ngo/CNET However, the new drive has an aluminum casing, instead of plastic, and feels very sturdy in the hand. The design is two-tone, with shiny white on top and the rest of the body painted in dark blue. It's one of the best-looking in WD's My Passport family of portable storage devices. Like most USB 3.0 portable drives, the My Passport Slim has a Micro-USB 3.0 port on one side and comes with a short standard USB 3.0 cable. This is the only cable you need; it handles both power and data functions.
Designed to work best with USB 3.0, the drive also works with USB 2.0 and in my tests it had no problem drawing power from any USB ports. The drive also comes with a small user-guide booklet and a nice traveling pouch. Out of the box, the Slim is preformatted for Windows (NTFS) and works immediately when you plug it into a computer. On a Mac you read data from it but can't write to it until you reformat the drive into HFS+ or exFAT. You can do this using the Disk Utility built in to Mac OS X or use the WD Drive Utilities software preloaded on the drive itself.
/onehalf The USB cable is compatible with both USB2.0 and USB3.0 and is around a foot in length. PERFORMANCE As this is a Mac OS-targeted product, the pre-formatted file system is in HFS but it is possible for anyone to just format it for Windows use.
Since this drive is mostly a cosmetic redress of the My Passport line we’ve checked before, most of the numbers should be in line with what we’ve seen before. In the interest of fairness though, we will not be including the results we got from the 2TB My Passport for consistency purposes. Priced at around Php4,900, this drive should be around the price range of most 1TB solutions with the 2TB and 500GB variants coming in for Php8,990 and Php3,790 respectively. We known its rude to generalize or stereotype, but Mac fans tend to have a bit more to spend than PC users so its good to know that WD isn’t riding the Apple Tax bandwagon by overcharging for these things. Even more so is the performance we’re seeing is still very respectable so we’re giving this drive both straight 10s for Performance and Value. Everything’s not all sunny for the WD My Passport for Mac though. To make it jive with Mac products, the WD employed a silver coating on the case which sadly gets easily marred and scratched.
Another oversight is the cable color of choice as most Mac fans would surely go want a white cable. We’re docking 2 points for Quality for these. All in all though, Western Digital manages to deliver a great performing product with this one. The slim profile, large capacity and reasonable price makes it an easy choice for anyone looking for a portable storage solution for their MacBook, Ultrabook or basically any use.
We give the WD My Passport our Value award. And for a Mac-targeted product, that’s rare. It also comes backed by a 3-year global warranty.