Wd 2.5 My Passport Protable Storage For Mac
. A hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive, right? In a sense that there’s an actuator, a reading system and a bunch of platters on which the data is stored. But some drives differ from others in application. WD has been a master at highlighting this in the past, crafting its colour-coded drives to be adept at handling multiple situations, from the WD Red drives for mass storage solutions to the gaming-orientated WD Black rapid spinners.
Wd 2.5 My Passport Portable Storage For Mactm Externe Festplatte
This doesn’t just stop with internal drives though. The company has been outing various external drives for different uses, including a rather interesting drive for consoles. But we recently had a go at the My Passport for Mac drive, and as you probably guessed by the name, is designed for Apple ecosystems. While the My Passport for Mac might be your typical standard 2.5-inch hard drive, it’s designed to play nicely with Apple OS X’s file system from the get go. Of course, that’s just reducing it. While we won’t go into all of that (because, to be fairly honest, it’s boring), this benefits the consumer in a number of ways that are less apparent than first noticeable. The drives now support storage sizes of up to 3TB, but we got hold of a 1TB unit, the size that most consumers will probably eye.
And while I mentioned the eye, it also mirrors Apple products’ look and feel. There’s a textured metallic finish to each drive, with a bundled USB cable alongside it in the packaging. It should be noted that like its more expensive Mac drive counterparts, it isn’t entirely metal, but that does mean it saves on price and weight. We’re not sure why there’s a lack of a USB-to-Lightning cable which would’ve really made it a distinctly Apple-orientated drive, but it’s not immediately important. Nevertheless, it does use the much faster USB 3.0 interface, so not all is lost.
What is, is that it looks great next to the older MacBooks and newer paper thin models. Essentially, the My Passport for Mac line is effectively the My Passport Ultra drives, rebranded and given a new lick of paint. It’s not a bad idea to re-market a product (we’ve seen AMD and Nvidia do this with their graphics cards for ages), but one could arguably purchase a WD My Passport Ultra, reformat it and use it as a Mac drive with no problem.
Understandably, people want ease-of-use, and WD was sure to bundle the My Passport for Mac drive with its suite of data management tools specifically for Apple products. Like the other Mac drives, it’s compatible with the Apple Time Machine backup utility, and boasts an automatic sleep function, which did work particularly well and should lengthen the life span of the device itself. And if you’re one of the sane people on the internet interested in security, the drive can be digitally locked thanks to WD’s bundled encryption tool. You can set a drive-wide password, which restricts access to data unless you manage to guess the password correctly, or completely wipe the drive in an instant if you’re interested in starting over. There are a number of diagnostic tools available too, which allows users to manage the health of the drive, which was a very nice touch.
I can’t quite recall seeing this particular portion of the WD Drive Utilities on Windows-orientated drives. And as for performance? You should achieve read/writes of anything from 80MB/s to 100MB/s depending on drive load, drive temperature or file size transferred. I don’t typically enjoy running benchmark tools because they differ vastly from real world performance, but in this case, I found the My Passport for Mac to be mostly reliable in its transfer speeds. Finally, WD offers a three year warranty with these drives, but we can’t exactly comment on whether or not that’s long enough. We would love to see another two years pegged onto that figure.
Verdict: If you happen to harbour more Apple products than you can count and need a good looking, relatively swift and dependable external drive, you can’t go too wrong with the WD My Passport for Mac. While you could just buy any external drive and bolt it on (after reformatting, of course), the WD My Passport for Mac does feature useful Mac-centric tools. As a backup solution or temporary storage box, WD’s solution is fairly slick for just south of R1200.
Score: 9/10.
Choosing the best external hard drive or SSD for your Mac or PC is essential. As any designer or artist knows, it doesn't take long for creative files to start filling up the internal hard drive of your machine – but it's important to pick the right one, and there are a number of considerations to make before pulling out your wallet. First, a quick recap of the basics. An external hard drive or SSD (which stands for Solid State Drive) is a device that can be easily plugged into your machine, giving you almost-instant storage space, without having to prise open your computer and make complicated upgrades. Not only does an HDD or SSD give you more capacity for large files, but because the devices are portable, they can be taken with you on the go and plugged into different machines – handy if you swap between PCs and Macs regularly. Also, in the event that something bad happens to your machine, your files will still be safe and accessible.
Right now, we think the overall best external hard drive for Mac and PC is the Western Digital My Passport 4TB. It offers the best balance of speed, reliability, portability and price. But there are many options out there – scroll down to see our full list of recommendations, and the best external hard drive prices too. Storage considerations There are a number of things to consider when looking for an external hard drive or SSD for your Mac or PC. First, is storage.
You'll want to make sure you buy an external storage device that has enough capacity for your needs – without paying for high capacities you'll never use. Around 500GB is a good sweet-spot for external storage, though you can buy smaller capacities, as well as larger ones at 1TB or greater. Hard drive vs SSD: which is best?
Another consideration is whether to get an external storage device that uses a traditional hard drive, or one with an SSD. Usually, external hard drives with traditional drives are more affordable and come in larger capacities. There are external SSDs that come with large capacities – but these can be expensive. SSDs are much faster than traditional hard drives, and because they don't have any mechanical or moving parts, they're generally more robust and smaller in physical size as well. So, if you want to store huge amounts of data while keeping prices low, an external hard drive is the way to go. But if speed is your top priority – for example, if you move a lot of large files, or want to run programs off the drive – then choose an SSD. The right connections The connection between the external hard drive and your Mac or PC is also important.
The first generation rectangular USB-A ports are slowly being superseded by the newer, smaller reversible USB-C ports. These are now found on all modern PCs, and Macs. Some high end PC and Macs, such as the new iMac and, come with USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3. This is the fastest external storage connection there is, and it provides very fast data transfer speeds, though Thunderbolt storage is considerably more expensive than plain old USB. Best external hard drives and SSDs for Mac and PC 01.
Western Digital My Passport 4TB. WD backup software is basic This is the latest generation of the Western Digital My Passport range of external hard drives to have landed, coming in sizes from 1TB to 4TB. It features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption, along with WD's own backup software. It also offers very good data transfer speeds.
And while it doesn't quite offer a similar speed to solid state drive devices, the Western Digital My Passport range finds a great balance between high storage capacities and quick file transfers. Samsung Portable SSD T5. Expensive The Samsung T5 SSD is a great performing storage device, reaching speeds up to 550 MB/sec, making the most of the USB 3.1 specification. It plugs directly into PCs and Macs with either a newer USB-C port or USB-A, is roughly the size of a matchbox and being a flash storage device, contains no moving parts, so can survive being dropped. External SSDs may cost considerably more than hard disks, but the extra money and faster speeds go a long way. You’ll be able to easily load edit and save 4K video directly on the T5, which can be very slow with a USB hard disk, you can install applications onto it, or even run an entire alternative operating system off it at full speed, if you’re so inclined.
The downside is the pricing. SSDs give you less capacity for more money, so we don’t recommend the T5 for backup. It’s better to have a bigger hard disk for that and use the T5 in more specialised situations that need all that lovely performance. High price G-Technology has long been a favourite of Mac creative professionals, and no small part of this is the clever use of silver aluminium that perfectly matches Apple’s iMac casing, keeping desktop areas with a uniform appearance.
The latest incarnation of its G-RAID dual hard disk Thunderbolt product isn’t just a start performer, capable of 440 MB/sec transfer rates in RAID 0, which is pretty incredible for hard disks, but it also gives you a few extras. There's an HDMI 2.2 port on the back, which routes a video signal for an external display over the G-RAID’s Thunderbolt 3 cable, which has plenty of bandwidth to spare even with the hard disk going at full speed. It also has a USB-C port to connect to Macs or PCs that lack Thunderbolt. Expect to pay a small fortune for the largest capacities, but thanks to the easy drive removal system, you could always buy a cheaper, lower capacity G-RAID and upgrade it with off-the-shelf hard disks yourself. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt.
Limited hard disk performance If you want to make use of your Thunderbolt port, then this Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt is a great option, as it provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3.0 drives. It's also not especially expensive compared to other Thunderbolt drives. This is mainly down to the fact that it's a traditional hard drive, not an SSD, which means it's not quite as fast as it could be – though it will still give you an upgrade to your transfer speeds. Helpfully, the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt also comes with a USB 3.0 port for connecting to computers that don't have a Thunderbolt port. Adata SD700 External SSD.
No USB Type-C The Adata SD700 will suit those looking for a rugged storage device that can provide ample capacity without costing too much. It performs superbly well and remains the only SSD we’ve seen that's IP68 rated. Thanks to the solid state drive that resides in this external hard drive, it's a lot faster than external drives that use traditional spinning hard drives – so you're getting great transfer speeds as well as rugged protection. It also comes in capacities up to 1TB, so you don't have to worry about missing out on storage space just because it uses an SSD.
This Adata drive really does hit all the right notes. WD My Book Duo. Limited performance compared with Thunderbolt drives If you're looking for the absolute largest capacity external USB hard drive, then the WD My Book Duo Is the one to get, as it now goes all the way to 20TB.
If you don't mind sacrificing some of the ample storage space you can set the drives up in a RAID 1 array, so you have file backups of your files should one of the drives die. This is an excellent feature if you're going to use this device to back up irreplaceable data, such as your creative work, as it adds a level of protection in case things go wrong. It provides two additional USB ports on the rear, so you can easily insert flash sticks. The device, which comes with two-year warranty, has 256-bit AES hardware encryption, and automatic backup software (WD SmartWare Pro).
It's also worth noting that the enclosure used is fully serviceable and that WD ships the drive already pre-formatted for Windows users (NTFS), so you'll want to reformat it to work with your Mac. Read TechRadar's review. LaCie Rugged USB-C. Ugly orange casing Lacie’s rugged hard disk series is instantly recognisable from its orange casing, which is a rubber enclosure that keeps the disk safe from even medium-height drops up to 1.2m, along with your precious data. According to Lacie it can apparently withstand the pressure of a one-ton car, and is resistant to rain.
That makes it a great choice for content creation when you’re out and about, whether you’re participating in daredevil sports, travelling the world, just a bit paranoid or simply clumsy.