Western Digital My Passport Vs My Passport For Mac
Western Digital My Passport for Mac Review (1TB) Western Digital completely redesigned and increased the capacity on both their My Passport for Mac and My Passport Studio portable hard drives. Besides the new look, the latest models increase the capacities offered, upping the previous cap at 500GB to 750GB and 1TB. WD My Passport Wireless Pro Hands-on Review. The WD My Passport Wireless Pro combines an SD memory card reader, an internal hard drive, and a rechargeable battery into a pack-friendly device for backing up photos from a memory card while traveling. Mac set vlc as default application for all video files.
A fantastic storage companion for MacBook users. I’ve been a fan of Western Digital storage options for a very long time. A company I used to work for had to do daily backups and per project backups and we relied on Western Digital products to ensure that our data was secured.
In all the time we used WD hard drives, I don’t think we ever had a drive fail. Now that I am working independently and I need storage solutions for my media backups, I immediately looked to Western Digital. I have a 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro, which only had USB-C ports on it so I was grateful to find that WD had a portable storage option for people in my situation — the My Passport Ultra USB-C edition. DETAILS The My Passport Ultra USB-C edition has the same compact design as classic My Passport drives from WD with the addition of a USB-C port. The case has been modified slightly from previous versions to include a metal cover. The drive is USB-C ready (as previously mentioned) and compatible with USB 3.0 (with the use of a provided adapter).
The hard drive can act as an automatic backup drive and features password protection as an option. The hard drive can also be encrypted using 256-bit AES hardware encryption through WD Security. Thanks to WD’s built-in software, WD Discovery, the drive also features social media and cloud storage import.
This utility software can also help to manage your hard drive with WD Drive Utilities. Out of the box, the drive is Windows 10 ready, but it can be formatted to work with Mac computers, too. The My Passport Ultra USB-C is available in three sizes — 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. It’s very easy to use and has a 3-year limited warranty. There are two color options — Blue/Black and Silver. USB-C version (blue) versus USB 3.0 version (white/gold) Package Includes: • My Passport Ultra Portable Storage • USB-C™ cable with USB 3.0 adapter • WD Discovery™ software* for WD Backup™, WD Security™ and WD Drive Utilities™ • Quick install guide USER EXPERIENCE The My Passport Ultra USB-C is an updated version of the My Passport Ultra (2017). The older version was only available with a USB 3.0 connection cable, which meant that users like me (with a USB-C MacBook computer) would have to use an adapter or dock in order to interface with the hard drive.
The physical size of the hard drive hasn’t changed much model-to-model except that the corners are rounded on the 2018 model and it simply looks sleeker. Both models are formatted for Windows machines out of the box, but you can reformat using Paragon NTFS for Mac (included with the drive). The My Passport Ultra USB-C is really an exceptional hard drive. It does a beautiful job of storing data and makes it really easy to keep a portable drive with me at all times. The one thing you really have to be cautious of is the fact that this is a mechanical hard drive and not an SSD. Because of that, the hard drive does not have any shock protection.
If it is thrown around a lot, it will be more prone to fail. That said, because it is a ‘portable’ hard drive, I think that it’s probably a bit more svelte than other mechanical drives. To date, I’ve not had any issue with Western Digital’s portable hard drives being carried by hand during daily treks through the urban jungle or on a coast-to-coast airplane ride. One of the first things I usually do with any hard drive I test out is to open up Disk Utility to see that the capacity of the drive matches what the box says. In this case, Disk Utility stated that it was a 2TB hard drive which matched up with the packaging. Because the drive is formatted for Windows and I use a Mac, I did end up using Paragon NTFS to erase and reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so I could use it freely with my MacBook Pro. After the formatting, the drive showed up as a 2TB drive, but space was shown as ‘free’ instead of used like it did when it was formatted as NTFS.