WD My Passport for Mac 2TB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0

• Ultra-fast transfer rates with USB 3.0 interface
• Compatible with Apple Time Machine
• Password protection and hardware encryption
• Manufacturer Limited Warranty: 2 Years

For 10 years now I've been a loyal customer of Western Digital hard drives. They are my brand of choice when it's time to upgrade or expand my system. In the last 10 years, I have not had even a single hard drive crash or failure. This is significant considering that I currently own 4 WD external drives and 4 WD internal drives. I've also owned and gave away another 2 externals drives and 4 internal drives. That makes 14 Western Digital hard drives with zero problems.

This new WD My Passport Mac specific hard drive meets all of my expectations. It is very fast at USB 3.0 transfer speeds. Plus the actual hdd stored inside is impressively fast too. I've gotten ride of 2 Seagate external hard drives because of slow disks even when they are housed in USB 3.0 cases. The disk speed is important.

The specs on this drive are no different than the other new WD My Passport hard drives, EXCEPT that this drive is formatted HFS+ Journaled for Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion. To use this with Windows it must be reformatted. So if you are a Windows user or looking for a drive to use with both Windows and Mac you are better off purchasing a standard WD My Passport.

Buy WD My Passport for Mac 2TB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 Now

This is a fantastic hard drive for photo or video editors that work on the road. It's very small and very light. Its USB 3.0 speeds are very good, making it a great choice for a Photoshop or Final Cut scratch disc. It's smaller and cheaper than portable Thunderbolt drives. Of course it's not as fast, but for mobile photo and video editing it offers a compelling price/performance combination. I used the drive as a video scratch disc on a MacBook Pro 2012 -which has USB 3.0 -and was very pleased with the performance.

For home use, it's not as compelling, though still very good. Generally speaking, you can get faster and cheaper external drives, with the caveat being you'll also need an external power source for the extra performance. The USB 2.0 speeds are good, but not extraordinary. For people that don't travel and/or can't take advantage of USB 3.0 speeds, there are several cheaper choices that are also a bit faster.

The Western Digital utilities included in the drive are good for novices, but people familiar with hard drive care and security can ignore them.

Overall, this is a quality drive that's good for most uses and outstanding for certain users. For home and office use, it's a good drive. For photo and video editors that travel, this is a fantastic product that offers fast USB 3.0 performance at a relatively low price. For people that don't want to pay the high price for a portable Thunderbolt scratch disc, this is an appealing alternative.

Read Best Reviews of WD My Passport for Mac 2TB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 Here

Apparently, it "looks" like aluminium because of the grey/silver casing but it is not. I spoke with an Amazon CSO, and she said that it really was aluminium so I bought it. I feel so cheated! That's the materials part.

On the actual purpose of the product which is to store data, it works fine. But I wouldn't recommend this and would recommend the other 2 TB WD Drive in black instead which is cheaper and does the same thing. For Mac users, even though it says formatted for Windows, don't worry; you can use Disk Utility to reformat the drive when it comes.

So the difference between this and the 2 TB WD in black? The casing. Just a different colour. And you pay more because it says "For Mac".

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I have been using the Western Digital My Passport Studio 1 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive WDBK8A0010BBK-NESN for my Macbook Pro and Macbook Air. It was a very slick drive, enclosed with brushed aluminium case and supports Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 connections. Now, I have the WD My Passport for Mac which looked very similar to the WD My Passport Studio. I have been using it for a month now and would like to share my thoughts here.

The My Passport for Mac is a very small external drive. Unlike My Passport Studio, it has a plastic enclosure painted like a metal case. The My Passport for Mac is lighter and smaller than My Passport Studio. I was amazed by its storage capacity, 2TB! I guessed from the size that the My Passport for Mac uses a 2.5 inch hard drive and have never seen 2TB in this size before. Now is the time not to be surprised with a notebook computer equipped with 2TB capacity. Isn't it cool? Using a 2.5 inch drive means that it does not need any bulky AC adapter to carry. I always prefer to bring a 2.5 inch external drive for this reason and My Passport Studio has been served very well for this purpose. Until last month.

Unfortunately, I had to test the My Passport for Mac only with USB 2.0, since my college kid took my only mac equipped with USB 3.0. I was expecting the My Passport for Mac worked great on USB 3.0, but here was my Xbench disk test result of the My Passport for Mac on USB 2.0 connection.

Disk Test 41.22

Sequential 39.60

Uncached Write 47.24 29.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 40.64 22.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 24.74 7.24 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 67.49 33.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 42.98

Uncached Write 20.18 2.14 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 55.98 17.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 66.82 0.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 93.62 17.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Compared with the My Passport Studio on USB 2.0, which got 33.82 on disk test score, the My Passport for Mac was slightly faster in random read/write access. But in real life, both drives felt fast and did not notice much difference (if I used a USB 3.0 connection, I bet the difference would be obvious).

My choice right now is definitely the My Passport for Mac. It is smaller, lighter and has the double capacity of the My Passport Studio. I am still wowed by the fact that this tiny drive has that much space (2TB is huge for me). I have not had any problem with the My Passport for Mac and love to carry it anywhere. I did not try the software that came with it and have no intention of using it in the future. The reason why I gave 4 stars instead of 5 is that I do not know about the reliability which I think is important yet.

Overall, I love the small size and the capacity of this drive so much. This is a great drive even on USB 2.0 connection.

I've transitioned from PCs to Macs in the last eight months, and one of the best parts of the transition is how easy it is to back up a Mac. Time Machine...boom. All you need is a back-up destination with lots of space.

And the Western Digital My Passport for Mac is a perfect destination. Plug it in...the Mac sees it...tell Time Machine to back-up to it...and you're good. Amazing.

The portable (that is, it uses the computer's power via the USB cable) hard drive comes with a couple of tools / applications:

WD Security allows you to protect the data on your drive with a password. I'm not a hacker so I'm not sure how robust this protection is it seems enough to keep someone like me out!

WD Drive Utilities: Diagnostics, Sleep Timer, Drive Erase, and Registration. All the tools seem to work well, and none are too invasive (unlike, say, some of the back-up apps that come with external drives made for PCs).

I've backed-up two Macs (a Mini and a MacBook Air) with My Passport for Mac; everything went smoothly and fairly quickly (though I can't really see a big difference between the Passport's USB 3 capabilities and my older USB 2 devices). I'll update this review if I encounter any issues down the road.