WD adds 1TB portable Mac drive
My Passport SE
Western Digital has extended its portable drive line for the Mac with 750GB and 1TB models.
WD's My Passport line of portable 2.5-inch hard drives connect by USB 2.0 to its hosts, Macs in this case. The My Passport SE is the higher capacity variant, with the high-end My Passport Studio adding FireWire 400 and 800 connectivity for faster transfer speed, a capacity gauge and other goodies such as an e-ink label.
My Passports for Mac top out at 640GB. The new My Passport SE adds 750GB and 1TB capacity points. The My Passport Studio offer 320GB and 640GB capacity points.
WD's new My Passport SE is the Mac version of its existing My Passport Essentials SE, a 750 and 1TB portable drive for Windows PCs.
The My Passport SE drives are compatible with Time Machine and come with 256-bit hardware encryption and password protection. The manufacturer's recommended price is $179.99 for the 750GB version and $199.99 for the terabyte tip of the line model. They're available from WD's online store. ®
COMMENTS
Agree, sort of
Indeed. Having said that, I was looking for a 750GB external drive with Firewire 800. The only ones I could find were all labelled 'Mac'. I think I got an Iomega of some description. Whatever it was, it came with sockets for FW800, 400 and USB2 (and cables for each. Handy).
Anyway, the key point is, your probably better off getting an external drive that does FW800 as it's much faster than USB in most situations (especially sustained data transfer -- my particular use case as I store all my 1080p HD video on there). They usually come with USB for more basic machines (though the HFS+ can be an issue -- so pretty much a few thousand MacBook Pros before they put FW back in).
Oh, and it was silver too!
Mac Drive?!
WTF? No such thing as a "Mac drive"! Sold to muppets who have to have everything labelled as Mac-stuff. When I need 1TB for my iMac, I went to Amazon and simply ordered a USB external HD and reformatted it to HFS! Alright I bought a silver cased one just so it would like nicer, but it wasn't labelled as "Mac drive"!
Blimey, these were available in Aus over a month ago.
A bit late on this news.....
I picked up an 640Gb SE in Melbourne in the middle of Feb for the bargain price of $79 aus - it was a return since some bloke had claimed it was 'missing' 40gb rolf!!!
Also the windows ones work perfectly in a mac once reformatted (including the password protection) the windows drives even have the mac wdsmartware / annoying virtual cd on them which can - or rather *should* be disabled cos' it sucks).
Anyways the 1Gb were on the shelves at the same time with 'ouch' pricing. The interesting thing is that you can't crack these externals open for use in other things - no sata connection AT ALL - purely usb on the drive - first time I've ever seen that.
