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WD gives My Passport spinning rust drives a lick of paint

Colourless My Passport for Mac and My Book drives are boring black only

WD has refeshed the design style of its portable USB 3.0 My Passport, My Passport for Mac and desktop My Book external disk drives, using colours and texture.

We guess it has ambitions of competing more strongly with Seagate's designer-influenced LaCie brand.

The design was worked on by fuseproject and the descriptive language is the usual enjoyable, or excruciating, prose endemic to such organisations; take your pick.

Yves Béhar, founder and principal designer at fuseproject, came out with a canned quote: “Western Digital lies at the intersection of our physical life and the digital world, and we wanted to create a quality aesthetic that symbolizes this intersection.”

WD's SVP for its Content Solutions Business Unit, Jim Welsh also indulged in breathless canned quotery that is worth lingering over: "The team focused on the design and user experience to catapult My Passport and My Book to the next level. Through the reimagined design language, we want to engage consumers in a conversation about how storage is core to their lives and how they feel more empowered by the real benefits of capturing, protecting and enjoying life’s precious memories.”

WD_My_Passport

Six colourways for My Passports

Empowered indeed. Jeez Jim, these are just spinning rust drives in pretty cases for storing files.

Some details:

  • My Passport
    • Six colours – black, yellow, red, white, orange and blue
    • Password protection with 256-bit AES hardware encryption
    • Automatic backup with included WD Backup software
    • My Passport for Mac (in black only) is formatted for Mac OS X and Time Machine
    • 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB capacity levels
    • 1TB drive is 16.3mm (0.64in) thick while the others are 21.5mm (0.85in) thick
WD_My_Book

My Book making a spectacle of itself

  • My Book
    • Password protection with hardware encryption
    • Black only
    • Automatic backup with included WD Backup software
    • From 3TB to 8TB capacity (was 2TB - 8TB before)
WD_My_Passport_Mac

My Passport for Mac looking like a pocket hand warmer

My Passport and My Passport for Mac portable hard drives are protected by a two year limited warranty and are available from wd.com and at select retailers and distributors around the world. My Passport drives start at $79.99 (£67.99) for 1TB. A 3TB MyBook is $129.99. ®

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