Roger Fingas
Western Digital on Thursday announced the My Passport SSD, not only its first portable SSD but a unit designed with Apple's latest MacBooks in mind, thanks to a built-in USB-C port.
The drive in fact requires a bundled Type-A adapter to work with traditional USB. When connected to either USB-C or USB 3.x, it can hit speeds of up to 515 megabytes per second — it's not Thunderbolt 3-compatible, however.
For basic file transfers the drive should be ready out of the box. Proprietary backup software is included, and it can also be reformatted for macOS's Time Machine. Through a WD Security app the drive can be locked with 256-bit AES encryption.
Design-wise the drive is said to fit in the palm of the hand, but be engineered to survive drops up to 6.5 feet.
256 gigabyte, 512 gigabyte, and 1 terabyte models are planned, with prices around $100, $200, and $400, respectively. A launch date has yet to be revealed.
USB-C is the only USB format natively supported by current MacBook and MacBook Pro models. Apple has yet to bring the technology to other Macs, though iMacs shipping this year will likely include it, as should future Mac minis, and a redesigned Mac Pro coming in 2018.
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16 Comments
Bearing in mind that free, bundled "proprietary backup software" usually translates to "nothing anyone should consider using."
Yeah if those are the prices I'll be pretty pleased. I paid $340 for my 256gb external ssd three years ago. (And ages ago i paid $300 for a used 300mb spinning HD. ah those were the days...)
A Crucial 275GB MX300 SSD goes for about $95 on B&H, so the pricing seems on par at the low end. However, pricing for the 512GB model is about $50 more than a bare SSD, and about $120 more than a bare 1TB SSD. I wonder why the upper tier is so out of line with the pricing of a bare SSD. I understand that you have to cover the cost of the housing, circuitry, and cables, but it would be reasonable to assume that those costs would be the same across the range.
Choices and competition are good. USB 3.1 Gen 2 in Western My Passport SSD is great. But how does it fully compare to the current gold standard: Samsung Portable SSD T3, which amazingly remains cold even after booting Mac and working from it all day long? http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/portable/t3.html BTW, bring also larger sizes like 4TB and larger (T3 already has 2TB).