Andrew O'Hara
Western Digital has updated its popular My Passport for Mac drives with a new 5TB model and new colors to complement the fresh design.
According to Western Digital, the new 5TB My Passport for Mac is the world's slimmest portable hard drive at its capacity. The drive is 19.15mm thick — about 3/4 of an inch.
The Windows version of My Passport uses a USB-A to USB-Micro B interface. The My Passport for Mac comes pre-formatted for macOS Mojave and is a USB-C drive, eschewing the older connectors.
Western Digital includes its WD Discovery software on the drives with offers 256-bit AES hardware encryption and a three-year warranty.
The drive is available in several colors including blue, black, and red and the Mac-specific model comes in Midnight Blue. The drive line starts at $79.99 for the 1TB model and are available direct from Western Digital and Best Buy before opening up to more retailers.
Marko Zivkovic
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10 Comments
Perfect. Keep this up (for as long as we need the extra waste).
Actually, the 5TB config is new - though I’m not sure if all the colors were previously available. WD has sold these USB C drives for both Windows and Mac for a while now, but they maxed out at 4TB. They continue to sell the older design drives (USB A to Micro B) as well.
I’ve bought a handful of the 4TB drives (Windows and Mac) in the last year or so - silver is generally the color on sale at Best Buy - reformatting as NTFS to maintain cross-platform compatibility.
Did they make them faster too or it’s the same speed?
The Seagate 5TB external disk at this size has been available for three years. Not sure why WD is so late to the party. The only place I can find the WD at the moment is at B&H for $160. The Seagate is currently under $100 at Amazon. I have two of the Seagate 5TB with no issues (I reformatted for Mac).
BTW, I'm a fan of the WD 20TB My Book Duo, which I've used as mirrored 10TB with my iMac Pro for the past two years with no problems. $700 at B&H or Amazon.
I have a question. If I use this new drive for backup, how do I move my old backups over from a different drive?