Designed for Mac and ready to be used with Time Machine, the 2TB My Passport for Mac USB 3.0 Type-C External Hard Drive from WD can be used to create system backups, store your photos and videos and much more. The drive comes preformatted in HFS+ for Mac and works out of the box; simply plug the drive in and begin transferring your files. Getting Started with a My Passport Studio How to format a WD hard drive to exFAT or FAT32 file system. Answer ID 291. This answer explains how to setup and use WD Security and WD Drive Utilities on a Windows or Mac computer. How to install WD Security & WD Drive Utilities.
- Western Digital My Passport For Mac
- Wd Passport Mac Compatibility
- Wd My Passport Studio For Mac Reviews
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Western Digital My Passport Studio 1 TB Hard Drive for Macintosh 5:29:10 PM Comments: If you are looking for the Cadillac of external hard drives to use with your Mac, you have found it in this drive. Designed for Mac and ready to be used with Time Machine, the 2TB My Passport for Mac USB 3.0 Type-C External Hard Drive from WD can be used to create system backups, store your photos and videos and much more. The drive comes preformatted in HFS+ for Mac and works out of the box; simply plug the drive in and begin transferring your files.
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Western Digital My Passport Studio 500GB
On paper, the My Passport Studio 500GB has a lot going for it. It’s compact, offers three different connection types, has a healthy amount of storage space, and comes with a five-year warranty. On top of it all, the My Passport Studio features what the company calls 'Turbo' capabilities that is supposed to boost data transfer speeds. In our time trials, we found the Turbo drivers did boost the speed of the connection a bit, but we found that even with the boost the My Passport Studio is only an average performer.
The external shell is simple, but what the drive lacks in stylistic verve it makes up for in ease of use. Already formatted for the Mac, the My Passport Studio can be easily attached into a computer with your connection of choice—FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0. Like many portable drives, the My Passport Studio doesn’t offer eSATA. No separate power source is required; the drive uses power from USB or FireWire.
Back in 2007, Buffalo introduced USB Turbo technology that supposedly increased USB data transfer rates by up to 60 percent. Now, many external drives offer USB Turbo technology for the PC; it's not always available on the Mac. This is the first drive we’ve reviewed that offers FireWire 800 and 400 Turbo as well. To use the My Passport Studio's Turbo features, you need to install WD's drivers. The drivers are available on the drive itself (so don't format the drive without looking first), or you can download the drivers from WD's Web site.
On average, the USB connection was improved by only six percent with the Turbo drivers. The results with the FireWire 400 and 800 connections were even less impressive; on average, the connection speed only improved 2 to 3 seconds compared to the test results without the Turbo drivers installed.
The results could have used a more significant boost with the turbo capabilities, because the drive's scores were disappointing in our time trials. It took 52 seconds to copy a 1GB file while using the USB 2.0 Turbo connection. This speed puts it on par with competing drives, but its FireWire 400 (51 seconds) and 800 (41 seconds) Turbo copy results were less than impressive. While using the FireWire 800 connection, OWC's Mercury On-The-Go FireWire 800/400 + USB 2.0 () beat the My Passport Studio by a full 6 seconds, or 15 percent. The 1GB Duplication Test and Low-Memory Photoshop Test were all generally a few seconds off the best times posted by other external drives. Interestingly, the FireWire 400 Turbo and USB 2.0 Turbo connections produced very similar scores that were within the margin of error; both finished the duplication test around 1 minute, 15 seconds and took 1 minute, 37 seconds to complete the Photoshop test. Unfortunately, while the scores are satisfactory, the added Turbo capabilities were disappointing.
The 500GB capacity of the My Passport Studio is fairly large for a portable drive, but can’t compete with the higher capacities of non-portable desktop drives. It’s still plenty of space to fit music, photos, and other media but can’t compete with the one or two terabyte capacities of high-end drives. Normally priced at $250, the 500GB My Passport Studio has a price per gigabyte of 50 cents. Western Digital currently is offering a promotional discount that brings the price of the drive down to $200 and the price per gigabyte down to 40 cents. This later price is even more impressive than the Toshiba USB 2.0, which has a price per gigabyte of 45 cents, and lacks the My Passport Studio’s FireWire 400 and 800 connections.
Timed trials
Western Digital My Passport For Mac
without Turbo | with Turbo | |
Copy 1GB file to USB 2.0 | 0:56 | 0:52 |
---|---|---|
Copy 1GB file to FireWire 400 | 0:53 | 0:51 |
Copy 1GB file to FireWire 800 | 0:43 | 0:41 |
Duplicate 1GB file via USB 2.0 | 1:22 | 1:15 |
Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 400 | 1:23 | 1:16 |
Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 800 | 0:53 | 0:52 |
Low-memory Photoshop: USB 2.0 | 1:40 | 1:37 |
Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 400 | 1:39 | 1:37 |
Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 800 | 1:28 | 1:26 |
Scale = Minutes: Seconds
How we tested. We ran all tests with drives connected to a Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz Xeon with Mac OS X 10.5 installed and 1GB of RAM. We tested the drive with each available port—FireWire 800, USB 2, and FireWire 400 to 800 adapter. We copied a folder containing 1GB of data from our Mac’s hard drive to the external hard drive to test the drive’s write speed. We then duplicated that file on the external drive to test both read and write speeds. We also used the drive as a scratch disk when running our low-memory Adobe Photoshop CS3 Suite test. This test is a set of four tasks performed on a 150MB file, with Photoshop’s memory set to 25 percent—Macworld Lab Testing by Chris Holt
Macworld’s buying advice
Despite its claims to faster connection speeds with Turbo offerings, the scores for the My Passport Studio 500GB were only average compared to competing three-port drives. For users looking for a compact drive with a lot of storage and don’t care about having the absolutely best connection speeds on the market, the My Passport Studio is a fine option. If the connection speeds improved, the My Passport Studio would be the market's best option.
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Western Digital My Passport Studio 500GB
Cons
- Turbo feature not as fast as advertised
- No eSATA option available
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Wd Passport Mac Compatibility
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Western Digital My Passport Studio for Mac 640GB
Some developers refresh their product lines infrequently, only changing their formula when they’re able to dramatically improve performance or offer new features. In contrast, others release new editions of their line seemingly every year, continually evolving their line as a car company would. Western Digital falls into this latter category, but that doesn’t mean their latest My Passport Studio portable hard drive isn’t a huge leap forward for the portable line. Thanks to an innovative new display and some solid connection speeds, the My Passport Studio is a solid successor to Western Digital’s tradition.
The latest My Passport Studio offers a dual interface design with FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connectivity. The drive also comes Time Machine ready and offers capacities of 640GB, 500GB, and 320GB. The unit we tested had 640GB of storage.
The unit itself is slightly shorter and more rounded than the previous version, weighing in at 0.4 pounds and with dimensions of 3.3 by 0.7 by 4.8 inches. Visual studio for mac wikipedia. It feels flimsy in your hands but survived several of our drop tests with no ill effects. The My Passport Studio is light enough to put in your pocket and take with you anywhere.
The My Passport Studio features a sleek silver aluminum exterior with white trim and a new smart display. Even when unplugged, you can view the white on black customizable label. The display can reveal what’s on the drive, to whom it belongs to, or indicate some other message to its owner. Meanwhile, the display also lets you know the available capacity and security status of the drive.
The My Passport Studio features a 2.5-inch drive with a 8MB cache and a 5400-rpm drive mechanism. The drive offers both USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 ports, though users can also achieve FireWire 400 connectivity with a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 cord (not included).
With only a 5400 rpm mechanism and without eSATA connectivity, it’s not surprising that the My Passport Studio did not achieve the best times we’ve seen in our lab tests. The My Passport Studio finished our 1GB copy test in 31 seconds while using its FireWire 800 connection—6 seconds behind OWC’s Mercury Elite-AL Pro Mini (), our top product for portable hard drives.
The My Passport Studio fared better in our duplication tests, finishing the test in 39 seconds with its FireWire 800 connection enabled. That’s actually a second better than the Mercury Elite AL Pro Mini. Unfortunately, the low-memory Photoshop tests proved to be comparatively difficult for the My Passport Studio; its FireWire 800 score was 20 seconds slower than the Elite AL Pro Mini’s. Microsft visual studio mac os for college student.
Why the up and down times? The AJA tests only complicate the narrative: the My Passport Studio has slower read speeds than the Mercury Pro with its FireWire 800 connection. However, My Passport Studio produced better write times than the Elite Al Pro Mini. This is impressive considering the My Passport has a 5400-rpm mechanism, compared to the Elite AL Pro Mini’s 7200-rpm mechanism, and the copy tests (usually a pure write test) are worse for the My Passport.
Timed trials
Copy 1GB file to USB 2.0 | 0:49 |
---|---|
Copy 1GB file to FireWire 400 | 0:36 |
Copy 1GB file to FireWire 800 | 0:31 |
Duplicate 1GB file via USB 2.0 | 1:21 |
Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 400 | 0:58 |
Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 800 | 0:39 |
Low-memory Photoshop: USB 2.0 | 4:09 |
Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 400 | 3:45 |
Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 800 | 3:13 |
How we tested. We ran all tests with the drive connected to a Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz Xeon with 2GB of RAM running OS 10.6. We tested the drive with each available port. We copied a folder containing 1GB of data from our Mac's hard drive to the external hard drive to test the drive's write speed. We then duplicated that file on the external drive to test both read and write speeds. We also used the drive as a scratch disk when running our low-memory Adobe Photoshop CS4 Suite test. This test is a set of four tasks performed on a 300MB file, with Photoshop's memory set to 25 percent.—Macworld Lab testing by Chris Holt
AJA tests
Write | Read | |
---|---|---|
USB | 20.5MBps | 39.7MBps |
FireWire 400 | 34.2MBps | 38.6MBps |
FireWire 800 | 69.1MBps | 81.9MBps |
The 640GB My Passport Studio will set you back $200, giving it a price per gigabyte of $.31. That’s pricey, even for a portable drive. LaCie’s Rikiki (), for example, is a measly $.22 per gigabyte. The My Passport Studio comes with a three-year warranty. Stop motion studio mac free.
Macworld’s buying advice
Western Digital’s My Passport Studio provides satisfactory (though not exceptional) speed, a strong warranty, and a convenient digital label. If you’re a fan of Western Digital’s line of drives, you’ll appreciate the company constantly seeks to improve their storage solutions and the digital label is just that—an upgrade. If you’re not a fan, however, you’ll likely wonder why you’re paying so much for such unexceptional performance.
[Chris Holt is a Macworld associate editor.]
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Wd My Passport Studio For Mac Reviews
Western Digital My Passport Studio for Mac 640GB
Cons
- Mixed speed results