WD Introduced a New Design for My Passport and My Book HDDs

Western Digital introduced what they call a modern and innovative redesign of their My Passport, My Passport for Mac, and My Book external hard drive lines. The new drives were created in partnership with fuseproject which is an industrial design and branding firm and the drives were designed with the customer in mind. I’ll provide my take on that later, lets first take a look at the new drives.

The new drives include password protection and 256-it AES hardware encryption which is a nice feature and they come in bright new colours – at least the My Passport drives do. The new series is available in six colours: Black, Yellow, Red, White, Orange and Blue. Capacity wise, the My Passport is available in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB versions. That is quite impressive considering that the three larger models only measure 110 x 81.5 x 21.5mm. The 1TB model is even thinner and only measures 16.3mm width.

The WD My Passport for mac is only available in one colour, black. It is otherwise pretty much identical to the normal My Passport, except that it’s prepared for Mac usage and is Time Machine ready. Same capacities and same measurements apply.

The My Book is for larger storage needs and it is available all the way up to 8TB capacity – but it is also a bit larger. It retains the same design as the My Passport drives, just in large and only in black. Other capacity options include 3TB, 4TB, and 6TB.

As the My Passport, the My Book also comes with WDs auto backup software that makes this side of your operations easy.

I started the article by withholding my opinion and that’s because you should make up your own first. What they call a modern and innovative redesign is what I call cheap looking and toy looking design. The My Book looks pretty good in the new design and the black My Passport is also okay. But the coloured My Passport drives simply don’t look good, at least not in my personal opinion.

All the new drives are protected by a 2-year limited warranty and should be available now. The My Passport drives have a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) starting at $79.99 USD and the My Book drives have a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) starting at $129.99 USD.