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Data storage specialist Western Digital (NYSE: WDC) introduced My Passport Studio, WD’s first 2-terabyte capacity portable drive dedicated for Mac customers. Along with Apple Time Machine compatibility for automatic backup of Mac hard drives, the hard drive allows Mac users to employ one drive for the protection and transport of all their digital content.
The My Passport Studio portable drive maintains its protective all-metal casing to complement the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, while increasing storage capacity to 2TB, enough space for approximately 400,000 photos, 240 hours of video or 500,000 songs. The My Passport Studio 2TB portable hard drive is available on the WD store and at select retailers and distributors, and carries a price of $299.99.
In addition to the USB 2.0 interface, My Passport Studio has two FireWire 800 ports, which make it well-suited for active and mobile creative professionals, including photographers, videographers, graphic artists and others who require the speed, capacity and flexibility to access content wherever they are. The dual FireWire ports provide enhanced upload and transfer speeds while also allowing users to daisy-chain additional drives or other peripherals such as high-definition camcorders. My Passport Studio also features hardware-based encryption and password protection software, and an all-metal design constructed for sturdiness and scratch resistance.
“The My Passport Studio is a perfect companion for the MacBook Pro and for creative professionals on the go,” said Jody Bradshaw, senior director and general manager of WD’s consumer storage products group. “For those who create large content files, such as photographers and videographers, they will now be able to carry it with them wherever they go, as well as create a backup copy of everything they produce without fear of running out of additional storage while on location.”
In March, the company released the next generation of its My Passport storage drives for PCs with a range of capacities, beginning from 500GB and topping out at 2TB. The drives feature the companys SmartWare automatic backup software and WD Security technology for password protection and hardware encryption. The drives are powered through the USB port.
SmartWare features a visual interface that lets users see the WD drives connected to the computer, and automatically scans the computer and finds all personal files, including email. It also lets users restore all of the files theyve backed up or select a particular file or folder and set the number of versions they want to save so they can go back in time to retrieve an older version of a file.