WD My Passport Studio Review
The Pros: The WE My Passport Studio external hard drive has both Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 inputs. It is scratch proof. Offers stable performance
The Cons: It does not support USB 3.0 and still is a little pricey.
Summary: This external hard drive is strictly for Mac users and it is a fast portable drive.
Design and features
The WD My Passport Studio is definitely sleek. It has a storage capacity of 1TB which is plenty for most users. It is fully covered in metal with two
WD my passport studio
different colors being mostly black and the remaining is white. It has two Firewire 800 inputs on the top along with one USB 2.0 slot. Also the power light is on top that shines blue when it is on. This drive also works with Firewire 400. The drive will come with the Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 cables, but you will need to buy a cable if you are wanting to use Firewire 400. It also is powered through these cables so you do not need a power cable of any sort. Less cables = good, agree?
If you know anything about the previous model you will know that it came with an electric label or a storage gauge. This one does not. This one just keeps it simple and sleek. It is already preformatted for Mac systems that are running OS 10.4 or later. Once you plug the external hard drive in and get into it, you will see the installer for the WD Utilities and security apps. The drive utilities are tools for reformatting, diagnosing the drive, and for a sleep timer is you choose. You can also create a password on the drive to prevent unauthorized access.
Mac doesn’t support USB 3.0 connections usually, so if you are a Windows user look elsewhere. Even though this drive can be formatted into NTFS to comply with Windows it would be a waste due to the lack of supporting 3.0 which means it would be really slow.
Performance
The WD My Passport Studio offered pretty good performance using both USB 2.0 and Firewire 800.
When testing USB 2.0 it ranged around the average mark of all portable drives we have tested. Read speeds were 26mbps and write speeds were 33mbps. When using Firewire 800 the results were much higher of course with speeds at 69mbps write and 79mbps read. These speeds are somewhat slow compared to usb 3.0 supported machines, but this drive is not meant for Windows so these speeds are actually almost as good as they get for the Mac.
After long use, the WD My passport did get warm, but it stayed very quiet and did not vibrate.
Warranty
The drive comes with a 2 year warranty which is not the best, but is around average.
Conclusion
This drive is one of the best external hard drives for Mac users, but not so much for Windows users. Windows users need to look elsewhere for a USB 3.0 supported external hard drive. Windows users can find some better ones that are not as pricey as this one.
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