WD My Passport Air – Review

The WD My Passport is a real fact of portable hard drives, and it is rare to find a person who has not tried it or had a My Passport at least once in his life. I myself own one and are looking for a second. Could it be the My Passport Air next? Let’s see it together.

This particular unit has been designed especially for Mac computers, especially for the MacBook Air, the thinnest notebook from Apple (hence the name), although perfect for all the other MacBook. The Mac is ready for something that is not seen often in the outdoor unit, usually all initialized and ready to be used on Windows. This hard drive is formatted for Mac (HFS Journaled Formatted for Mac OS X Lion or Mountain Lion), and if you are Windows users, it’s up to you now reformatting.

The WD My Passport Air is sold in a pack yellow and black, that does not go very unnoticed, and difficult to open (at least for me). Inside is the hard disk, USB cable and documentation, a user guide and warranty.

The product is very thin with its 11mm thick, all-aluminum, designed to fit and complement the shape of the MacBook Air. The back and sides of the My Passport Air are silver anodized and brushed, while the upper part of black color with logo printed on the WD My Passport Air. The build is very stylish but above all the feeling of strength, apparently destined to last over time. On the back edge next to the USB port, there is an LED, which indicates to us, flashing, the drive is working.

Being an Apple user, and in particular, owning a MacBook Pro, I had to do was attach the drive to the USB port and open the device ready for use. Fortunately, the reviewer who has tested the product before me was not in the Windows environment, thus leaving the file preloaded software installation. The WD My Passport Air is bus-powered, so there was no need for a separate power supply. The USB 3.0 interface work much faster (300%) compared to USB 2.0 compatible.

In addition, the drive is compatible with Apple Time Machine for backups fast and easy, and it comes, as mentioned earlier, with applications WD Drive Utilities – Security. The WD Drive Utilities software allows you to configure, manage, and diagnose the WD drives. With WD Drive Utilities, you can run the drive diagnostics, manage the RAID configuration (for models with RAID support), delete and format the drive, set the timer for the suspension of the unit (in the units supported) and record the unit.

WD My Passport Air – Specifications

During operation, the Air is like a typical external hard drive, though (could be my imagination) a bit faster. Since the Macbook Pro used for this review does not support USB 3.0, cannot say much confirming the specific dates WD. We have tried to transfer about 400 GB of data in a time that is around three hours normal for a device with a USB 2.0 connection.

What else is there to say? The WD My Passport Air is a good partner for your MacBook Air laptop and other Macs (ok, also for Windows computers), with a fast USB 3.0 connection, solid, reliable, all-metal construction with a cover. There are two models, one 500 GB (the one tested by us), and a 1 TB for sale, respectively $95 and $149.99. Recommended!