WD MyPassport Pro – Up to 4TB fast in your backpack

Archiving data is a problem that plagues much of the technology enthusiast but not limited to: PCs, smartphones and tablets have brought personal productivity, more or less frivolous, to a level unthinkable a few years ago.

If all this is then added the passion (if not profession) for photography and videos, then the problem becomes even more important, because it is truly a moment to accumulate GB on GB which it is imperative to keep at least one backup.

Run out of space on the system disk, no matter how large, it is only a matter of time; That’s why the markets are multiplying visibly options to extend the capacity of your archive with external solutions to your PC, whether they consist of physical devices or cloud services on the network. It should be clear to understand what are the solutions to each one, as we will explore in the conclusions.

Now we focus instead on a new storage device is unique in its genre, the WD MyPassport Pro, which is aimed at a niche audience certainly, but potentially able to receive the benefits that this new external hard drive can offer.

We talked about hard disk to begin to understand what it’s about, but to be exact WD MyPassport Pro integrates two, in the 2.5-inch form factor, which can be configured in chains RAID 0, RAID 1, or JBOD.

The choice is Thunderbolt interface, so it is designed for Apple users and little else (there are Windows PC with Thunderbolt interface, but they are very few), but to characterize the unit really is the absence of a power supply, since this interface is able to supply enough watts to operate.

With USB 3.0, this would not be possible, since the limit of 4.5 W; Thunderbolt comes to 10W instead, and that explains why the unit was not designed with USB 3.0, and much more widespread with a pool of potential customers vastly superior.

As we have already stated it is a niche product, with the uniqueness of being transported without a power supply and at the same time offering high capacities and speeds far superior to those of a normal external hard drive mechanic (of course in the case of RAID 0 configuration).

The unit is made entirely of aluminum, like many similar devices principally intended for the Apple world; worth mentioning is the integration of the Thunderbolt cable that wraps around the chassis and going to get stuck in the slot. Two cuts are available, ie 2TB and 4TB, which differ not only for this feature but also by the thickness.

The 2TB drives is made of 2.5-inch hard drive standard (9.5 mm thick), which helped to contain the total thickness of less than 3cm (28.7 mm to be exact). The 4TB model, in practice, it is instead a ” tile ” almost 4.5 cm thick (44.2 mm), since the two disks have integrated 15mm each.

The performance speaks about 230MB per second read and write, of course in RAID 0 ( ” striping “, they add performance and capacity of the unit), while we expect a value more or less halved if you chain events constituted a RAID 1 ” mirrored “, which replicates the data on the disc even in the other.

The units are sold with HFS J, typical of the Apple world, but you can format the whole thing even in exFAT, if you intend to use WD MyPassport Pro with Microsoft operating systems (and not only). Closes the overview of the features the 3-year warranty, while the prices on the last page, we’ll take an idea, when you pull the money.