Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In ten years, I've owned at least five external hard drives from Western Digital and have never had a problem with any of them. They're reliable, well-made, and priced right. I've never had one die on me and the only reason I've owned so many is that they eventually can't hold enough of my media! To this day, I still use the first 60 GB drive I bought for twice this price! The WD My Passport is a very compact, lightweight drive perfect for students or professionals. It's not much larger than a deck of standard playing cards and weighs just a bit more. It uses a USB 3.0 interface, which allows for faster file transfer speeds, but you'll need a computer with the right connection. How can you tell? Basically, if your Mac was purchased before June 2012, it most likely has the slower USB 2.0 ports. All NEW Macs, however, have USB 3.0 ports. If you're not sure, another way to tell is if you look at your USB ports--if it's blue, you're good--if it's white, it's still USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible, though, so it'll still work on a USB 2.0 port; you just won't see the speed increase--it'll transfer at USB 2.0 speeds. Also, USB 3.0's theoretical speeds aren't as fast as Apple's ThunderBolt, but it's the cheaper option. Still, it's a huge speed difference over the older USB 2.0 standard. As an example, I transferred a 25 GB video file from my MacPro to the drive in under 5 minutes; my old USB 2.0 drive took 14. If you're a Mac user, this drive comes formatted in HFS, so it'll work for your right out of the box, no problems. If you're a Windows user, you'll have to reformat it to NTFS (or just buy the regular WD drive, which is usually cheaper and comes formatted for Windows). If you're planning on going between the two platforms, however, you'll need to format it in exFAT using a Windows computer. An exFAT drive will work on any Mac OS running Snow Leopard (10.6.5 ) or later, but you'll need to install a driver for use on Linux. Another final option is to buy a third-party program, like Paragon for Mac, which allows users to write to NTFS volumes, or MacDrive for PC, which mounts HFS volumes. All the technobabble aside, this is a standard 5400 rpm external hard drive that's great for shuttling around large files, and with the faster USB 3.0 speeds, is great for on-the-go editing of raw video footage in Final Cut on a Macbook Pro. For reliability, price, size, and convenience, it's an easy five stars!