WD has announced a new high-speed portable hard drive aimed at photographers, film makers and musicians. My Passport Pro is a compact, dual-drive unit powered by Intel's new high-speed Thunderbolt connector. The lightweight drive comes in capacities of 2 and 4TB and can be set up for data striping (RAID 0) for high performance or mirroring (RAID 1) for complete data redundancy.
The drive is bus powered so there is no need for power adapters or additional cables. It comes with a single Thunderbolt cable which can be stowed in the drive casing when it's not in use.
“WD’s My Passport Pro enhances the workflow of mobile creative professionals by providing fast transfers and data protection for the large amounts of digital content they generate outside the studio,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president of branded products and worldwide sales, WD.
The My Passport Pro offers speeds up to 233 MB/s, with a 1GB movie file copying from a MacBook Air to the drive in around five seconds. The drive is faster than USB 3.0, with the ability to copy a 22 GB high-definition video file in half the time typically required by a USB 3.0 drive working in RAID 0 format.
My Passport Pro houses two 2.5-inch hard drives and has been shock-tested for extra durability. It ships with software to configure RAID options and maintain disk integrity. The 2TB model retails for $499.99, the 4TB model for $649.
