• Designed for Mac and ready to be used with Time Machine, the 2TB My Passport for Mac USB 3.0 Type-C External Hard Drive from WD can be used to create system backups, store your photos and videos and much more. The drive comes preformatted in HFS+ for Mac and works out of the box; simply plug the drive in and begin transferring your files.
• WD My Passport Studio Review. This video is unavailable. Watch Queue Queue.

The Bottom Line Whether you use a Mac or a PC, the 320GB Western Digital My Passport Studio is the perfect compact external drive with a low cost per GB, a.

There has generally been little difference from one external hard drive to the next (especially in the highly portable 2.5-inch models). Maybe one was a bit smaller than another, or it had Firewire in addition to USB 2.0, but there has often been little to differentiate them aside from capacity and price (generally a function of capacity). In the recent past we’ve seen more drive enclosures offering color options and docks of negligible usefulness, but that’s about all the drive manufacturers offered up to consumers.

Here’s a little secret though–hard drive manufacturers hate just selling hard drives. If a drive is just a dumb box for your pictures and videos (and honestly, not many casual consumers care about the specifications) then who cares if their drive is a Western Digital or Seagate? No one wants their product to be a commidity, so what we see are companies striving for innovation. Doing that with an external hard drive is tough though because it’s such a barebones product.

WD has found their answer in one of today’s hottest technologies: e-ink e-Label. The storage company has integrated an e-ink display into their 2.5-inch external hard drive, the My Passport Studio, as they did previously with the My Book Elite. The Studio series is WD’s higher-end external storage variant aimed at well-heeled Mac users who are willing to pay a premium for a Firewire 400/800 connection (in addition to USB 2.0) so e-ink is a perfect fit. It not only matches the design aesthetic of the Studio series, but it adds a bit of functionality and helps justify the price premium.

And there is a price premium. The 640GB My Passport Studio with e-ink sells for $199 from straight from WD. That’s $50 more than the standard 640GB My Passport Essential and the same prices as the 1TB My Passport Essential SE. The good news is that the street price is much less. You can find the Studio for around $160 if you do some searching online.

The e-ink display is two lines, and measures about 1.75×0.5-inches. It can display a label (12 alphanumeric characters), a fill gauge, the amount of gigabytes free storage, and if the drive is encrypted or not. It’s simple, but it gets the job done; you won’t ever have to slap a sticker on your drive or plug it in to determine how much space you have left. The coloring can be in standard or reversed mode (pictured) so that you can either have the text appear black-on-grey or grey-on-black. And, best of all, because e-ink only uses power when in changes states, the label is always there telling you want you want to know.

Along with the e-ink label the My Passport Studio has a new feature, though this one is shared with all of WD’s new external products. The software is called SmartWare, and it’s actually quite good. I have an extensive video covering it as well as setting up the drive, so check out below for a ton of details:

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In case you don’t want to check out the video, SmartWare will allow you to configure your drive, customize your e-ink label, setup a backup, encrypt/password protect the drive, and do much more. It has diagnostics tools and file backup with versioning. It’s basically a one-stop-shop for working with your WD drive. And, unlike most drive managers in the past, it’s worth checking out.

The My Passport Studio is limited by USB 2.0 (unlikes some new USB 3.0 products) but it still manages good transfer rates. In the test above you can see the read/write speeds achieved by the drive, tested with a HP EliteBook 8540p. These are above-average speeds for a USB 2.0 product, so unless you are getting a new USB 3.0-enabled computer soon, there is nothing to worry about.

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While the My Passport Studio includes a premium, it’s undeniably a cool product. For some people the e-ink label will just be a gimmick, for others it will be a very useful tool for cataloging their storage. So while the e-ink and Firewire mean this USB hard drive isn’t for everyone (it is aimed at Apple users after all), the new SmartWare software makes WD’s USB product range more attractive than ever.

Update: For the sake of clarification I wanted to mention that WD technically uses E-Label, not E-Ink. E-Ink is a trademarked term for a certain type of electronic paper technology, and while this is generally the term used for any display like this, it isn’t technically the correct usage here.

Wd My Passport Studio For Mac Reviews

If used as a shorter version of the term “electronic ink” then “e-ink” could be seen as being correct, but the fact remains that WD’s built-in displays are not provided by the E-Ink Corporation.