![Western digital my passport studio for mac 640 gb vs 1tb Western digital my passport studio for mac 640 gb vs 1tb](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126256535/342861551.jpg)
I have the following WD Passport: My Passport Studio Ultra-portable Hard Drives 640 GB, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 I am using it with my Mac Book Pro, which using Boot Camp, I have Snow Leopard and Windows 7 installed.
Passport is the apt name chosen by Western Digital for its range of portable storage devices, not much bigger than the 2.5in notebook drives they contain.
Western Digital My Passport Studio 640GB is the top model from the range, now more pocketable than ever thanks to extra-rounded corners - and attractive capacities. FireWire connectivity promises great performance too.
We tested the Western Digital My Passport Studio 640GB with a WDC Scorpio Blue drive inside. This relatively cool and quiet hard disk barely makes its presence known, even when busy.
More conspicuous are changes wrought to the outside of the Western Digital My Passport Studio 640GB. An e-label display allows personalisation with a single line of your choosing - name, company or contents - up to 12 upper-case characters.
Also shown is remaining capacity, and a padlock to denote whether the drive is locked - an option from the included WD SmartWare suite. When activated, you're required to enter a password to access drive contents. This is true 256-bit full-disk hardware encryption too, always on whether you set a password or not.
The Western Digital My Passport Studio 640GB unit is immaculately finished in silver and white plastics. On the bottom are micro-USB 2.0 and one FireWire 800 port. Unlike previous generations, the single FireWire means you can't daisy-chain to additional devices. Nor is there a sliding hatch now to help keep out dust, or a soft carry pouch in the box.
![Western Digital My Passport Studio For Mac 640gb Western Digital My Passport Studio For Mac 640gb](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126256535/505234103.jpg)
But at least Western Digital has ironed out the bug that prevented the My Passport Studio from being used for FireWire booting in OS X.
The SmartWare app walks you through setup - label, then locking, and finally the backup software. This automates backup of all or part of your user files to the Western Digital My Passport Studio 640GB. The virtual CD that appears every time you plug in the drive can be switched off here.
WD's Flash-based app can be heavy on system resources though - we saw up to 90 percent CPU usage just cataloguing files before backup.
In lab tests, the Western Digital My Passport Studio 640GB performed well. Tested with HD Tach and HD Tune Pro tools, USB showed read speeds up to 31MB/s and writing at just 15MB/s - not untypical results for USB 2.0.
Wd My Passport Studio
We used the included adaptor cable to measure 34MB/s and 32MB/s respectively, for read and write speeds over FW 400. And over FW 800, the Passport excelled with average read/write speeds of 56MB/s and 44MB/s.
If Western Digital had made its new Digital My Passport Studio USB 3.0 compatible, it would make the most versatile pocket-size external hard drive on the market. Instead, it only supports FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and USB 2.0 connections. Still, it's a handy portable drive that offers up to 640GB of storage and has a cool electronic label that works even when the drive is unplugged.
Western Digital My Passport Mac
The drive performed well when connected via USB 2.0, but its FireWire connections' speeds were much slower than we expected, at least with Windows. Nonetheless, if you need a sleek-looking portable external hard drive for about $200, the 640GB My Passport Studio is a decent storage device. The drive also comes in smaller capacities, 500GB and 320GB, that cost about $180 and $150, respectively.
Drive type | External hard drive |
Connector options | FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 |
Available capacities | 320GB. 500GB, 640GB |
Capacity of test unit | 640GB |
Drive size | 2.5-inch |
Drive speed | 5,400rpm |
Cache | 8MB |
Dimensions (LWH) | 4.88x3.27x0.73 inches |
Notable design features | Sleek aluminum casing with a customizable e-label |
OSes supported | Windows XP, Vista, 7; Mac OS X |
Software included | Western Digital SmartWare software |
Service and support | Three-year warranty |
Design and features
The new My Passport Studio, which is not to be confused with the old version of the same name, probably is the most full-featured portable external hard drive that Western Digital has ever created.
The new My Passport Studio, which is not to be confused with the old version of the same name, probably is the most full-featured portable external hard drive that Western Digital has ever created.
First off, the drive comes with a cool customizable electric label that shows text even if the drive isn't plugged in. The label can display any message up to 12 characters long, enough for labeling the content of the drive or the name of the owner. Apart from that, the label also shows a storage gauge and the amount of storage currently available on the drive.
In order to change this label, you'll need to install the WD SmartWare software, which is included with the drive on a separate read-only partition. The first time you plug the drive into a computer, you'll be prompted to install this application. If you don't, you still can use the drive, but you won't be able to change the label or take advantage of its additional features, including backup and security.
The WD SmartWare takes about 2 minutes to install. After that it will run automatically each time you plug in the drive. The software lets you change the label and enter a password to lock the drive. Once changed, the label will remain visible even when the drive is powered off; make sure that you remember this password because if you forget it, there's no way you can reset it without losing all the data stored on the drive.
The WD SmartWare has a nifty backup feature for novice users. As it loads, it quickly categorizes all user data on the computer's main hard drive into Documents, Mail, Movies, Music, Picture, and Others, each with the total amount of occupied storage. You then can select what categories you want to back up (by default, all are selected). Unfortunately, this is the only customization available. The software doesn't lets you manually choose a folder or to further customize the documents you want to back up. For example, there's no way to back up just photos taken in April and skip the rest, or back up just Word files and leave Excel files alone. You can't schedule an automatic backup, either.
When you need to recover files, you can conveniently recover them to the original location or copy them to a new location to avoid accidentally overwriting important files. All things considered, we found that the backup software is only useful for novice PC home users. Mac users are better off using the drive with OS X's built-in Time Machine.
Out of the box, the My Passport Studio comes with cables for all the connections it supports. All these connections are bus-powered; you just need to keep one cable with the drive at a time. For compatibility, it's best to use the included Micro-USB 2.0 cable.