Pros & Cons
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- Huge, 4TB capacity in a portable drive.
- Speedy throughput scores.
- Permanently attached cable.
- Bus powered.
- RAID Level 0, 1, JBOD.
- Three-year warranty.
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- No Thunderbolt pass-through.
- Bulky for a portable drive.
The Western Digital My Passport Pro ($429.99) is a spacious, Thunderbolt-equipped, portable hard drive for the graphics pro. With a 4TB capacity and built-in Thunderbolt cable, it can hold all of your project files for quick access and use. There are faster drives out there, but the My Passport Pro offers a very good balance of portability, speed, capacity, and price. It comes highly recommended for the graphic artist or video producer on a constant deadline.
Design and Features
The My Passport Pro has the same silver and black color scheme as the Western Digital My Passport Studio, though it's much thicker. It's almost two inches tall and weighs 1.56 pounds, so it pushes the definition of a pocket drive. Rather, it's designed for semi-portable use at a worksite or cafe, after you've taken it out of your commute bag along with your Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch. A Thunderbolt cable is permanently attached, with a channel molded into the chassis for storage, which also means that you can't lose it. You wrap the cable around the drive and plug it into a handy receptacle next to the cooling fan. I wish that the receptacle were a Thunderbolt pass-through port for daisy chaining, but alas, it's empty.
View All The Thunderbolt cable carries the data and powers the drive, which is a simpler setup than the dual-powered Promise Pegasus J2. While The Pegasus J2 is made from two SSD mechanisms, the My Passport Pro is made of two 2TB spinning hard drive mechanisms, which is why the chassis is so thick. This gives users 4TB of space in RAID level 0, 2TB in RAID level 1 (mirroring), and two separate 2TB drives in JBOD (Just a Bunch of Devices) mode.
