New Thunderbolt-powerered ultra-portable dual drive from WD

Thunderbolt-powered WD Passport Pro

WD always seems to be one of the first to bring out ultra portable drives with decent capacity and new connectivity. Their Passport Pro drives are nicely designed and rugged enough for lugging around between gigs

The latest Passport Pro has the useful addition of Thunderbolt, giving it a very high speed transfer rate - ideal for moving those raw or 4K files from place to place.

To make life easier every time you need to use the drive, it's Thunderbolt-powered: there's no need for an external power supply.

There's no need to look for a Thunderbolt cable either because it's tightly integrated into the design of the drive itself - another major time-saver.

You can RAID this drive

The drive contains two 2.5 inch hard drives that can be striped together as RAID 0 for high speed data transfers or, for additional safety, Raid 1, which mirrors the content of the two drives. (This feature is Mac only).

WD's My Passport Pro is available in 2TB and 4TB sizes and costs £239 for the smaller capacity model and £349 for the larger.

To us, this is a well thought-out product. Thunderbolt is a great interface but cables are expensive and bulky - and sometimes downright inflexible. Integrating the cable with the drive not only makes the drive more convenient to use, but because it powers the device as well, makes this one of the most convenient, highest-performing ultra-portable drives we've seen.

We'll be reviewing it as soon as we get one.

Press release in full after the break

WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company, and world leader in storage solutions for the connected life, today introduced My Passport® Pro, the first portable, Thunderbolt™-powered dual-drive solution, providing creative professionals and enthusiasts high performance and capacity in a truly mobile solution. For Mac systems, My Passport Pro has user-selectable RAID functionality to deliver needed performance for the most demanding applications in the field, without the need for power adapters or extra cables. My Passport Pro is available in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities.

“The only Thunderbolt dual-drive solution that’s bus-powered, 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. “From photographers, videographers and musicians to graphic designers and architects, people who depend on portable storage for their livelihood will find My Passport Pro defines a new level of performance, reliability and especially portability.”

“Thunderbolt™ technology makes new approaches possible for high-performance workflows,” said Jason Ziller, Intel’s Director of Thunderbolt Marketing. “By combining dual storage drives on a portable, bus-powered device, the My Passport Pro from WD is a uniquely powerful storage solution with high capacity for today’s demanding users.”

Directly powered via the integrated Thunderbolt cable — a design unique to WD — performance of My Passport Pro clocks in at speeds up to 233 MB/s, providing super-fast transfer, edit and backup capabilities. Another key feature of the dual-drive My Passport Pro is its user-selectable RAID function, which lets users choose data striping (RAID 0) for high performance or mirroring (RAID 1) for data redundancy, depending on the user’s needs. Superior to both FireWire 800 and USB 3.0, the integrated Thunderbolt technology of My Passport Pro makes video manipulation quick and easy—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.

Consisting of two 2.5-inch hard drives housed in a sleek aluminium enclosure, My Passport Pro is thoroughly shock-tested for extra durability to perform reliably when working on the go.   

Pricing and Availability

My Passport Pro will be available immediately at Apple and major consumer electronics retailers and e-tailers as well as online at www.wdstore.co.uk . MSRP for the 2 TB My Passport Pro is £239.00 and the 4 TB model is £349.00.