Review: The new Western Digital My Passport – Sleek and Sexy

In this age of laptop setups, working from home and prioritizing portability, an issue that often rears its ugly head is storage space. Whether you’re clogged up with a disgusting amount of project briefs and word documents, or otherwise video games and memes – an external hard drive can make all the difference to your technological space.

The team at Western Digital have been making hard drives for longer than any of us care to remember, and their original range of My Passport’s have assisted in many a workflow in that time – but the team at WD weren’t satisfied with what they’d done… no… they needed a newer version, a sexier version, one that you’re not afraid to flaunt on your Zoom meetings. Introducing the all new, WD My Passport;

The first thing I’ll tell you about the new My Passport is that it’s as sleek as WD claims it to be. There’s absolutely no shame in whipping this bad boy out in the boardroom or local cafe (when we’re out of quarantine of course).

Operationally, it functions as a nice high speed external hard drive with one key difference – WD Discovery. Discovery is a piece of software that comes with your My Passport to provide a range of additional features that I’m sure you’re going to find handy. 

The first and my personal favourite is drive password protection. Being a security nerd, there’s nothing I love more than being able to lock down files, folders and entire hard drives. WD Discovery gives you incredibly easy access to simple password protection that will keep your files safe, should your My Passport end up in the hands of the untrustworthy.

Discovery is also equipped with cloud storage import and social media import so that you can quickly create a secure backup of your files that have traditionally been stored online. This is beneficial for both ease of access (whether that’s operating offline or just for speed), as well as having an additional safety net in place should you lose your accounts.

With its wonderfully intuitive functions and great new look, I highly recommend the new WD My Passport if you’re in the market for an external hard drive. The My Passports come with a 3-year limited warranty and are available from JB Hi-Fi in 1TB ($88) , 2TB ($119) , 3TB ($129) and 5TB ($229) models.