The highest capacity portable hard drive around in a compact form factor

Mar 20, 2012 14:24 GMT  ·  By

Western Digital announced earlier today the company’s next generation of My Passport portable hard drives, which offer consumers a fresh new enclosure design and as much as 2TB of storage space in a compact form factor.

Five drives were introduced by WD, with capacities ranging from 500GB to 2TB, which are available in a selection of popular colors including white, black, silver, blue, and red.

All drives are compatible with the USB 3.0 interface, which enables them to reach transfer speeds, at least in theory, of up to 5Gbps.

Furthermore, the use of USB 3.0 also allows the WD drives to operate without requiring an additional power adapter to be connected.

All of Western Digital’s My Passport HDDs come with the company’s SmartWare automatic backup software and WD Security technology for password protection and hardware encryption.

"More than money, jewelry and other valuables, the item most missed if ever lost or stolen is one's computer – and everything on it – so our goal in launching the next-generation of the popular My Passport drives is to encourage more consumers to protect their data before something happens," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups.

"The new My Passport makes backing up and preserving one's digital life easier, reliable and more secure than ever – it's the perfect blend of monstrous capacity, reliability and user-friendly technology in a sleek form factor, now in five colors," concluded the company’s rep.

All My Passport external drives are available online at the WD store, as well as from various other retailers and distributors.

Prices start at $129.99 USD (about 99 EUR) for the 500GB version of the HDD, and top at $249.99 USD (roughly 190 EUR) for the 2TB edition.