Western Digital’s external drives are your favorites (and have been for a while) for performance, storage, reliability, and price—and today the company unveiled whole new line that packs more storage into the same portable form factors, as well a speedy 1TB SSD.
Among the announcements are new My Passport drives, the ones that earned top spot in a recent Kinja Co-Op, that come with built-in 256-bit encryption and up to 4TB of storage in a drive that’ll fit in your pocket. Western Digital’s My Book line got a storage bump and design shift as well (the new glossy black top and textured bottom looks sharp but will probably attract a few fingerprints) and now comes with up to 8TB of space in a single drive. Both new models connect easily to your computer via USB 3.0, and the My Passport drives don’t require additional power, like any good portable external drive.
The new My Passport drives will set you back $79 for the 1TB version, and $159 for that flagship 4TB version, with stops in between for 2TB ($109) and 3TB ($149.) They also come in a variety of colors. You’ll need to shell out $129 for the 3TB version of the new My Book, and $299 for the massive 8TB model, with 4TB ($149) and 6TB ($229) in between.
WD also took the wraps off of a new line of SSDs under the WD Blue and WD Green banners, with the former designed for performance and multitasking and the latter designed for power efficiency and longevity. The new WD Blue SSDs run from $79 for a 250GB model, $139 for a 500GB model, and go up to $299 for the 1TB SSD that WD sent us to try out (more on that in a future showdown.) The new WD Greens will be smaller, 120GB and 240GB, and pricing hasn’t been announced yet.
If you’re the type who uses a ton of external storage (like I do, even though I have a pair of NAS units for the same purpose), they may be worth a look, and as always, make sure you keep external drives backed up. Hit the links below to learn more.