WD Re-Designs World's No. 1 Selling Portable Hard Drive

Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) company, and world leader in storage solutions, today introduced the new, redesigned My Passport® Ultra portable hard drives and My Passport for Mac drives. With the My Passport line now in its 7th generation, the My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac portable hard drives are now available in capacities up to 3 TB and in four stylish colours - Classic Black, Brilliant White, Wild Berry and Noble Blue. WD is also introducing a new optional accessory – WD Grip Pack – a soft band, available in a variety of colours, which encircles the drive, offering consumers an easy way to personalise their My Passport drives.

“With more photos being taken than ever before, it’s critical to have a high capacity, reliable external storage solution that you can carry everywhere,” said Tony Tate, general manager and vice president of Content Storage Solutions at WD. “The latest generation My Passport drives deliver an easier automatic back-up experience, hardware-based encryption for security and higher capacities than ever before. Consumers can keep all their content in their pockets, while expressing their personal styles with the colours and WD Grip Pack.”

My Passport Ultra portable drives come in 3 TB, 2 TB, 1 TB and 500 GB capacities and feature 256-bit AES hardware encryption – delivering a high level of security with no impact to write-speed or CPU activity. If your My Passport Ultra falls into the wrong hands, the 256-bit AES hardware encryption protects users’ files, folders, photos, videos and music with a password known only to them. USB 3.0 compatibility provides fast data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second, while being backwardly compatible with USB 2.0. My Passport for Mac portable drives are available in capacities of 3 TB, 2 TB, 1 TB and also feature 256-bit AES hardware encryption with USB 3.0 connectivity.

Sold separately, the WD Grip Pack accessory for My Passport Ultra is available in five colours (smoke, slate, grape, sky and fuchsia) and, when wrapped around one of the four colours of My Passport Ultra drives, enables consumers to create a total of twenty possible colour combinations. The WD Grip Pack comes with a colour-matched 18-inch flat USB 3.0 cable, creating a stylish complete solution. 

My Passport Ultra’s built-in WD Backup software is a simple-to-use application with focus on reducing frustration when setting up a backup plan to preserve data. Since 31% of devices have had malware at some point, having your data safely backed up onto a secondary device like a My Passport drive is critical to preserving precious data.

Pricing and Availability

My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac portable drives are available today in the WD store at wdstore.co.uk  and at select retailers, including Amazon (My Passport Ultra: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W8XXRPM, My Passport Ultra for Mac: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WJOVDYM) and distributors. My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac have a Manufacturer’s Suggest Retail Price (MSRP) ranging from £59.99 up to £159.00 depending on capacity (3 TB capacity available next month). Both the My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac will offer a 3-year limited warranty. Terms and conditions of WD’s limited warranty may be found at support.wdc.com/warranty. WD Grip Pack accessories will be available in June and will have an MSRP of £9.99. 

1. 3 TB will be available next month
2. Colours only available on the My Passport Ultra 
3. Password must be set in order to use encryption.

Western Digital ships 4TB WD Black hard drive, melds speed with space for $339

The 4TB hard drives that we've seen gradually filter into the marketplace have come with a few snags for desktop users; they're usually either external drives we'd never boot from or pokey internal models not meant for anything speed-intensive. Western Digital doesn't want us settling. It's shipping a 4TB version of its WD Black desktop drive that holds nothing back for the sake of the extra storage, spinning at a healthy 7,200RPM while packing 64MB of cache, dual processing and a two-stage actuator that together keep the drive working at full burn. At $339, the SATA 6Gbps drive undoubtedly carries a premium in trying to be the best of all worlds; it may be worth the expense for performance-minded types who've been out of options (and capacity) for awhile.

[Source: Engadget]

Apple introduces 'Fusion Drive' as a build-to-order option for the new iMac

So you want the performance of an SSD with the extra storage of a good 'ole HDD? Apple has you covered with Fusion Drive for its new iMac. Unlike a standalone hybrid drive Apple is apparently "fusing" together the a separate SSD and HDD using software in Mountain Lion

[Source: Engadget]

Hard drive recall emails going out to owners of 1TB iMacs

Apple's extension of the iMac 1TB Seagate hard drive replacement program was mentioned last Sunday, and late this week customers began receiving email reminders to schedule a drive replacement. If you're an iMac owner but not certain your machine is covered, you can easily check your serial number via the online validation tool.

While the Apple service program covers replacing your potentially problematic drive, it does not include backup or restoration of your OS, applications or data: that is on you. Please take our advice and spare yourself much pain and misery -- back up your drive now.

[Source: TUAW - Click here to read the full story]

Apple extends Seagate drive replacement program for iMacs

As noted by MacRumors, Apple's extended service program for iMacs with 1TB Seagate internal hard drives was updated late last week to include iMacs manufactured as far back as October 2009. The program, launched in the summer of 2011, originally covered only machines made during a narrow window of that year. Drives can be replaced at the Apple Store, by an Apple Authorized Service Provider or by Apple Technical Support.

Apple has also extended the duration of this program more than once, and now will cover iMac hard drive replacements with affected drives for three years after the original retail purchase date or until April 12, 2013, whichever ends up providing longer coverage for the computer. You can check if your machine might be affected by entering your serial number on the program page. Of course, you'll need to back up your data prior to replacement, and you may need your OS installer discs depending on how you plan to restore your machine.

Seagate's had past problems with drive reliability, including a firmware flaw that resulted in data loss.

[Source: TUAW]