Since even the latest Mac machines lack USB3.0 support and given the high-cost of cables compatible with Intel's Thunderbolt interface (available already on Macs), USB2.0 will continue to be the interface of choice for the next few years.
Unlike other Mac storage products we've tested, this My Passport is designed exclusively for Mac use. Connecting the drive to our Windows 7 desktop, the machine was unable to detect and initialise the drive. Hooking the drive up to our MacBook Air though, an icon appeared on the OS X desktop instantly. The drive even offered to interface with Mac OS' Time Machine. The supplied WD SmartWare software can also be used to backup your important files.
Retailing for US $100 and offering 500GB of storage capacity, the My Passport costs just $0.2 per gigabyte. This is a competitive price on its own but given that the drive supports 256-bit password protection and encryption, there's plenty of extra value on offer.
Running our transfer tests on the My Passport for Mac, it performed as expected, given its USB2.0 interface. Copying our 1.2GB test file from Mac to the drive took 37 seconds, whereas copying from drive to Mac took 33 seconds. Both figures are competitive with other USB2.0 drives we've tested recently
Ratings Breakdown
Capacity: 500GB
Connection: USB
OS: Mac OS X
Price: $100
