WD pumps out My Passport for Mac / My Book Mac Edition

We'll wager you didn't know Macworld was going on today, did you? Pathetic jokes aside, Western Digital has lined up a pair of launches today in San Francisco to coincide with Apple's final Macworld keynote, as we're treated to the My Passport for Mac portable HDD and the My Book Mac Edition. Truthfully, the only real difference between these drives and their vanilla counterparts is the pre-format process; with these, they both come "pre-formatted for Mac," saving you the tiresome task of converting 'em to HFS+ Journaled yourself. Additionally, these USB 2.0 drives are made to work "seamlessly" with Apple's Time Machine backup software, and they'll arrive in capacities including 320GB and 500GB (My Passport) / 1TB (My Book). Both units should be available now for between $129.99 and $179.99.

[pika2000 @ Jan 6th 2009 3:58PM]

LOL. Work "seamlessly" with Time Machine? That's true for like any external hard-drives. What a way to twist words for marketing.

[coyotej @ Jan 6th 2009 7:33PM]

@Kevin: Untrue! You should look into MacFUSE for NTFS read/write support.

[coyotej @ Jan 6th 2009 7:34PM]

grr, posted in the wrong spot and no easy delete. . .

[Steve @ Jan 6th 2009 4:00PM]

I have a regular WD My Passport. I didn't format it for "HFS+ Journaled" whatever that is and it works perfectly well with both my MacBook and my Vista machine. It is FAT32 formatted.

What am I missing here?

[Me @ Jan 6th 2009 4:05PM]

Your max filesize will be 4GB...

[Steve @ Jan 6th 2009 4:08PM]

True but I could fix that by formatting as NTFS couldn't I? Or does NTFS not work with Macs? Either way I have no need for 4+gig file sizes but I could see how some might.

[Kevin @ Jan 6th 2009 5:26PM]

No such luck- OS X does not have drivers that support writing files to NTFS volumes.

[Steve @ Jan 6th 2009 5:31PM]

OK i see. So HFS+ Journaled is the Mac version of NTFS in that it allows file sizes over 4GB. Is there any format type that allows you to use an external hard drive on Mac and a PC and allows file sizes over 4GB?

[coyotej @ Jan 6th 2009 7:35PM]

@Kevin: Untrue! You should look into MacFUSE for NTFS read/write support.

[noel.lastrella @ Jan 6th 2009 4:08PM]

over priced! Seriously. I rather buy the NTFS/FAT32 formatted one for like $89 bucks... then reformat. I mean, I can format my own drive and save $90!

[John @ Jan 6th 2009 4:41PM]

@ Noel

You are paying the premium for the privilege to use something/anything configured for Mac.

You can buy a hardware boasting the same or better performance specs, but if it is branded Apple or Mac you will pay 200% more for the same item.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/777/1022777/apple-upgrades-three-times-cost

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49297849-2,00.htm?from=rss

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/30/1317249

This is a bargain seeing that it is only 100% more.

[Rob @ Jan 6th 2009 4:40PM]

GTFO. You Mac people make an excuse for every marketing bs that comes out every few weeks. Most often than not, the stuff inside of the "Designed For Mac" stuff is the same as the vanilla Windows versions. Wake the f-ck up people. I like Apple products too. But, I know bull when I see it.

[jollyllama @ Jan 6th 2009 6:50PM]

Of course this is BS, but blaming "Mac people" for wanting this kind of thing is stupid. I'm a "mac person" and I hate it when companies do this. It's not like we're asking to be scammed.

[Mr Awesomer @ Jan 6th 2009 4:34PM]

Not true in all cases...

For example, configure a truly comparable Dell or HP model PART FOR PART with what comes in the new base model unibody MacBook and you'll note that there not much price difference. It may not be exact configuration you want, but there is no price difference (...any more.)

[Omar @ Jan 6th 2009 5:05PM]

Thank you for that. I doubt many people will listen though. They never seem to.

On topic, Western Digital's external drives have an uncomfortably high rate for data corruption. It's probably the USB/SATA bridge they use. I'd rather just buy one of their internal drives and stick it in an enclosure of my choice. It would probably work out to be a little cheaper too.

[Harley3k @ Jan 6th 2009 5:20PM]

I think one of the points made were that the *upgrades* were over-priced, which they always have been when I went shopping.

Seriously, Apple wanted $399 for a 4GB memory upgrade for my MacBook pro and I got memory from Amazon for $54 bucks. I just checked and it's down to $300.

I love my MacBook Pro, my Apple 30" Display (connected to a windows machine), all my Apple Keyboards also connected to windows machines, my iPhone 3G, my AppleTV, but $399 vs. $54 for 4gb RAM - that's JUST FRICKIN' RAPE. They're raping people who don't know better.

[Mr Awesomer @ Jan 6th 2009 6:03PM]

True, true... I'm not going to defend Apple's upgrade price raping, haha.

[jollyllama @ Jan 6th 2009 6:52PM]

@Harley3k: You might look into Apple's ram upgrade price these days, it's gotten a lot better. I'd still do it myself, but it's not as bad as it used to be, considering they use "premuim" RAM (Samsung, I think).

[Agathocles @ Jan 6th 2009 7:05PM]

Top of the League!

[Kelmon @ Jan 6th 2009 5:03PM]

Big deal. I bought a Seagate FreeAgent Go Mac this week. At least they had the decency to include a handy docking unit and FireWire 400/800 connectivity as well as HSF+ formatting.

[Peter @ Jan 6th 2009 5:09PM]

Hopefully the s/w for Mac is better than it is for the PC. I hardly ever use my My Book (World Edition) because it is impossible for me to get through a backup without it flaking out and losing the whole backup. (I have the network version rather than USB so I'm assuming that has something to do with it, but the s/w should be robust enough to handle a temporary network issue or whatever is going on...). Buyer beware.

[catachip @ Jan 6th 2009 5:13PM]

OS X comes with zero-configuration backup software called "Time Machine" that automatically backs up your system every hour. There are no options to change and it works seamlessly.

So, yeah, the Mac software solution is good.

[Ben @ Jan 6th 2009 5:24PM]

Don't use the bundled software. On my PCs I use Allway Sync. On my Macs I use Carbon Copy Cloner. Both are excellent.

[Galley @ Jan 6th 2009 5:33PM]

Western Digital has been making external drives pre-formatted for the Mac for several years.

[lucas @ Jan 7th 2009 2:07PM]

yep and they always raise the rates cause they figure the typical Mac user will fall for it (and by typical I mean your mom, pop and granny that dont hang out on sites like this).

I believe the hoop here is that the portable drive sizes are now up to 500GB. before it was just 250 and 320.

personally I have used WD,LaCie, and Seagate and it was the first that I had the most trouble with. so I think I'm going to save my money and put it into one of those nice looking 2TB LaCie drives that just came out

[!!D @ Jan 6th 2009 5:59PM]

"saving you the tiresome task of converting 'em to HFS+ Journaled yourself."

The sarcasm may not have come across to the rookie OS X user. The process is actually a piece of cake: just use the application called "Disk Utility" to erase the external disk (the erase operation formats the external HDD with the file system type that you select). Once the external HDD is formatted to a Mac-compatible file system, then OS X 10.5's built-in Time Machine program will ask if you want to perform backups to this HDD.

[Dave @ Jan 6th 2009 8:41PM]

I will not ever buy Western Digital FAIL-CRAP again.

[lee @ Jan 7th 2009 11:54PM]

I bought this last month because it is a portable drive with a FireWire 800 connection which I believe to be the main reason for the price difference, not the formatting. I'll let you know how it turns out after I've spent more time with it.

[totally infected @ Jan 11th 2009 2:56AM]

Maybe what they really mean by compatibility is that, unlike their previous passport drives which couldn't get enough juice to run off of my Powerbook G4, these will actually work...