The computer industry has made in-roads in the last decade to bring more style to its hardware products thanks in large part to Apple Inc.
Even Samsung Electronics tried to produce stylish printers using piano black finishes, but not much has been done to stylize PC accessories such as hard drives until now.
Western Digital’s (WD) seventh iteration of its My Passport Drives series has made an effort to bring more personality to standalone storage.
WD Grip Pack
The Irvine, Calif.-based manufacturer has redesigned My Passport Ultra portable hard drives and My Passport for Mac drives with four colour options: Classic Black, Brilliant White, Wild Berry and Noble Blue. WD also created an optional accessory called the WD Grip Pack, a soft band, available in many colours that encircle the drive.
Tony Tate, general manager and vice president of Content Storage Solutions at WD, said people can now keep all their content in their pockets, while expressing their personal styles with the colours and WD Grip Pack.
Tate added that more photos are being taken than ever before and because of that it’s critical to have a high capacity, reliable external storage solution that you can carry. My Passport drives have automatic back-up and hardware-based encryption for security.
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Beyond the style points, the product comes in 3 TB, 2 TB, 1 TB and 500 GB capacities and feature 256-bit AES hardware encryption3. WD said that if the My Passport Ultra drive gets 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 five gigabits per second, while being backwardly compatible with USB 2.0.
The WD Grip Pack is sold separately and will be released in five colours: smoke, slate, grape, sky and fuchsia. The Grip Pack when wrapped around one of the four colors of My Passport Ultra drives, enables the users to create a total of twenty possible color combinations, which is part of WD new design and personalization strategy. For example, the Grip Pack comes with a colour-matched 18-inch flat USB 3.0 cable.
WD My Passport for Mac
My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac are available in the channel through retailers starting at $79.99 with a top end price of just under $200. The Grip Pack will cost $12.99.