WD My Book Essential hits 3TB, My Passport gets USB 3.0
updated 10:50 am EDT, Tue October 5, 2010
Available in a variety of colors and capacity
Western Digital today unveiled three additions to its external drive line. An updated My Passport Essential is Western Digital's smallest portable drive, and has a storage capacity of 500GB with USB 3.0 new to the group. The My Passport Essential SE portable drive comes in either 750GB or 1TB capacity and also uses USB 3.0. The My Book Essential desktop external drive also now reaches 3TB with the faster speed intact.
The drives are formatted NTFS for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, but they can be reformatted to support Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard and should work with Time Machine. They all are backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 and come with Western Digital's automatic continuous backup software.
The My Passport Essential drive is available in black, silver, red, blue, and white for $100. The My Passport Essential SE portable drive comes in black, silver, metallic blue and metallic red colors with prices of $130 for the 750GB model and $170 for the 1TB version. Picking the 3TB My Book Essential costs $250, though lower capacities are still available.
All three drives are available at retailers and Western Digital's own online store.
My Passport Essential SE
My Book Essential
