Western Digital’s new portable hard drives pack tons of storage with a splash of color

Western Digital has refreshed its My Passport and My Book external hard drive lines with a new modern and colorful design.

In an age when almost all portable drives look the same, Western Digital is hoping to reinvent itself with a new angular design that’s colorful fun. The new My Book and My Passport drives share a new look that’s half glossy panel while the other half features a subtly ridged texture.

Color is also a big focus for the portable My Passport series as WD is launching drives in an assortment of colors including black, yellow, red, white, orange and black. Meanwhile, the storage maker is keeping it professional with My Book, which will only be available in black.

 

The new design comes by way of a new partnership with the Fuseproject, who’s Founder and Principal Designer Yves Béhar has famously designed the OUYA, Zolt charger, Kodak Super 8 camera, Jawbone Jambox and countless other products.

Beyond looks, Western Digital assures its latest drives are secure and reliable as ever. Users can put a password lock on the My Book and My Passport, which will hard lock their data with 256-bit AES hardware encryption.

Both also pair perfectly with Time Machine on macOS and for users on Windows 10 or Linux, automatic backups are made easy with the included WD Backup software.   

Pricing for the WD My Passport starts at $79 (about £60, AU$105) for 1TB of storage while the drive supports a maximum capacity of 4TB. Meanwhile, the 4TB WD My Book runs for $129 (about £105, AU$170) and the line maxes out at 8TB.

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.