However, given the choice, it would also be one of the first things I would jettison from my travel kit thanks to the added weight and space it consumes in my pack. The My Passport for Mac drive’s built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption with password If you’re like me, chances are good that a normal part of your mobile kit for photo travel is a laptop computer. Popular among students and other Mac users who take their digital content everywhere, the My Passport for Mac with USB 3.0 allows users to quickly and conveniently take advantage of the faster transfer speeds USB 3.0 provides when connecting the drive to their MacBook computer or MacBook Air computer with that interface.The My Passport for Mac drive includes USB-C and USB-A cables, so you can save tomorrows content with the Mac computers of both today and yesterday.It’s a hard drive with its own built-in Wi-Fi network, internal SD card slot, USB connection, and dedicated iOS and Android apps. It gives customers the ability to easily transfer various types of files including photos, videos, music, and documents.Remember when Mac computers only had USB 2.0 ports Well, now that the 2012 MacBook Air and Pro models include USB 3.0 ports, your choice is no longer.That’s exactly the challenge the Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro is designed to address. The My Passport is a popular portable drive for the causal user.Connectivity to common cloud services, including Adobe Creative Cloud Additionally, battery capacity has been improved significantly, from 3400 mAh to 6400 mAh, providing a claimed 11.5 hours of mobile power (6-8 hours under heavy use).However, according to WD, one of the most common feature requests was directed at the MyCloud mobile app, which didn't provide a way for users to export photos from the drive to the Camera Roll on their device. The new WD My Cloud app facilitates this, though how it works will depend whether you're using JPEG or Raw files. It also supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi using both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, and WD tells us the new model is capable of WiFi data transfers up to 20 MB/sec compared to 9 MB/sec on the first edition. In fact, a Western Digital representative told us that the company listened carefully to users of the first edition, and that most of the improvements in this updated model were in direct response to user feedback.On the hardware side of things, the My Passport Wireless Pro has a much faster SD card slot than its predecessor, with a 75 MB/sec read speed compared to 10 MB/sec on the previous model. What's newThis is the second iteration of Western Digital’s My Passport Wireless line of products we reviewed the original about a year and a half ago and, although it was great in concept, it felt a bit like a first attempt at a product with room to improve.However, since the Passport doesn't recognize Raw image files by type they get categorized as 'Other.' (Which explains the 300GB of 'other' files in the graph.)During setup you have the option of connecting to the internet. Then, using either a computer or mobile device you simply turn on the drive, connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot it creates using a web browser or the My Cloud app, and follow the setup instructions.The web-based dashboard is intuitive and puts most functions within easy reach. If you’re working from a mobile device you’ll need to download the WD My Cloud app from the appropriate app store before starting. SetupInitial setup of the My Passport Wireless Pro is fairly straightforward, though I did find myself referring to the user manual on a couple occasions.
My Passport Usb 3.0 Review Password If YouSecond, assuming you’ve configured your My Passport to connect to a Wi-Fi network (and selected the option to share its contents), any computer on the network will be able to access the drive. This works whether the Passport is connected to the internet or not, and it allows you to access the contents of the drive using the My Cloud app or a computer. The first is via a direct Wi-Fi connection between the Passport and your computer or mobile device. When configuring the Wi-Fi connection it’s important to pay attention to the option that asks whether you want to share the device on the network: if you’re on a private network this can be a useful feature, but if you’re on a public network, such as at a hotel or a coffee shop, everyone else on the network will be able to see your files as well.Once the setup process is complete there are basically three ways to connect to the My Passport Wireless Pro. I would have to recycle my cards and needed a foolproof, reliable way to back up all the images. This type of trip requires disciplined data management as it involves shooting multiple DSLRs at one time, with each camera capturing hundreds, or even thousands, of photos per night while capturing time-lapse sequences. The prospect of leaving all that at home, and traveling only with the My Passport Wireless Pro and an iPad was enticing, so I decided to put it through a real world test.A couple months ago I traveled to the city of Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories to photograph the northern lights. In this scenario it just acts like a normal hard drive, but a direct connection provides the best performance.The Passport's built-in Wi-Fi hotspot can act as a bridge to connect to the internet and supports connections from multiple devices simultaneously.My typical photography workflow when traveling revolves around a laptop computer and various attached hard drives or SSDs. Finally, the My Passport can always be plugged directly into a computer using a USB 3.0 cable. Mac cleaner pirate bayI settled for the automatic transfer option, so all I had to do was insert a card and go about my business. The device can be set to back up cards automatically or require the user to initiate transfer. Upon returning to the hotel every morning, I simply turned it on and began inserting cards to back up while I focused on re-organizing my gear and charging batteries. It also supports incremental backups, so inserting a card with a few extra files added doesn’t result in redundant backups or duplicated data only new files are copied. The result is a well-organized hierarchy of every card you’ve backed up along the way. When a card is inserted, its entire contents are copied to a unique folder, and all folders are organized by date. (I did my testing on an iPad. To access images on the drive you’ll need to download the WD My Cloud app, available for both iOS and Android. Western Digital’s premise is that you can leave your laptop at home and work entirely from a mobile device. This essentially provides a thumbnail image for each Raw file so that you know which image you’re looking at in the app. If you want to work with Raw images you really need to shoot Raw + JPEG. It’s possible to see the files, but clicking on one results in a giant question mark instead of an image preview. It works, but it seems like a missed opportunity to make the app much more user friendly.Unfortunately, there’s no support for Raw images inside the My Cloud app. However, since very few cameras save DNG files natively, chances are pretty good that whatever you’re backing up in the field will be in a different format. This works fine if you’re working with DNG images, especially now that iOS recognizes this type of file. Shooting Raw + JPEG serves to provide thumbnail images to help find the file you're looking for.The quickest way is to save your Raw image(s) to your Camera Roll or send them to another app for editing. However, it's possible to save them to your Camera Roll (DNG) or send them to other apps for processing. From here you have a couple options to work with a Raw file.If you're shooting Raw files it's not possible to view them directly inside the My Cloud app. This means that you can easily copy any of your files to a cloud service where you may have additional ways to work with it. At the time of publication, this includes Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, WD’s own MyCloud and Adobe Creative Cloud.
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