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Western Digital's New Hard Drives Aspire to Be Art

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Western Digital is giving its most popular external hard drives a few new coats of paint. My Passport drives for both Windows and Mac and the My Book hard drive are getting new designs with help from Yves Béhar and design firm Fuseproject. Both My Passport drives start at $80 for 1TB and offer a variety of sizes  up to 4TB at $160. The My Book starts at $130 for 3TB and goes up to 8TB for $300.

Photo Credit: Sam Rutherford / Laptop Mag

I was impressed with the new designs in an early hands-on. The My Passport for Windows drives come in black, white, red, blue, yellow and orange, all with matching USB 3.0 cables. I loved the brighter colors, which are atypical in tech these days, but was disappointed to learn that My Passport for Mac and My Book are only available in black. All of the drives have a new modern design divided into two segments: the top is smooth with WD's logo, while the bottom features a pattern with curved ridges.

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"The way we use data is changing; it’s becoming much more of a personal commodity, something we value,” Béhar said in a press release. At the hands-on, WD representatives suggested that the new designs would make users feel more connected to the physical devices that hold their data.

All three drives offer 256-bit AES hardware encryption that can be unlocked with a password. The HDDs are available from wdstore.com and at brick and mortar stores. 

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Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew joined Laptopmag.com in 2015, reviewing computers and keeping up with the latest news. He holds a M.S. in Journalism (Digital Media) from Columbia University. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Twitter @FreedmanAE.