WD 3 TB My Passport Wireless Pro, Black

Product Information

Ultimately if you can’t imagine travelling without your laptop, then you should simply go for a smaller and cheaper portable drive instead like WD’s My Passport Ultra. Adding a service will not make the WD My Passport Wireless SSD act as a client, so you will need to manually copy folder contents from your cloud provider to the device before you can access them in the field. Anything that’s in the root of the SD card is copied over, so no videos, nor logs or other data are left behind. Great review, but I have one question that WD’s foreign-based Tech Support has had trouble answering…If one desires redundant backup in the field, can data on the My Passport Wireless be copied to an external HD without an accompanying laptop? The experience on an iPad was far superior, as the larger screen allowed the app to display thumbnails on one side and a large view of the selected image on the other.

While the former is something many of us can certainly live with, those who are planning to use the device to back up data from external memory card readers will be sorely disappointed with the performance of the latter. When I had lots of images in a folder including many similar-looking ones, I often found it hard to pinpoint the exact one I was looking for, switching back and forth between thumbnail and full-screen views. In terms of the drive itself, the SSD is nice to have for lower power consumption and greater durability, but you won’t exploit its speed with any of the wireless connections, nor even the SD slot; the speed benefit only kicks-in with a direct USB 3 connection.Once the configuration is complete, you’ll be presented with the dashboard for the drive which indicates the capacity and battery life remaining, as well offering further configuration options like changing the Wifi defaults. It is a built to be a rugged device that can survive quite a bit of abuse, including occasional bumps and drops (it is not water or dust-proof though). What’s nice about the My Passport-series devices, is that you can preview RAW files from many different cameras when using the WD My Cloud app. From this point on the experience is the same whether connected via a shared access point or directly. Wi-Fi password protection helps to keep your photography, videos, music and other important files safe from unauthorized wireless access.

WD provides a list of compatible cameras, although you may find newer unlisted models also work so long as they share a similar format to previous models; for example, I was able to view RAW files taken with a Sony A7 III even though it hadn’t yet been added to the compatibility list; WD can also provide compatibility with newer cameras via firmware and app updates, although none were available during my testing period. Above: Browsing through large numbers of photos is much easier with the larger screen of a tablet, such as an iPad here. Interestingly, even some medium format cameras such as the Fuji GFX 50S and Hasselblad X1D-50c are supported, which is great! WD isn’t the only company to offer self-contained storage solutions designed to operate without a laptop.Finally, the drive has it’s own inbuilt battery which gives it up to 10 hours of power for backing up the cards or connecting to a tablet or phone.