Western Digital updates My Passport drives for Mac

Western Digital has announced that they’ve updated their made-for-Mac line of My Passport external drives: the My Passport Studio, and the My Passport for Mac. The most obvious difference for the updates involves the drives’ physical design, with WD wrapped these new drives in an all-metal enclosure instead of the usual shiny plastic. The result? They’re more durable than their predecessors. As a bonus, the new drives look pretty good, with design cues that match Apple’s aluminum-clad Macs.

The My Passport for Mac is still your average USB 2.0 drive that simply offers high storage capacities for mobile users, and has been given a boost with a larger capacity. The mobile drive now tops out at 1TB for $130, and starts out at $100 for the base 500GB model.

The My Passport Studio is a premium drive designed for performance. Aside from the larger capacity (it also tops out at 1TB), the My Passport Studio also sports two FireWire 800 ports alongside the usual USB 2.0 port. The FireWire interface give it faster file transfers, while the extra FireWire port lets users daisy chain another external drive or multiple peripherals (like a camcorder or digital camera) to a single port on a Mac. The My Passport Studio costs $130, $160, and $180 for 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities respectively.

Both drives feature support for Apple’s Time Machine backup feature.