The Western Digital My Passport Ultra hard-disk drive and My Passport SSD drive provide highly portable and rather inexpensive storage that you just cable up to your computer (see previous post).
Or you can go wireless with the Western Digital My Passport Wireless drives that also can communicate over Wi-Fi, so you can access them from multiple devices, including computers, smartphones and tablets, and even for direct FTP transfers from a camera.
Plus they have a built-in SD card reader, and can serve as an external battery power source for your other portable devices.
The WD My Passport Wireless Pro is a wireless hard-disk drive, SD card reader, and powerbank. It's about 5 x 5 inches square and 0.9 inches thick, and weighs around 15 1/2 ounces.
It's available with 1 TB of storage for around $149, 2 TB for $139, 3 TB for $199, and 4 TB for $189.
The WD My Passport Wireless SSD provides the same functions with a solid-state drive. It's especially durable with the SSD electronics and a protective bumper, so it's protected from shock, vibrations, and drops of up to 1 meter, even in operation.
It's available with 256 GB of storage for around $229, 500 GB for $299, 1 TB for $499, and 2 TB for $799.
For the fastest wireless connection, you connect directly to the drive as its own Wi-Fi hotspot. Or you can connect your devices and the drive to your local Wi-Fi connection, which then allows you to access the Internet as well -- although with lower transfer rates since the connection is indirect and shared.
You then can use the drive's Dashboard Web interface to set up the drive and transfer files. Or you can access the drive using the WD My Cloud app for iOS or Android. The drives also include DLNA and Plex media servers to stream to smart TVs and other devices.
You also can use the built-in SD card reader to share files from cameras or other devices, or to back up the contents of SD cards.
Plus, for wired connections, these drives have both a USB 3.0 port and a USB 2.0 port. With these, you can connect directly to a computer as a standard external drive, plug in another USB device and share its contents wirelessly, or power another portable battery from the built-in battery. The battery provides 10 hours of continuous use, whether recording files or streaming media.
These WD My Passport Wireless drives are multi-talented wireless hubs -- both to share from the built-in disk, SD cards, another USB drive, and even wireless cameras over FTP -- and to share to multiple other devices including laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
That's a lot of features, but wonderfully flexible and useful when you need them, whether assembling files and media from multiple sources in the field, or providing access to common files among several people and systems.
- See full Holiday Tech 2018 presentation for my local talks in the Princeton area
- See companion article in U.S. 1 Newspaper, Nov. 14, 2018
Find the WD My Passport Wireless Pro and
WD My Passport Wireless SSD on Amazon.com