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WD casts down the first Thunderbolt bus-powered portable dual hard drive

By Mike Epstein Published May 28, 2014

Western Digital, one of the computing industry’s big storage makers, just announced a new line of My Passport Pro portable hard drives. What makes these stand out is the fact the company claims they’re the first portable Thunderbolt bus-powered dual disk external drives.

Sporting a pair of 2.5 inch drives, the new My Passport Pro is encased in an aluminum shell, and can shuttle data at speeds of up to 233MB/s. You’ll also be able to configure the My Passport Pro’s drives in either RAID 0 or RAID 1 as well. On top of that, Western Digital outfitted the new My Passport Pro with a built-in Thunderbolt cable, so there’s no danger of ever misplacing the cord.

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“The only Thunderbolt dual-drive solution that’s bus-powered, WD’s My Passport Pro enhances the workflow of mobile creative professionals by providing fast transfers and data protection for the large amounts of digital content they generate outside the studio,” said Western Digital exec Jim Welsh in a prepared statement. “From photographers, videographers and musicians to graphic designers and architects, people who depend on portable storage for their livelihood will find My Passport Pro defines a new level of performance, reliability and especially portability.”

As the above quote indicates, with the My Passport Pro line, Western Digital is targeting creative professionals who regularly deal with large files.

The My Passport Pro is available now in two models: a 2TB drive for $299 and a 4TB drive for $429.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.

Associate Editor, Gaming

Michael is a New York-based tech and culture reporter, and a graduate of Northwestwern University’s Medill School of…

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