The Western Digital Corporation is one of the largest computer hard disk drive manufacturers in the world. Western Digital sells many hard drives with a one, two, or three year warranty. This means using a computer for over 3 years can be risky and may result in hard drive failure.

This is the on-the-go photographer’s dream gadget I was originally introduced to a wireless drive for photographers back in early 2017. It was a device I found while looking at the tech products at CES that year and I was highly impressed with the concept. That particular product lacked some advanced features but soon after I learned about the My Passport Wireless Pro from Western Digital. I had the opportunity to use it while I was at CES 2018 as my portable backup drive. Sadly, the main problems I had with it was because it was using spinning, mechanical drives. That made the battery drain quicker and it also kept me from backing files up while on the move since the spinning drive needed to remain stable while transferring data.

I recently switched from Windows to Mac. Steam says I have fewer Mac specific games than total games and it should be an equal amount unless you can only download, install. This is basically Steam for Windows that is used specifically on Mac. Because of this, you will have to switch between your primary Steam for Mac application and your new Steam for Windows application depending on if the game you want to play is for Mac or Windows. Play steam game for windows on mac.

I found its transfer speed to be quite slow and the drive also lacked a CF card slot. I saw potential in the WD device and looked forward to the day when they would swap the mechanical drive for an SSD. Needless to say, while at CES 2018, Western Digital showed off the new My Passport Wireless SSD, which is a substantial update to the My Passport Wireless Pro. I was simply in love with this device. DETAILS The My Passport Wireless SSD is an all-in-one portable drive. It has a built-in SD 3.0 card reader with a convenient one-touch copy button.

The battery lasts up to 10 hours and a durable, shock-resistant SSD is housed inside the outer case. With the My Passport Wireless SSD, you can wirelessly stream 4K videos and view photos from connected devices. The drive has the power to import media from USB card readers and it also has a built-in power bank for charging mobile devices, too.

One of the most impressive specs of the My Passport Wireless SSD is that it has file preview support of RAW photo files. The drive comes in four different capacities — 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The My Passport Wireless SSD creates a secure 802.11ac WiFi connection so you can wirelessly connect to your drive to access stored files.

You can also connect it directly to your computer using USB 3.0 (cable included with the drive). You have the ability to use the My Cloud app to view media and some third party apps — like and — will talk directly to the My Passport drive as if it were an external drive for your mobile device. Each drive ships with a drop-protection bumper, a USB cable, and a USB power adapter. It’s compatible with Windows 10, 8.1 or 7 and Mac OS X El Capitan, Sierra, or High Sierra. Plex-enabled or DLNA/UPnP devices are needed for streaming.

USER EXPERIENCE The My Passport Wireless SSD arrived in a standard Western Digital branded box, which uses dark grey and yellow as its main colors. The box had some product information included and the device was well identified.

When you open the box’s cover, you will find a quick start guide of sorts that illustrates the main features of the My Passport and how to use them. Inside the box, you will find the drive itself, a quick start card, power adapter, and USB 3.0 cable. Set-up of the drive is pretty straightforward.

It can be done using the mobile app (iOS version in my case) or your desktop computer. Aside from learning how to connect to it wirelessly, the main purposes of the initial set-up are to assign preferences for the drive.

You will be asked to approve the license agreement, select whether or not you want contents to automatically copy from an SD card or USB device when they are plugged in, and review the Enhance Your WD Experience screen, which includes automatically updating the WD SSD software. All of these settings can always be managed later from your Dashboard. There are several ways to connect/manage the content stored on your WD My Passport Wireless SSD device — wirelessly through the mobile app, Mac utility app or as a Shared drive, through the web interface, or through a wired connection directly through a USB 3.0 connection. I tested all of these options along with transferring data through SD card and USB 20 to make sure I ran a thorough testing process for this review. I will break down the experience I had with each feature. USB 3.0 This was probably the most natural connection I could have used. WD provides a USB 3.0 Micro-B 10-pin to Type A cable with the drive.

The Micro-B end plugs into the drive while the Type A side plugs into your computer. I have a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar so I only have USB-C ports on my machine. Because of this, I used a dock with a USB 3.0 connection.

When I plugged in the drive for a wired data transfer, I used one of those ports. When you plug the drive in using a cable, it mounts like any other external drive would. You can see a disk image on your desktop and access the files using a standard Finder window interface. If you are using a Mac, you will need to use Paragon NTFS for Mac in order to read and write to the drive. WD includes this software on the drive for users to install without any hassle. When I installed it, I was still having some issues with being able to write to the drive.