Begin by turning on the Mac computer with only a single My Book Studio or My Passport Studio drive connected. Ensure that the version of Mac OSX being used is compatible with the firmware updater (Leopard, Snow Leopard).

• Wd My Passport Studio
• My Passport For Mac Cable
• My Passport For Mac
• Western Digital My Passport Studio

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• Western Digital My Passport Studio for Mac 640GB

Some developers refresh their product lines infrequently, only changing their formula when they’re able to dramatically improve performance or offer new features. In contrast, others release new editions of their line seemingly every year, continually evolving their line as a car company would. Western Digital falls into this latter category, but that doesn’t mean their latest My Passport Studio portable hard drive isn’t a huge leap forward for the portable line. Thanks to an innovative new display and some solid connection speeds, the My Passport Studio is a solid successor to Western Digital’s tradition.

The latest My Passport Studio offers a dual interface design with FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connectivity. The drive also comes Time Machine ready and offers capacities of 640GB, 500GB, and 320GB. The unit we tested had 640GB of storage.

The unit itself is slightly shorter and more rounded than the previous version, weighing in at 0.4 pounds and with dimensions of 3.3 by 0.7 by 4.8 inches. It feels flimsy in your hands but survived several of our drop tests with no ill effects. The My Passport Studio is light enough to put in your pocket and take with you anywhere.

The My Passport Studio features a sleek silver aluminum exterior with white trim and a new smart display. Even when unplugged, you can view the white on black customizable label. The display can reveal what’s on the drive, to whom it belongs to, or indicate some other message to its owner. Meanwhile, the display also lets you know the available capacity and security status of the drive.

The My Passport Studio features a 2.5-inch drive with a 8MB cache and a 5400-rpm drive mechanism. The drive offers both USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 ports, though users can also achieve FireWire 400 connectivity with a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 cord (not included).

With only a 5400 rpm mechanism and without eSATA connectivity, it’s not surprising that the My Passport Studio did not achieve the best times we’ve seen in our lab tests. The My Passport Studio finished our 1GB copy test in 31 seconds while using its FireWire 800 connection—6 seconds behind OWC’s Mercury Elite-AL Pro Mini (), our top product for portable hard drives.

The My Passport Studio fared better in our duplication tests, finishing the test in 39 seconds with its FireWire 800 connection enabled. That’s actually a second better than the Mercury Elite AL Pro Mini. Unfortunately, the low-memory Photoshop tests proved to be comparatively difficult for the My Passport Studio; its FireWire 800 score was 20 seconds slower than the Elite AL Pro Mini’s.

Why the up and down times? The AJA tests only complicate the narrative: the My Passport Studio has slower read speeds than the Mercury Pro with its FireWire 800 connection. However, My Passport Studio produced better write times than the Elite Al Pro Mini. This is impressive considering the My Passport has a 5400-rpm mechanism, compared to the Elite AL Pro Mini’s 7200-rpm mechanism, and the copy tests (usually a pure write test) are worse for the My Passport.

Timed trials

My Passport For Mac Cable

How we tested. We ran all tests with the drive connected to a Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz Xeon with 2GB of RAM running OS 10.6. We tested the drive with each available port. We copied a folder containing 1GB of data from our Mac's hard drive to the external hard drive to test the drive's write speed. We then duplicated that file on the external drive to test both read and write speeds. We also used the drive as a scratch disk when running our low-memory Adobe Photoshop CS4 Suite test. This test is a set of four tasks performed on a 300MB file, with Photoshop's memory set to 25 percent.—Macworld Lab testing by Chris Holt

AJA tests

The 640GB My Passport Studio will set you back $200, giving it a price per gigabyte of $.31. That’s pricey, even for a portable drive. LaCie’s Rikiki (), for example, is a measly $.22 per gigabyte. The My Passport Studio comes with a three-year warranty.

Macworld’s buying advice

Western Digital’s My Passport Studio provides satisfactory (though not exceptional) speed, a strong warranty, and a convenient digital label. If you’re a fan of Western Digital’s line of drives, you’ll appreciate the company constantly seeks to improve their storage solutions and the digital label is just that—an upgrade. If you’re not a fan, however, you’ll likely wonder why you’re paying so much for such unexceptional performance.

[Chris Holt is a Macworld associate editor.]

• Western Digital My Passport Studio for Mac 640GB

  Cons

  • Mixed speed results

Summary:

Many users asked me about the same problem: 'My Macbook can recognize my WD MY Passport, but when I want to open it and find some files, the system shows that the drive is unreadable. The files in the drive is important, do you know how to get the data back before I repair it.' Data loss problems are common in our daily life, find a suitable method to recover the data is very necessary for you. And you should know that to recover files from My Passport external hard drive is not a difficult task, this article will provide you the full guides to solve your problem.

Part 1. WD My Passport External Hard Drive Data Recovery for Mac

As long as lost files on your WD My Passport drive haven't been overwritten by new data and you drive can still be recognized as a drive by your Mac, you’re likely to restore all lost data with the help of a WD My Passport data recovery program such as iSkysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

This powerful utility enables you to recover WD My Passport data lost for various situations and it'll do no harm to your drive. With its comprehensive recovery mode and simple operation, you can easily get back all kinds of files, such as photos, audio files, document files, videos and more. Besides, is compatible for all Mac models and Mac OS X versions including Yosemite, El Capitan and macOS Sierra.

My Passport For Mac

iSkysoft Data Recovery

A Life Saver to Solve Your Data Loss Problems!

• It is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating system.
• It supports a large number of storage device type including hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc.
• All major types of files can be recovered including music, images, video, documents, emails, and archives.
• It has a deep scan features for in-depth scanning of the hard drive for searching files to recover.

Part 2. How to Recover Data from WD My Passport Hard Drive on Mac (El Capitan, macOS Sirra and macOS High Sierra)

Steps on How to Recover Deleted Photos and Videos on WD My Passport Hard Drive

Step 1. Choose File Types to Start WD My Passport Recovery

After launching the tool on your Mac, you'll get 6 file type option tabs as follow. If you want to recover lost, deleted or formatted files from WD My Passport drive, you can select one or more file types. After that, try to click 'Next' button to continue.

Step 2. Scan Your WD My Passport Drive

Western Digital My Passport Studio

Then your WD My Passport hard drive will be listed in the window. You can select it and click 'Start' to start scanning for lost data.

Step 3. Recover Files from WD My Passport Hard Drive

After scanning, found contents on your hard disk will be listed according to folders in the window. You can view original name or preview photos and documents to check whether the lost data are found or not.

Part 3. Tips About WD My Passport Data Recovery on Mac

WD My Passport external hard drive has been widely used all over the world. However, files on WD My Passport hard drive can be lost due to deletion, formatting, data transferring, virus infection, system error and some other reasons. If you have backup of lost files on somewhere else, you can retrieve them within seconds. Otherwise, you need WD My Passport data recovery software to solve your problem.

Since lost files can be easily overwritten by new data on your WD My Passport drive, please stop using it immediately when files are lost.