Western Digital has added another Mac friendly hard drive to its portfolio. The My Passport SE comes in capacities of 750GB and 1TB and is pre-formatted in HFS+ to support Macs out-of-the-box. The drives are USB 2.0 powered and WD says they draw power from the computer instead of the external power supply.
Additionally, the drive is compatible with Apple’s Time Machine software and comes with 256-bit hardware encryption with password protection to keep the data secure and safe.
The 750GB HDD will sell for $180 and the 1TB version for $200.
Who needs or wants a “Mac friendly” gadget, the price being specially upgraded just for the innocent?
Any Hard Drive can be simply and quickly formatted to HFS+ in Disk Utility. It takes a minute tops. Hardly worth the substantial extra charge.
btw There is no such thing as “Compatible with Time Machine”. That is like saying a car is “Compatible with Roads”. Time Machine works with any bootable Hard Drive, Mac formatted or not, in fact the first time you plug it into a Mac, the Mac asks if you want to use it with Time Machine.