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Cnercessian

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 24, 2012
27
0
I've been looking for an portable external HD for my 2012 MBA and stumble upon this today

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Dig...al-5400-RPM-/300753902160?var=#ht_1974wt_1374

I know i have to reformat it for a Mac but what i was wondering is if the usb 3.0 function will work with the Mac? I ask this because on the Western Digital website, they have a separate "My Passport for Mac" hard drive but it is only USB 2.0, so i wondered if they didn't recognize the 3.0 functionality.

Thanks
 

AurelMax

macrumors newbie
Aug 4, 2012
11
0
just bought 2012 MBA, and I have a WD passport 500gb and a WD elements 1TB, though it looks one generation before, but with USB3.


and i'm having terrible results with both for the moment :(


another forumer has had the same problem, change the cable, seemed to fix the problem


will see
 

TwinCitiesJHawk

macrumors 6502
Feb 9, 2009
465
52
I've been looking for an portable external HD for my 2012 MBA and stumble upon this today

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Dig...al-5400-RPM-/300753902160?var=#ht_1974wt_1374

I know i have to reformat it for a Mac but what i was wondering is if the usb 3.0 function will work with the Mac? I ask this because on the Western Digital website, they have a separate "My Passport for Mac" hard drive but it is only USB 2.0, so i wondered if they didn't recognize the 3.0 functionality.

Thanks

I bought the blue one from amazon last month, had to format it to work with my MBA and it works perfectly. Not sure if Its running with usb 2 or 3.0 though.
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,071
15,494
California
I've been looking for an portable external HD for my 2012 MBA and stumble upon this today

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Dig...al-5400-RPM-/300753902160?var=#ht_1974wt_1374

I know i have to reformat it for a Mac but what i was wondering is if the usb 3.0 function will work with the Mac? I ask this because on the Western Digital website, they have a separate "My Passport for Mac" hard drive but it is only USB 2.0, so i wondered if they didn't recognize the 3.0 functionality.

Thanks

I have the 500GB version of that drive and just formatted for Mac and it works fine at USB 3.0 speeds on my 2012 MBA. from what I can tell, the "Mac" version is just preformatted in HFS+ for you.
 

AurelMax

macrumors newbie
Aug 4, 2012
11
0

TwinCitiesJHawk

macrumors 6502
Feb 9, 2009
465
52

Nyvar

macrumors newbie
Feb 20, 2012
19
0
well based on WD's website:

Up to 5 Gb/s in USB 3.0 mode and
up to 480 Mb/s in USB 2.0 mode

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...178-705230.pdf

Informal real life results: it took 12 hours to put 1.4TB on to the drive using my late 2011 mbp, samsung 830 ssd from a firewire 800 external through usb 2 to the passport. Moving the same set of files (iTunes library if you're curious) via usb3 to a usb3 seagate 3TB using the mba, took a little less than 5 hours.
 
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