Western Digital announces its thinnest external drive with USB 3.0

Excellent for anyone that hates to travel with a laptop bag, Western Digital has announced a new hard drive that can slip into a pocket.

Explained in detail within a Western Digital press release today, the popular hard drive manufacturer has announced a new 500GB My Passport Edge drive for both PC and Mac computers. The PC drive is just 0.5 inches thick and the Mac drive, encased in an all-metal housing, is even smaller at 0.4 inches thick. Comparing that thickness to a popular smartphone, the Mac drive is barely thicker than Apple’s iPhone 4S. In addition to the slim body style, the drives are fairly light and don’t weigh significantly more than a standard smartphone. Either drive could easily be slipped into a pants pocket for transport and include shock tolerance features for rougher handling. In addition, both drives come equipped with a USB 3.0 interface for speedy file transfers compared to the older USB 2.0 standard.

The PC version of the My Passport Edge drive has a slightly different design with a light gray color on top along with a familiar pattern of dark gray circles around the logo. The PC version of the drive also ships with Western Digital’s SmartWare software that allows the user to setup automated backups in order to recover data in case of a hard drive crash in the user’s main desktop or laptop PC.

The drive has been formatted in NTFS for use with the Windows operating system. The 500GB version of the drive includes a three-year warranty from Western Digital and is currently priced at a MSRP of $109.99. 

The Mac version of the My Passport Edge drive was designed to blend into Apple’s lineup of Macbooks and offers a solid black top with a brushed aluminum finish around the edges. According to Western Digital, the drive is compatible with Apple’s Time Machine for data backup and have been formatted in HFS+. While My Passport Edge for Mac also comes with a three-year warranty, the drive is priced at a higher MSRP of $119.99. However, both drives can be purchased at a discounted rate when using the “Where to Buy” feature on the Western Digital site.