Western Digital My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition (2 TB) Review Today, we are going to take a look at the 2 TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition (WDBEZW0020). To be more precise, it is the Anniversary Edition, but both the Metal Edition and Anniversary Edition are really the same drive. It boasts the following features : Stylish aluminium design Complete backup solution Back up your way Cloud backup with Dropbox Save, share, access in the cloud Keep your private stuff private Easy setup WD Drive Utilities Ultra-fast USB 3.0 WD reliability Now, let's find out how this portable hard disk drive fares against its competitors! Link : Western Digital My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition Portable Hard Disk Drive Review
Hi, I bought the 1TB version of this drive last month. I read an Amazon review that the hardware encryption only encrypts access to the drive, not the actual files and contents within the drive. But reading your review it sounds like it actually encrypts the contents within. Is this true? I already repartitioned the drive for Mac OSX (it was NTFS) and encrypted 20% with TrueCrypt. Unfortunately, I didn't save the pre-installed software since it was only good for Windows. If the hardware encrypts the contents can I still install the program that runs it and go from there. It took more than 2 hours creating a 20% TrueCrypt container, I think hardware encryption would be easier/quicker if it keeps data just as private. Thanks for any input.
Hi TechHarpUser006, From what I understand, WD drives with built-in hardware encryption will ALWAYS encrypt the files on the fly. The only difference is the password set to none (null) by default, so the unlocking utility will automatically mount and decrypt the files as if there is no encryption. Once you create a password, it will become the new key to mount the partition and decrypt the files on-the-fly, as they are read from the platters. The downside for such a feature are that : - the files are automatically encrypted and therefore much, much harder, if not impossible, to recover even if you do NOT set a password - it's not as foolproof as TrueCrypt, partly because it has not been independently audited, and partly because it has been successfully bypassed. You can opt for the on-the-fly encryption feature if you want the FASTEST possible speed. But if data security is critical, go with TrueCrypt. Despite its sudden "demise" (see Tech ARP -, it is still the best open source option. Either TrueCrypt or VeraCrypt - Tech ARP - ED#185 : The New TrueCrypt - VeraCrypt Or CipherShed? Hope that helps you some!
