Every serious photographer knows the importance of backing up their image files as soon as possible to ensure they don’t get corrupted or accidentally deleted. This is especially true for wedding and event photographers who only get one chance to capture the moments that matter, but it also applies to landscape photographers who’ve been waiting patiently for the light to fall into place, or indeed portrait photographers shooting on location without their laptop.
While there are plenty of portable hard drives on the market, you’re often limited to little more than an LED indicator to confirm that your images have been backed up successfully, which isn’t always all that reassuring – especially if something goes slightly awry during the process. Indeed, anyone with a basic drive has probably been left thinking ‘did that actually work?’ at some point. This is something that the MyPassport Wireless Pro manages to eliminate thanks to its inclusion of built-in Wi-Fi. Simply connect your smartphone (or tablet) to the drive using the free WD MyCloud app for iOS and Android and you can browse all of your backed-up photos to eliminate any lingering doubts.
The MyPassport Wireless Pro is powered by an internal battery that provides enough power for a full day’s use, and can even be used to juice up your phone. Better still, it comes with a built-in SD card slot too, which means you won’t need to connect any leads to your camera or fumble around with third-party card readers. Simply insert your card, press the Copy button and let the drive do its thing. Four small blue LED lights will indicate the progress of your backup – once they are all lit your backup is complete. Transfer speeds are pretty quick too – with a Class 10 U3 card we were able to get almost 50MB/sec, which equates to about six minutes for a 16GB card full to capacity. Back home, you can transfer the stored images to a computer via its USB 3.0 output.
Price: £144 (1TB) – £339 (4TB)
