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WD Redesigns World's No. 1 Selling Portable Hard Drive

WDC | May 27, 2015

New My Passport Drives Now Feature Up to 3 TB Capacity, Easier Backup Software and Personalization Options

IRVINE, Calif., May 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- WD^®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) company, and world leader in storage solutions, today introduced the new, redesigned My Passport^® Ultra portable hard drives and My Passport for Mac drives. With the My Passport line now in its 7^th generation, the My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac portable hard drives are now available in capacities up to 3 TB¹ and in four stylish colors² - Classic Black, Brilliant White, Wild Berry and Noble Blue. WD is also introducing a new optional accessory – WD Grip Pack – a soft band, available in a variety of colors, which encircles the drive, offering consumers an easy way to personalize their My Passport drives.

"With more photos being taken than ever before, it's critical to have a high capacity, reliable external storage solution that you can carry everywhere," said Tony Tate, general manager and vice president of Content Storage Solutions at WD. "The latest generation My Passport drives deliver an easier automatic back-up experience, hardware-based encryption for security and higher capacities than ever before. Consumers can keep all their content in their pockets, while expressing their personal styles with the colors and WD Grip Pack."

My Passport Ultra portable drives come in 3 TB, 2 TB, 1 TB and 500 GB capacities and feature 256-bit AES hardware encryption³ – delivering a high level of security with no impact to write-speed or CPU activity. If your My Passport Ultra falls into the wrong hands, the 256-bit AES hardware encryption protects users' files, folders, photos, videos and music with a password known only to them. USB 3.0 compatibility provides fast data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second, while being backwardly compatible with USB 2.0. My Passport for Mac portable drives are available in capacities of 3 TB, 2 TB, 1 TB and also feature 256-bit AES hardware encryption with USB 3.0 connectivity.

Sold separately, the WD Grip Pack accessory for My Passport Ultra is available in five colors (smoke, slate, grape, sky and fuchsia) and, when wrapped around one of the four colors of My Passport Ultra drives, enables consumers to create a total of twenty possible color combinations. The WD Grip Pack comes with a color-matched 18-inch flat USB 3.0 cable, creating a stylish complete solution.

My Passport Ultra's built-in WD Backup software is a simple-to-use application with focus on reducing frustration when setting up a backup plan to preserve data. Since 31% of devices have had malware at some point, having your data safely backed up onto a secondary device like a My Passport drive is critical to preserving precious data.

Pricing and Availability

My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac portable drives are available today in the WD store at wdstore.com and at select retailers, including Amazon (My Passport Ultra: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W8XXRPM, My Passport Ultra for Mac: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WJOVDYM) and distributors. My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac have a Manufacturer's Suggest Retail Price (MSRP) ranging from $79.99 up to $199.99 depending on capacity (3 TB capacity available next month). Both the My Passport Ultra and My Passport for Mac will offer a 3-year limited warranty. Terms and conditions of WD's limited warranty may be found at support.wdc.com/warranty. WD Grip Pack accessories will be available in June and will have an MSRP of $12.99.

About WD

WD, a Western Digital company, is a long-time innovator and storage industry leader. As a storage technology pacesetter, the company produces reliable, high-performance hard disk drives and solid state drives. These drives are deployed by OEMs and integrators in desktop and mobile computers, enterprise computing systems, embedded systems and consumer electronics applications, as well as by the company in providing its own storage products. WD's leading storage devices and systems, networking products, media players and software solutions empower people around the world to easily save, store, protect, share and experience their content on multiple devices. WD was established in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.wd.com.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its companies design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD, HGST and G-Technology brands. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

Western Digital, WD, My Passport and the WD logo are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products may be available in all regions of the world. As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte = one billion bytes; one terabyte = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

¹ 3 TB will be available next month
² Colors only available on the My Passport Ultra
³ Password must be set in order to use encryption.