Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro

Since I moved to a 100% digital workflow, I’ve always looked for ways to secure my images while travelling. Back in the days of PCMCIA cards and the first CompactFlash cards, reliability was far from guaranteed, cameras only housed a single memory card and there was no redundancy at all. My first standalone “device” was an Archos MP3 player with a 20 GB hard drive and a PCMCIA slot, which turned out to be very limited in the way it handled files. Since then, I’ve been searching for a truly reliable standalone device to offload my cards in the field.

The Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro fitted into that philosophy. Marketed as an all-in-one solution, this Wi-Fi hard drive includes an integrated SD card reader and lets you copy the contents of your cards to the internal drive without a computer. The enclosure also provides a USB 2.0 port to connect a camera or an external card reader directly. Its battery, rated for around 10 hours of runtime, can theoretically be used as a power bank to recharge a smartphone or tablet.

Western Digital offered the My Passport Wireless Pro in several capacities, including 2 TB and 3 TB, with a mobile app that allowed you to organise your photos, stream videos and access files from a Mac, PC, smartphone or tablet over Wi-Fi. For Adobe users, the advertised integration with Creative Cloud even promised direct uploads of photos and videos to your online account.

On paper, the My Passport Wireless Pro was therefore one of the most attractive options for travelling photographers. In real life, my own unit turned out to be disappointing, with a transfer rate that was far too slow from SD cards and a recurring connection bug with my other devices. In the end, I preferred to send it back rather than trust it with my field backups.

Western Digital later extended the range with the My Passport Wireless SSD, a flash-based version announced in early 2018, better suited to shocks and intensive use on assignment. However, the whole My Passport Wireless family (Pro and SSD) is now at the end of its life cycle. According to WD’s lifecycle policy, the My Passport Wireless Pro is officially supported until 31/12/2024, and the My Passport Wireless mobile app no longer receives any updates after that date.

By 2025, investing in a second-hand My Passport Wireless Pro no longer really makes sense, whether because of an ageing battery, limited performance or the end of software support. All the more so as there are now simpler, more modular and often more affordable solutions based on a smartphone, USB hub and external SSD that achieve the same goal with much greater flexibility.

If you’re looking for a modern, long-term method to back up your memory card photos without a computer while travelling, I recommend reading my detailed article: How to back up camera photos while traveling – no laptop needed. I explain why an all-in-one device like the My Passport Wireless Pro is no longer essential, and how to replace it with a few carefully chosen accessories.