Western Digital brings the Pro series to Malaysia. Unveiled last Friday, WD showcased the WD Pro Series: My Passport Wireless Pro Wi-Fi mobile storage and My Cloud Pro Series network attached storage (NAS).
 
Attended by Asia South Sales Director Margaret Koh and APAC Senior Product Manager Albert Chang, Albert demonstrated the capabilities of the devices, while also allowing us to have a hands on experience with the device.
 
Today, it’s very important to keep record – of everything. People no longer take photos only because they want to, but also because they can. Think motorists with video recording devices in the car or on their helmets. The extreme sport enthusiast with a go pro to record their training. The drone selfies.
 
It has been estimated that in 2015, one trillion photos were taken. Thanks to the revolution of smartphones, as well as various devices to capture photos and videos such as drones and wearable cameras, it is more convenient than ever to take quality pictures and videos from daily happenings. People are capturing and storing more, bigger, better quality photos and videos.
 
With new cameras and devices, the gear that a typical photographer carries could weight around 7kg. By swapping out laptops for a more portable device option such as a tablet, along with Wireless Pro, WD offers a lighter alternative for photographers to edit and share in the field.
 
“However, knowing photographers, any weight that is removed will be replaced with more camera bodies and lenses. So in actuality we are not providing a solution to make bags lighter – but to allow photographers to be more prepared.” Albert half joked.
 
Designed to cater for creative professionals in the field, the WD Pro Series enables seamless transfer of content between devices, with reliability and speed. Albert explained that it’s to help professionals achieve better workflow.
 
“We want to simplify photo/videographer workflows. As of this moment, photographers have to transfer data into a laptop, and then further transfer it into a desktop unit via portable storage devices for any further editing. However, with this wireless device, photos can be transferred and accessed directly without needing to transfer to a HDD beforehand.”
 
The products use the My Cloud mobile app – the new version of the app will be launched with the My Passport Wireless Pro and My Cloud Pro Series and be compatible with the Adobe Creative Cloud.  In addition, both the My Passport Wireless Pro and My Cloud Pro Series devices are also compatible with the Plex Media Server and My Cloud OS 3 software for easy editing, streaming and sharing of content.
 
My Passport Wireless Pro comes with a 5GHz AC Wi-Fi connection, allowing automatic file backups from compatible cameras, as well as save, edit and transfer work from up to eight other devices connected to the drive. Tethered connections are also available for faster transfers and include a built-in SD card reader as well as a USB 2.0 port.
 
Available in capacities up to 3TB and transfer speed up to 50mbps, the My Passport Wireless Pro device features up to 10 hours of battery life and a built-in battery pack that can double up as an emergency power bank.
 
My Passport Wireless Pro devices include compatibility with Adobe’s Creative Cloud for mobile photo and video editing, as well as compatibility with Plex Media Server, which is capable of playing up to four streams of content while on-the-go.
 
Accompanying the launch for the wireless device, WD also revealed its NAS offering, the My Cloud Pro Series NAS. Offering up to 32TB of storage, the My Cloud Pro Series NAS comes optimized to import directly from cameras/memory card readers and other USB storage with no extra charges.
 
In addition to giving creative professionals and enthusiasts a reliable place to store their files, this fast, high capacity drive features a hardware accelerated video processor. It comes with a GPU with powerful transcoding capabilities – so the NAS can ingest, edit, store and stream content to and from popular formats, including 4K video, depending on device compatibility.
 
WD’s Pro series is available at select retailers in August. The My Passport Wireless Pro storage will offer a 2-year limited warranty. The My Cloud Pro Series will also offer a 2-year limited warranty for diskless models and 3-year limited warranty for populated models.