WD, a provider of external storage offerings, has introduced new My Passport Studio portable drives featuring the FireWire 800 interface and a customisable e-label that’s visible even when the drive is unplugged.

According to WD, the My Passport Studio drives are formatted for Mac computers, compatible with Apple TimeMachine software, and feature automatic and continuous backup with SmartWare software. They are offered in capacities of 320GB, 500GB and 640GB. The e-label smart display on the front of the drives shows available capacity and whether the drive is locked; and it can be changed often using the SmartWare software.

The SmartWare software features visual backup displays that show content in categories and shows the progress of backup; and customisable data backup that allows users to set drive security, run diagnostics and manage the power settings.

In addition, the new My Passport Studio drives feature user-selected password protection combined with 256-bit hardware-based encryption, which scrambles files before they are stored. The drives also feature an USB 2.0 interface; and HFS+ Journaled formatting and are compatible with Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for branded products group at WD, said: The e-label smart display is an elegant and practical solution for organising and keeping track of one’s digital life and work. WD SmartWare software makes it easy for users to protect their valuable content with automatic and continuous backup and encryption.