It’s where to store your data in the Year of the Dragon
The WD My Passport Ultra Limited Edition Dragon ($89.99 for 2TB) is one of a growing number of thematically decorated hard drives. Typically, they are nicely decorated but have otherwise-pedestrian feature sets, with outdated connectivity and a lack of software. The Dragon Edition of the My Passport Ultra changes this trend; not only does this Editors’ Choice award winner have a gorgeous graphic on the front, it has all the features you might want in a portable hard drive, and it is priced the same as the standard My Passport Ultra. Our only (minor) regret is that it is limited to a 2TB capacity.Design: The Rise of the Decorative Hard Drive
Storage drives are not generally sexy or buzzworthy as far as tech products go, although manufacturers often make at least token efforts to dress up their external drives to give them a persona beyond the utilitarian. Gaming SSDs and hard drives (the latter chiefly used for game storage these days) take this further than most, frequently featuring RGB lighting and other flourishes. A few general-purpose spinning hard drives, such as the LaCie Mobile Drive (2022), place an emphasis on style, and WD’s My Passport and My Passport Ultra products are partially clad in a pleasing corrugated, ridged texture, which also makes them easy to grip. Still, even simple flourishes like multiple color options were once rare.
This all changed a few years ago, when Seagate launched hard drives depicting Lucasfilm and Marvel characters and themes. In late 2022, we reviewed two Mandalorian-themed portable hard drives, the Seagate FireCuda Beskar Ingot External Hard Drive and Seagate Grogu Special Edition FireCuda External Hard Drive, followed by the Seagate Spider-Man Special Edition FireCuda External Hard Drive. Since then, additional decorative drives have appeared, many but not all of them branded tie-ins to entertainment or popular culture.
These drives appeal to the fans of the series and movies, but as storage devices, the ones we tested were nothing special. Although they were decent performers, they were limited to USB-A connectivity (with a native USB mini-B port) and came with no software. In addition, they were warrantied for a single year, and were priced considerably more than typical 2TB portable hard drives.
