Talking of portable hard drives Western Digital is the first that would pop in your mind. And WD certainly has been making our lives easier with its My Passport series of portable drives. Though as a result of our unquenchable thirst for more storage space the sizes of these HDD’s have now reached in the TB’s and such huge spaces will require higher transfer speeds.
And this is exactly what WD’s My Portable 2TB portable HDD with USB 3.0 promises to address here. We go ahead and take a look at how it performs and whether it does deliver on its promise of more space with better transfer speeds.
For your academic knowledge the drive comes in different capacities of 500 GB to 2TB and is available in five colors which includes midnight black, arctic white, metallic red, metallic blue and cool silver.
In the box you have the WD portable hard drive, USB 3.0 cable, quick install guide and the warranty card. All the necessary software to install will already be available on the HDD.
Build & Design:
Now talking about the My Passport drive, it stands true to its name with its dimensions pretty close to that of a passport the only difference being the thickness of the drive over the latter. Here are the statistics 111mm x 82mm x 21mm or 4.37″ x 3.24″ x 0.82″ with a weight of eight ounces.
The drive has a matte finish design all over the body and the dotted design on the front with the WD logo makes it look stylish as well.
You have a USB 3.0 port on the top while the rest of the sides are completely blank. On the bottom you have four rubber pads towards each corner to avoid the drive from slipping and also helps avoid scratches as well.
The design is mostly similar to the My Passport Studio, albeit there is no aluminum casing here, but the drive still pretty much manages to look more than decent in comparison.
Connectivity:
The connectivity options on My Passport include USB 3.0 which is also compatible with USB 2.0. Unfortunately there is no FireWare 800, like you had on the Studio, though this shouldn’t be a deal breaker for most.
Performance:
As usual My Passport comes pre-formatted for NTFS and can be formatted in case you would want to use it with a Mac. It also has a host of useful software which includes WD drive utilities for diagnostics, drive erase etc along with WD security app and SmartWare.
Speaking of the WD SmartWare, it is extremely efficient software with easy to use UI to help you back up files and retrieve any files which you have accidentally deleted.
We were quite satisfied with the transfer speed that we got.
Here are the results for USB 3.0 & 2.0:
- Approx. 15 seconds on USB 3.0 for a single 1GB file
- 40 seconds on USB 2.0 for 1GB file.
Moreover, the hard drive doesn’t get easily heated up as well. It might get mildly warm when used for considerably long periods of time. It hardly makes any audible noise during operations as well.
Here is a quick video review of the WD 2TB My Passport USB 3.0 Portable HDD
Wrap-Up:
The WD My Passport 2TB hard drive not only provides you a huge storage space in a slim body design but also gives you fast data transfer speeds. Also considering the fact that you have a very few known players in this storage segment, WD’s brand plays a huge role in its favor. And when you consider the utility software’s bundled within the package this is surely a value for money deal, albeit being a little on the expensive side at Rs. 12,500 approx.
Seagate Backup Plus is another option you can consider if you are looking for a slightly cheaper option and it comes with FireWire 800 as well for approx. Rs. 10,000. Though getting hold of a 2TB drive might be a bit difficult.
