WD - My Passport 1TB External USB Type-C Portable Solid State Drive - Space Gray

Need to backup data fast, and make it discrete. This is the drive you need. This USB Type-C (with a Type-A adaptor) is one fast SSD drive. The Hollywood televised drama of covert copy fiend could use one of these, there be no suspense as this thing writes data extremely fast. Copying 1GB files takes a matter of seconds via USB Type-C, and a little longer with USB Type-A 3.0, and a lot longer with a USB 2.0 connection. Using Crystal DiskMark, a 1GB file averaged about 939 MB/s, and 950MB/s for sequential read and write respectively. Even the random 4K reads and writes are not bad, with it averaging 35MB/s read and 49MB/s write. Larger files (5GB+) do slow down a bit over time, but still not bad. The slow down is inherent to all drives, but dramless drives are more susceptible to such things. This drive does not seem to suffer as bad, and I am not sure how much cache buffer it has to help speed up the write speeds but it works rather well with large files. The one big concern I have for this drive is heat. The fancy outer blue shell is made of plastic and thermal heat generated from the drive just plugged in and idling is a concern. Intensive read/write operations make the drive significantly warmer than normal. We all know that heat is a detriment to electronics and to memory chips. The device retains quite a bit of heat, and the heat generated is not just warm, I’d characterize it as hot to touch when doing intense operations. This would NOT be a drive to keep plugged in for a long time, but definitely, a backup drive to move large amounts of data quickly for backup. Something like this is perfect for traveling. It’s going to find a permanent home in my photo gear bag, for when I travel. This has plenty of space to backup my photos off my camera before the next day’s shoot. The drive comes with a software called “WD Discovery”, which allows for firmware as well as an encryption of the data on the drive. This is optional, but useful for someone who may want to store confidential data on an AES 256-bit encrypted drive. If you are looking for a fast, discrete, light, and reasonably reliable hard drive for quick backups at home or on the road, this drive is the key. So long USB flash drives, this one is a keeper. Pros * Fast reads and writes in USB Type-C and slightly slower using USB-A 3.0. * Simple, light, easy to use, and carry 1TB hard drive. Cons: * Won’t work as an OTG Drive on a USB Type-C phone to directly output photos from your mobile device (it may require some software/app but that is not readily evident) * Heats up, and slows down on large transfers (issue with almost all SSDs as the buffer fills up), but not as bad as a USB Flash drive. Thermal would have been better if it was made of metal.

The WD – My Passport SSD is all plug and play! Take it out of the box and plug in the USB-C connectors from the SSD to your computer and you’re ready to store all your files. I have other external hard drives that use USB-A end connectors and am glad WD went with USB-C with this SSD. USB-C is the future. There is a USB-A adapter that can be used if desired. The device itself is light and small. I compared it to a normal-sized pen and this device could pass as a small card wallet. The device is portable and can fit pretty much anywhere which I like in external storage. The shell design of the SSD is subtle but aesthetic. The software for the device will not install on your computer unless you share your data such as app activity and crash info with WD. I don’t necessarily like this when a company forces the user to share their info with them in order to have access to the software. Other pieces of software that came with my other external SSD’s didn’t force this on the user. I complied for the sake of the software and the various features the software provides. My favorite feature so far is the ability to set a password for your files, something not many other pieces of software offer Now for writing speeds. I first want to address that the device does get a bit hot. I’m not sure if this is because of the materials used or because I was writing a large amount of data at once. Heat can damage electronics; I am curious about how this drive holds up in the future due to this heat. I decided to back up my entire laptop’s data onto this drive. I had about 36GB of stuff on my laptop. This entire backup took about 25 minutes to complete. This was a lot quicker than what I was estimating which was about half an hour. I then tested it out with other various sized files up to 10GB and they were quick to write as well. This SSD has quick writing speeds for large amounts of data! Overall, if you are looking for a solid and portable SSD with quick writing speeds, I do recommend this SSD. The only downside to this SSD is how hot it gets and the sharing of data that comes with installing WD’s software.

The WD 1TB USB-C My Passport is a huge upgrade from the hard drives of the past. As soon as I plugged it into my PC I remembered I needed to format it first on my Macbook, so to my surprise, it's ALREADY FORMATTED TO WORK WITH PC AND MAC RIGHT OUT THE BOX!! This saved me time and energy! So then upon transferring files, I couldn't believe how FAST! I was moving gigabytes' worth of data within seconds and minutes. No more waiting around for files to transfer and finally getting to take advantage of the new USB-C! The portability is awesome, I can finally use those little pockets in my backpack because this passport is so slim and small it practically takes up zero room! Perfect for photographers, videographers, or anybody who works out in the field. This Passport really makes a huge difference! The only thing I would advise people is the device itself produces heat after being connected for a long period of time so I would advise not to keep it connected all the time to your PC/Mac. Other than that it's perfect!

So small love it and fast …………… ……………. …………….

Since my MacBook was about to out of space, I decided to get this SSD, and this thing went beyond my expectation! Fast and reliably secured. I'd love to give credit for its compactness, which helps a lot for any minimalist who doesn't like carrying too much around.

As a computer enthusiast, you can never have enough storage, especially when you need to backup your most sensitive data. Typically faster storage usually coincides with higher price, however, we are at a point now to where external SSDs are quite affordable even for those who do not necessarily care about the speed of the transfer. As such, I was happy to be given the opportunity to review WD's latest passport offering. Packing 1 TB of space in a sleek and lightweight enclosure, the new passport attempts to offer the sweet spot for price and capacity. Additionally, I wanted to test several different types of transfers to give you a clearer picture on what to expect with this latest offering. As one would expect, the newest My Passport SSD features NVMe technology, offering read speeds up to 1050 MB/s and 1000 MB/s write over USB 3.2 Generation 2. As soon as you open the box, you will be quite excited with the sheer size (or lack thereof) of the new drive. It is extremely compact and has a nice aluminum iodized feel. On the front of the drive, you will note the wavy etched pattern that gives the new drive a premium design. As expected, the drive includes a small USB Type-C cable, along with an adapter that will allow you to plug the drive into existing Type A ports. Overall, setup should be straight forward. Lastly, the new SSD Passport ships already formatted in exFAT. For my tests, I wanted to focus the new Passport with a comparable drive of similar specifications. I decided I would compare the newly released SanDisk Extreme V2 1TB drive (Model: SDSSDE61-1T00). Additionally, for data transfers, I wanted to keep my tests relatively simple to focus on an out of box experience. As with anything computer related, data and benchmarks can quickly become complicated, especially when you factor in the different ways USB is implemented across a wide range of chipsets. With this in mind, I wanted to give you an idea on what to expect with this drive given two drastically different computer environments. I ran both drives over USB 3.0 using the included Type-A adapter on my Asus Maximus V Extreme Z77 motherboard running Windows 7 Ultimate. My second test was to then use my HP Laptop Envy X360 (2017), this time over USB Type-C using Windows 10. Additionally, the laptop's USB Type-C port is limited to Generation 1. Lastly, to compliment my Crystalmark tests, I manually copied two sets of data. My first data test is one large 37.3 GB bluray image. The second transfer is one large 28.9 GB music folder, but features 5,002 files and 1,152 folders to test the random 4K performance. Here is the data for both drives on my desktop. UASP was disabled on my board due to not being supported in Windows 7. To shorten the data, I will only list the Sequential values and Random 4K at a queue depth/ thread of 1 (full results in the pictures). Passport: Sequential Read: 257.97 / Sequential Write: 264.06 Passport: 4K Read (Q1T1): 37.26 / Random 4K Write (Q1T1): 72.99 SanDisk: Sequential Read: 258.18 / Sequential Write: 263.23 SanDisk 4K Read (Q1T1): 37.26 / Random 4K Write (Q1T1): 72.73 As you can see both practically equivalent, which probably suggests that both of these drives could, in fact, house the same M.2 drive inside, though I cannot 100% confirm that is the case. Coinciding these results, here are the results from my laptop. Passport: Sequential Read: 430.72 / Sequential Write: 368.50 Passport: 4K Read (Q1T1): 22.74 / Random 4K Write (Q1T1): 30.96 SanDisk: Sequential Read: 430.68 / Sequential Write: 367.83 SanDisk 4K Read (Q1T1): 28.22 / Random 4K Write (Q1T1): 37.81 Once again, the results are almost identical as I noted on the desktop between the two drives. The noticeable increase on sequential is almost certainly due to having UASP native support on Windows 10. Next, I ran both of my manual transfers on both computers. As for my manual transfers, the WD 1 TB and the SanDisk Extreme V2 performed just as my data would suggest. On the desktop and laptop, my Bluray image would sustain a write speed on both drives around 215-230 MB/s, which was exciting to see. The nearly 40 GB image transferred in roughly two minutes. Next my 28.9 GB folder of music proved to be a more difficult task, albeit still extremely fast. I noted that the drives would both sustain around 140-160 MB/s. Occasionally, you will see some dips but nothing too drastic. I will note, however, that on my laptop, the music folder transfer was drastically different. The manual transfer dipped anywhere from 75 MB/s all the way up to bursts of 180 MB/s. Not sure of the reasoning of the drastic dips, especially given that my laptop uses a Crucial P1 1TB M2 as its boot drive. However, it is certainly obvious that this transfer is certainly a worst case scenario and yet it was still able to complete the task in roughly 3-4 minutes. Safe to say, the WD My Passport SSD is absolutely stunning in performance. In conclusion, the WD Passport 1 TB SSD performs exactly as expected. It is both sleek and compact, and certainly breezes through any transfer you can throw at it. In addition, the price is certainly affordable and with 1 TB of space it could prove quite useful for anyone looking for storage. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fully unlock the drives full potential due to not having an available device that is equipped with a USB 3.2 Generation 2 port. However, it would not surprise me if those results are exponentially faster than the ones I have presented here. Regardless of whichever device you use this with, most should be extremely satisfied with the results. With that said, the WD My Passport SSD comes highly recommended.

The Western Digital My Passport 1TB SSD (2020) is a quick dependable external solid state drive solution that fits in the palm of your hands. The drive when tested met the claimed transfer speeds of around 1050 MB/s. It comes with a USB Type-C cable as well as a Type-A adapter that goes over one of the Type-C cable ends. This drive came in handy when I had to quickly transfer large raw format photos from my mobile device to my PC as I was able to connect the drive directly to my phone without any external power source. This drive is shock proof and enclosed in a metal casing and it feels like it can stand up to some of the roughest usage cases outside of military devices. There is software that comes with the drive that you can also download from the Western Digital website that includes tools to backup your data and manage the drive. The drive is backed by a 5 year warranty from Western Digital which should set your mind at ease about the longevity of the drive. Overall I'm very impressed with the small footprint and the speed of this drive and would definitely recommend it.

One could say this is a thumb drive on steroids and that’s kind of what it is. But with higher capacity and much faster write speed. Plus you can encrypt the data. The Passport SSD includes the drive and a very short USB C cable with an adapter to fit a USB A port as well. Keep in mind that the USB A port will need to be USB 3 or 3.1 to get the fastest speed the Passport can do. Build quality appears to be excellent. Aluminum shells for top and bottom. I’m also assuming that aluminum is used to help dissipate heat when in use. It gets warmest when writing data. Design and finish will also help you keep a grip on it. Setup is pretty easy. If you do not plan to use the Discovery software for encryption or automated backup to and from the Passport, simply plug it in and go. It will be seen as another external drive. If you do plan on encrypting your files then run the appropriate (Mac/PC) WD Discovery installation file included in the Passport’s root directory. It will guide you through the installation process. You will then have options for automated backup when you plug your passport in. Including WD’s cloud storage if you want to subscribe to it. I do not and don’t plan to. I have satellite internet and upload speed is way too slow for cloud storage. I connected My Passport to my desktop PC, 2 laptops, a smartphone and a tablet. It worked flawlessly on all of them. Here’s a few things to consider performance wize. If you are coming from a computer with an SSD to the Passport (SSD to SSD) you will see the fastest transfer speeds. If you are coming from a computer's hard drive it’s going to go about half as fast. This will also apply to read speed from the passport to computer. SSD to SSD will be fastest and SSD to hard drive will be slower. If you are using a special high performance hard drive on a high end PC the difference won’t be as great. If you’re using a low end PC / laptop or older computer it’s probably going to go slower than the Passport's top stated specs. On my PCs that I tested the device on, I logged the times and transfer rates. I used Windows Explorer to transfer the files. The rates listed below are average. They peaked and dipped during the transfers. The fastest transfers were from my Asus Zenbook at about 400 MBS reported by Explorer. That laptop only has an Intel SSD. My Acer Nitro 5 going SSD to SSD (Samsung 970 nmve) ran at 360 MBS. HD was 130 MBS My Lenovo desktop going SSD to SSD (Samsung 860 EVO) SATA III was 250 MBS. HD was 120 MBS. I also compared it to my WD 4TB Easy Store HD. It ran at around 75-85 MBS depending on the PC used. One thing that I want to point out is that the write speed never slowed down. Even when transferring 100 GB worth of files. Certain types of SSDs, memory cards and thumbdrives will slow down dramatically after writing a large amount of data all at once. Anywhere from a few GB to 32GB or so. In other words it appears fast in the beginning but if you go beyond that buffer your transfer rates might drop from, say, 70MBS to 4MBS. They have a certain amount of fast RAM they use as a buffer. What that does is give you high speed for smaller data writes. Later in the background the device moves data to the slower “archival” RAM. This data shuffling is necessary because all flash RAM has a finite amount of times they can change state from 0 to 1. So you never want to fill an SSD to the top. It needs that extra space to “keep house”. This generally only applies to write speed. Connecting it to my Galaxy Note 10+ was easy and the plug worked with my Otterbox case. Most thumb drives require me to remove the case to be able to connect it because the USB C connector isn’t long enough to extend past the thumb drive’s case and into the phone. It also worked with my Galaxy Note 2014 tablet. The only thing lacking is an “In Use” indicator light. As for the super short USB cable, my guess is that it’s to keep things small and portable. Also reduce any RF interference to keep data speeds as fast as possible consistently. Using a longer cable will work but a cheap one could reduce your speed. My conclusion is this is an excellent backup device if you need speed and durability against drops and other abuse that could damage a standard hard drive. Available in a 2TB size too.