WD My Passport HDD Review: I own a number of external hard drives due to the nature of my work and out of these, the WD My Passport has become my favourite. I have used it for about two weeks now and well, it’s stylish and comes with a number of interesting features which of course include password protection and capacities of up to 5TB.
Important to mention is that the WD My Passport comes in capacities of 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB all backed with a 3-year warranty. In this article though we will be looking at the 2TB Capacity that Western Digital is selling at $80 which should come to around Ksh,12,000 with the current exchange rate. This pricing makes it a very popular seller considering the value it’s offering.
So, for consumers who are cost-conscious and have a lot of storage needs, the WD My Passport 2TB variant is an option to consider. Let’s dive into this quick review.
Packaging and Design
The WD My Passport HDD comes in a small retail package with an image of the HDD splashed on the front. At the back of the box, you have a list of the content and a couple of more details about it.
Inside the box, we have the WD My Passport 2TB drive, a USB cable, as well as a user’s guide. My Passport utilises an 18-inch USB A to Micro USB B cable, which is about the perfect length.
The HDD has a mate texture finish which gives it a unique grip. It’s almost the size of your travel passport just as the name goes and you can easily slip it into your pocket. It measures just 4.22 x 2.95 x 0.44 inches and weighs 120 grams. Western Digital says My Passport has been redesigned to feature a convenient, slim form factor. It’s available in a range of colours – black, red, and blue.
Security and Software
Should you decide to buy the WD My Passport HDD Western Digital has provided users with WD Discovery software on the drive, which should help you to manage almost everything about your drive.
WD Discovery lets you enable the hard drive’s AES 256-bit hardware encryption-based password protection via WD security software. You activate and set your own personalized password using the company’s downloadable software. I like the fact that the software also provides download links for WD’s Drive Utilities to configure and check up on the drive’s health, as well as WD’s Backup software.
The backup software can also be set to run automatically to your schedule. All you need is to just pick the time and frequency to back up important files from your system onto your My Passport drive. You can even back up media from your socials, and cloud services Google Drive.
WD My Passport comes with NTFS for use in Windows. If you’re a Mac user, you can download the NTFS driver for macOS using the WD software.
Performance
When it comes to performance My Passport HDD performs just fine, offering you 123 MB/s read and write speed – but of course, if you’re looking for a faster external hard drive, SSDs like the SanDisk Extreme PRO are an option.
The drive also works with USB 2.0 but will offer slower read/write speeds. I wish there was a USB Type-C option.
During data transfer, the drive is relatively cool and doesn’t make so much noises or vibrations. There is also a small white power indicator light that only appears when the device is powered on
Should you buy it?
I have carried the WD My Passport for work during my recent trips and well, it’s a good option. It served me well. I particularly like the password and 256-bit AES encryption protection, I really didn’t have to worry about my data stored on the drive.
The transfer speeds may be average but it gets things done. As I mentioned earlier, I wish Western Digital included a USB Type-C port.
The WD My Passport HDD is priced at $64.99, $80, $109.99 and $119.99 for the 1TB, 2TB, 4TB vans and 5TB variants respectively.
You can buy one from the Western Digital Website here.
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