Pushing the boundaries of what portable hard drives can provide users in terms of storage, Western Digital released a 2TB version of their My Passport, making it the largest capacity portable drive on a 2.5-inch body available in the market for consumers.
I couldn’t believe when I first saw this compact-looking external drive bearing a whopping 2TB capacity, without the need of an external power source, and supports USB 3.0. But that’s what the WD My Passport 2TB offers its customers.
Design
This portable drive is compact but not as light as its lower-capacity brothers, not with the four 500MB 2.5-inch platters inside it. However, it won’t be a burden to lug around on your pack with its 0.5lb weight. The heft makes this hard drive feel solid and sturdy, and the cross-hatch textured finish allows it stand out with other plain external drives in the market.
Keeping things simple as all portable drives, the My Passport 2TB has one micro-USB 3.0 port and a 1.5-foot USB cable to go with it for both power and data. If you’re not familiar with a USB 3.0 cable, it has a mini-plug joined into the main microUSB plug that provides power to the drive. However, you can still use your ordinary microUSB cable if its own USB 3.0 cable is missing, you’ll just have to make do with USB 2.0 speeds. And the USB 3.0 cable is also backwards compatible to USB 2.0 ports by the way.
Features and Software
The My Passport 2TB is ready-to-use out of the box with no setup required. It is preformatted in NTFS so you don’t have to worry about dealing with greater than 4GB files. However, if you will be using your Mac to write onto it, better format it into HFS+ right away.
The drive comes preloaded with WD Utilities, WD Security and WD Backup that should work in both Windows and Mac environment. Not sure if you’re interested in using them but WD Utilities is used to monitor the drive’s condition and for other tools like reformatting. WD Security is simply for implementing a password system into the drive. WD Backup is a staple to My Passport for easy back up under Windows although you’re better off with third-party back-up software for more complete features.
Performance
If your machine supports USB 3.0 then you’ll gonna love the transfer speed on this Western Digital My Passport 2TB. Here’s a comparison on the same files transferred to this drive using USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 on the same machine.
USB 3.0 | USB 2.0 | |
---|---|---|
1 file – 4.7 GB | 45 sec. (98.565 MB/s) | 2:58 mins. (25.119 MB/s) |
53 files ““ 1.8 GB | 3 sec. (50.810 MB/s) | 10 sec. (17.388 MB/s) |
Verdict
If you want a simple hard drive that you would be using for a really long time, the Western Digital My Passport and its 2TB capacity should be more than enough to store your data. Its huge storage capacity, small and portable profile, and USB 3.0 speed should make it an appealing buy for the ultimate external storage they can bring anywhere. SRP: Php9,700.