WD My Passport Go SSD Review: Experience Redefined Portability

Rugged And Portable Design

WD My Passport Go is a tough and rugged SSD meant for those who travel a lot. It features rubber casing that makes it rugged. It can withstand 2 m /6.5 feet drop resistance. The rubber protective bumper on the exterior keeps the internal drive safe from impact due to drops or bumps. Besides this, the pocket-sized SSD is ultra-portable and you can carry it around wherever you go.

What I personally like about this rugged SSD from Western Digital is that it comes with an in-built cable. The integrated USB 3.0 cable enables easy connection to the PC or Mac. So, fret not if you do not have any cable with you!

On the whole, Western Digital has come up with a portable storage solution that is dependable and reliable at any time. Be it Mac or PC, you can use the My Passport Go to function out-of-the-box without carrying any cable or component to get it working.

Doesn’t Disappoint Performance

Though the overall capacity of the WD My Passport Go is 500GB, it has only 465GB on formatting the SSD. WD claims that the SSD can transfer files at a rate of up to 400MB/s. It comes with the USB 3.0 (USB 2.0 compatible) interface.

When it comes to benchmark, in the CrystalDiskMark 6.0 test, the WD My Passport Go SSD shows a read speed of 318.7 MB/s and a write speed of 115.8 MB/s in the Seq Q32T1 test. In the 4KiB Q8T8 test, this portable SSD has scored a read speed of 48.39 MB/s and a write speed of 6.508 MB/s.

In the real-life test, I copied a file weighing nearly 60GB from a hard disk drive to the WD My Passport Go SSD. And, it exhibited a maximum copy speed of 37.7 MB/s. The copy speed almost remained the same while it tried copying a folder with multiple files as well. However, the copy speed did fluctuate and dropped to nearly 20 MB/s in some instances. On the whole, it took almost 25 minutes for the file to be copied to the SSD.

Likewise, I also copied the same 60GB file from the SSD to my laptop after restarting the laptop and it showed a maximum speed of 44.8 MB/s. Notably, this was the maximum speed and it did drop down to 18 or 19 Mbps copy speed at times. This process took nearly 23 minutes for the file to be copied. On the whole, it appears to be a fast SSD that can copy files quickly and the company touts that it is twice as fast as the other portable storage solutions.

Verdict: Portable And Efficient SSD

The WD My Passport Go SSD is snappy performer and is capable of handling the tasks thrown at it effectively. Moreover, its shock proof design is attractive and adds to the USP of the SSD. The other notable aspect is its lightweight profile weighing just 55 grams. I also have to mention the fact that it supports both Windows and Mac and is compatible with Windows 10, Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 and macOS Mojave, High Sierra or Sierra. If you are someone who forgets carrying cables around, then I would recommend buying this SSD that can deliver a good performance.