WD My Passport Review: An impressive portable hard drive

Design and feel

The WD My Passport is available in six eye-catching colors. The color options here you get include Black, White, Red, Blue, Yellow, and Orange. So you have plenty of options to choose from. We will review the Blue unit.

Deviating from the company's signature book-shaped style, WD has employed a completely new design for its latest offering. The hard drive is designed by a design firm named fuseproject, which was founded by well-known Yves Behar. If you can figure out from the image above, the drive has two separate halves. While the upper half is plain, the lower half features a textured groove diagonal design.
You can also notice the WD branding on the front part of the portable drive. Also, it has a nice-to-look at glossy finish.

There is one thing that we can't help but point out. The My Passport has quite sharp corners, so don't be surprised if you feel a poke while you are carrying it in your pocket.

The new is almost 1mm thicker as compared to its predecessors. However, the company hasn't made any changes when it comes to other dimensions.

Notably, despite the change in design, the new My Passport features the same micro-USB 3.0 connector. There are also four tiny rubber feet under it to keep the drive steady.

Performance

Let's talk about the main aspect of the WD My Passport drive, which is performance. As we have mentioned earlier, the portable drive is available in four storage variants; 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB. All of them are compatible with Windows 10, 8 and 7, but can be reformatted for other operating systems.

There is also a short USB 3.0 cable that comes with the drive. WD has not officially published its specifications in details. However, we have tested the drive's read and write speeds using Parkdale. Remember, we have tested the one with 2TB storage space. The test showed us 28.5MBps sequential reads and 21.9MBps sequential writes.

However, random read and write speeds are more accurate when it comes to how hard drives handle a lot of small, individual files. Well, as you can see, the WD My Passport hard drive's scores are really high.

Software

WD My Passport ships with a backup software that can check the status and secure-erase the drive. There is also an encryption software available for storing sensitive data. While the backup software is not too advanced, it can come handy sometimes.

Verdict

You should keep in mind that My Passport is an entry-level USB drive from WD. As is often the case with hard drives in the Indian market, you can even buy it at a reduced price. On the design aspect, it does look attractive as compared to other hard drives available. Performance wise, you could call it a decent storage unit. That being said, WD My Passport is really useful if you want fast performance with small and individual files. So you can always go for it.