Portable hard drives are increasingly getting popular and making their way into the gadget list of very many people. It is becoming more of a necessity for people who deal with important work/data files and projects to be able to store extra copies as a back-up in the case of an unexpected data loss or as an extra storage option in order to free up memory space on personal computers. One of such portable hard drives is the My Passport drive from Western Digital (WD)
The 2TB My Passport hard drive got my attention at first contact, mainly because of its design. The highlights of the hard drive which include Auto backup and password protection are well presented on the front of the pack. Other information like content and compatibility are on the back of the pack.
Upon opening the box, you see the hard drive, user manual and a USB 3.0 cable. The hard drive itself is designed to have a wave textured half for better grip when holding the device while the upper half is smooth and glossy.
The glossy part is very prone to scratches and has the tendency of being a fingerprint magnet as you it gets easily smudged with sweat patches and the least rub.
The casing is made of plastic. It’s lightweight, portable and has almost the same size as an actual travel passport, evidently where the Passport name was coined. There is also a USB interface, a power indicator that lights up when the device is active and four rubber feet that help keep a short distance between the drive and the surface which it is placed.
My passport external hard drive is plug and play as the single USB cable serves as dual function: for power supply and file transfer. When connected to a PC, you will notice the hard drive is pre-loaded with functional basic software that provide an easy installation guide for both Mac and Windows PCs. There is a backup function that allows you retrieve lost files on the drive as well as password protection and support for data encryption up to 256GB.
The performance of the drive is good with a ready speed up to 90.0MB/s while the write speed peaked at about 77.0MB/s. In simple terms, I was able to copy a file of 2.1GB into the hard drive and this took 45 seconds while it took 24 seconds to copy the same file out of it.
My Passport is a less expensive, durable and functional hard drive that offers above-average performance that can rival more expensive hard drives from competition.
VERDICT: If you happen to need extra storage for fairly large to large files, the 2TB My Passport external hard drive is a must-have!