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. Pros Compact size. Includes automatic backup software and 256-bit AES hardware encryption. Reasonable price. Cons Design won't appeal to everyone.
![Ultra Ultra](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125407925/519098589.png)
1 day ago Help keep your private files private with a password of your choosing with WD Security tools to enable the 256-bit AES Hardware Encryption chip on the My Passport Ultra for Mac drive. High Capacity With up to 4TB of capacity, you have plenty of room to keep your photos, videos, music and documents with you, wherever you go and in your control. My Passport Ultra User Manual. Ii WD Service and Support. My Passport Ultra drive or back up files to the cloud using Dropbox. WD Security™software—Set password protection and hardware encryption for your drive to help protect your files from unauthorized use or access.
Bottom Line The 1TB Western Digital My Passport is a utilitarian portable hard drive that features a fun design and solid performance at a decent price. Sometimes you just need a little extra storage, but you don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it. That's exactly why you'd buy a like the Western Digital My Passport. It comes with automatic backup software, along with 256-bit hardware encryption and password protection, but it's light on flashier features like cloud storage—which is fine considering its low price ($79.99 for 1TB).
The remains our Editors' Choice pick due to its larger capacity, excellent price-per-gigabyte value, and superior performance, but this drive is a good alternative if your needs are modest. Design and Features The overall look of the drive is almost identical to that of the 4TB. Everything from the half-glossy, half-textured design to the six different color offerings is the same. Besides capacity, the only real difference between the two is that the 1TB My Passport is a bit slimmer and lighter, measuring 0.64 by 3.21 by 4.33 inches (HWD) and 5.92 ounces instead of the 4TB's 0.85 by 3.21 by 4.33 inches and 8.6 ounces. This makes the drive pretty compact and easy to toss into your bag or pocket. The is, as its name implies, slightly slimmer at 0.5 by 4.5 by 3 inches, but not by much. The 1TB My Passport also shares the same automatic backup, drive utility, and security software as the 4TB version, including 256-bit AES encryption and password protection.
It's formatted for NTFS out of the box, and is compatible with any PC running, Windows 8, or Windows 7. Western Digital does offer a Mac-compatible version, but reformatting this drive is another option. That's about it, however.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but features like cloud storage can be helpful as they allow you to access your files even if you don't have your hard drive with you. The Seagate Backup Plus, for example, comes with 200GB of free storage for two years. Finally, the My Passport comes with a USB 3.0 cable and two-year warranty. Performance and Cost The 1TB My Passport isn't the fastest portable drive on the market, but it performed respectably on our benchmark tests. On our PCMark 7 hard drive test, which measures performance across a range of general-usage scenarios, it scored 1,467 points—behind the Seagate Backup Plus (1,985) and the 4TB My Passport (1,737) but slightly better than the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC (1,423) and the 2TB (1,432).
The drive also took 12 seconds over USB 3.0 to complete our file transfer test, where we time how long it takes to drag and drop a 1.22GB folder onto the drive. That time means the drive is speedy enough for your average backup routine or manual file copying. Price-wise, the 1TB My Passport costs 7.9 cents per gigabyte. That's not quite as good as the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus (3.8 cents), the 4TB My Passport (3.9 cents), or the 2TB My Passport Ultra (6.5 cents).
But if you don't want to spend more than $100 and can be satisfied with a terabyte of storage, then this drive is a strong choice. Conclusion If you're a bargain hunter looking for little extra storage, then the 1TB Western Digital My Passport should be on your radar. It comes in multiple colors, and includes essential features like automatic backup, 256-bit AES encryption, and password protection. You won't find fancier extras like near-field communication support, as you will on the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC, and you don't get 200GB of cloud storage the way you do with the Seagate Backup Plus, but if you prefer a no-frills product? This is a good deal.
A fantastic storage companion for MacBook users. I’ve been a fan of Western Digital storage options for a very long time.
A company I used to work for had to do daily backups and per project backups and we relied on Western Digital products to ensure that our data was secured. In all the time we used WD hard drives, I don’t think we ever had a drive fail.
Now that I am working independently and I need storage solutions for my media backups, I immediately looked to Western Digital. I have a 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro, which only had USB-C ports on it so I was grateful to find that WD had a portable storage option for people in my situation — the My Passport Ultra USB-C edition. DETAILS The My Passport Ultra USB-C edition has the same compact design as classic My Passport drives from WD with the addition of a USB-C port. The case has been modified slightly from previous versions to include a metal cover.
The drive is USB-C ready (as previously mentioned) and compatible with USB 3.0 (with the use of a provided adapter). The hard drive can act as an automatic backup drive and features password protection as an option. The hard drive can also be encrypted using 256-bit AES hardware encryption through WD Security.
Thanks to WD’s built-in software, WD Discovery, the drive also features social media and cloud storage import. This utility software can also help to manage your hard drive with WD Drive Utilities.
Out of the box, the drive is Windows 10 ready, but it can be formatted to work with Mac computers, too. The My Passport Ultra USB-C is available in three sizes — 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB.
It’s very easy to use and has a 3-year limited warranty. There are two color options — Blue/Black and Silver.
USB-C version (blue) versus USB 3.0 version (white/gold) Package Includes:. My Passport Ultra Portable Storage. USB-C™ cable with USB 3.0 adapter. WD Discovery™ software. for WD Backup™, WD Security™ and WD Drive Utilities™. Quick install guide USER EXPERIENCE The My Passport Ultra USB-C is an updated version of the My Passport Ultra (2017). The older version was only available with a USB 3.0 connection cable, which meant that users like me (with a USB-C MacBook computer) would have to use an adapter or dock in order to interface with the hard drive.
The physical size of the hard drive hasn’t changed much model-to-model except that the corners are rounded on the 2018 model and it simply looks sleeker. Both models are formatted for Windows machines out of the box, but you can reformat using Paragon NTFS for Mac (included with the drive). The My Passport Ultra USB-C is really an exceptional hard drive. It does a beautiful job of storing data and makes it really easy to keep a portable drive with me at all times.
The one thing you really have to be cautious of is the fact that this is a mechanical hard drive and not an SSD. Because of that, the hard drive does not have any shock protection. If it is thrown around a lot, it will be more prone to fail.
That said, because it is a ‘portable’ hard drive, I think that it’s probably a bit more svelte than other mechanical drives. To date, I’ve not had any issue with Western Digital’s portable hard drives being carried by hand during daily treks through the urban jungle or on a coast-to-coast airplane ride.
One of the first things I usually do with any hard drive I test out is to open up Disk Utility to see that the capacity of the drive matches what the box says. In this case, Disk Utility stated that it was a 2TB hard drive which matched up with the packaging. Because the drive is formatted for Windows and I use a Mac, I did end up using Paragon NTFS to erase and reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so I could use it freely with my MacBook Pro. After the formatting, the drive showed up as a 2TB drive, but space was shown as ‘free’ instead of used like it did when it was formatted as NTFS. At this point, I ran two disk speed tests on the drive — AJA System Test Lite and Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. The AJA test is unique because you get a sense for how specific video files will be processed using the selected hard drive. Typically, I get the same type of speed from both tests, but I like running them both regardless.
With the AJA test, I selected 1080p (1920×1080) and 4K-Full (4096×3112). Each test returned approximately the same results with a read/write time of 124/122 Mb/s and 126/122 Mb/s respectively. With the Blackmagic Speed Test, I got a read/write result of 125/121.4 Mb/s. The Blackmagic test will show whether or not the speed of the drive tested will hold up with some common video formats.
The final test I ran on the My Passport Ultra USB-C was a file transfer test. I used a video file that was 2.36GB in size. Using the stopwatch function on my iPhone, I timed the transfer at 19.01 seconds. After converting the file size to MB, I calculated the transfer rate to be 124.1 Mb/s, which is in line with what I was seeing from the disk speed tests.
CONCLUSION The WD My Passport Ultra USB-C is a solid hard drive for any user of USB-C compatible products. Not only does it have a stylish look to it, but it also functions exceptionally well.
I believe that the investment in this product is well worth it. Even though it is still a mechanical hard drive, the cost difference between this drive and the SSD version is quite a lot (2TB My Passport SSD, $599.99 vs. 2TB My Passport Ultra USB-C $89.99). This hard drive is much more affordable and it does a great job as a backup drive. NOTE: There is also a available.
It’s designed to work with macOS out of the box without having to format it. That drive is available in 2TB and 4TB sizes, but is only available in silver.
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