Today Western Digital released the latest version of its popular My Passport portable HDD device. The new My Passport is redesigned with a slimmer build and higher capacity, up to 5TB. According to the company, this would make the My Passport the slimmest portable 5TB Hard Drive in its portfolio. Western Digital has released two versions one for Windows 10 with USB 3.0 and one for Mac (macOS Mojave) that leverages USB-C.
Today Western Digital released the latest version of its popular My Passport portable HDD device. The new My Passport is redesigned with a slimmer build and higher capacity, up to 5TB. According to the company, this would make the My Passport the slimmest portable 5TB Hard Drive in its portfolio. Western Digital has released two versions one for Windows 10 with USB 3.0 and one for Mac (macOS Mojave) that leverages USB-C.
The My Passport is a popular portable drive for the causal user. It gives customers the ability to easily transfer various types of files including photos, videos, music, and documents. The drive offers social media and cloud storage import (for services like Facebook, Dropbox, and Google Drive). The My Passport is ready to go out of the box. For security, the drive features WD Discovery software, which offers password protection and 256-bit AES Hardware encryption.
The WD My Passport comes in three colors, Black, Red, and Blue and is available now for a little as $80 for the 1TB
Western Digital My Passport Specifications
| Capacities | 1TB, 2TB, 4TB 5TB |
| Interface | USB 3.0, USB 2.0 USB 3.2 Gen1 |
| Dimensions | |
| 4TB-5TB LxWxH | 107.2 x 75 x 19.15 mm (4.22 x 2.95 x.75 in) |
| 1TB-2TB LxWxH | 107.2 x 75 x 11.15 mm (4.22 x 2.95 x.44 in) |
| Weight | |
| 4TB-5TB | 210g (0.46lb) |
| 1TB-2TB | 120g (0.27lb) |
| Temperature | |
| Operating | 5°C to 35°C |
| Non-operating | -20°C to 65°C |
| Warranty | 3-year |
Design and Build
The latest My Passport is just over four inches long and just under three inches wide. The top of the device is slightly redesigned and has WD branding in the top. The bottom of the device has information such as capacity as well as regulatory information.
On the side of the device is the mini-USB port.
Performance
For performance we did our Windows testing on an HP ZBook Studio x360 G6 workstation. We compared the current My Passport with the previous version we reviewed.
Looking at 2MB sequential speeds the new WD My Passport was able to reach 115.7MB/s read and 114.5BM/s write versus the previous scores of 109.48MB/s read and 105.44MB/s write. With 2MB random speeds hit 109.4MB/s write and 47.8MB/s read, while the previous version hit 66.59MB/s write and 48.94MB/s read. Looking at our 4K random throughput the new WD Passport gave us 2,229.4 IOPS write and 107.8 IOPS read, a large improvement over the previous one’s 37.5 IOPS write and 75.13 IOPS read.
Conclusion
WD has released a new My Passport that is both slimmer and comes with even more capacity than previous models, up to 5TB. The device leverages USB 3.2 Gen1 for fast transfer speeds. The drive is ideal for consumers that have several photos, videos, music, and documents that they need to take with them. My Passport also allows for import from social media and cloud storage for those looking to keep memories safe. Out of the box the device is ready to go with either Windows 10 or macOS Mojave depending on which model bought.
For performance, The new My Passport not only brought more capacity but better performance in all tests except 2MB random read. The new version hit sequential scores of 115.7MB/s read and 114.5BM/s write, random 2MB scores of 47.8MB/s read and 109.4MB/s write. And we saw throughput of 107 IOPS read and 2,229 IOPS write.
The 5TB version of WD’s My Passport gives users even more space to store their ever growing library of photos as well as higher definition videos while also giving them a nice little performance bump.
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