Expert's Rating
Pros
- Up to 6TB of capacity
- Super-low price per terabyte
- Good looking and portable
Cons
- Micro-B, not Type-C as intimated
- Hard drive level performance
Our Verdict
The “WD My Passport, Works with USB-C” offers a ton of capacity for a small outlay compared to SSDs. It’s also easily fast enough for streaming and background backup. The only caveat is that it’s not Type-C as its name might suggest — it’s Micro-B with an adapter.
Full confession. I still use hard disk drives for archiving data despite having a boatload of SSDs. Why? Because HDDs, such as the one in this review, offer a lot of capacity in a single unit for less than half the price-per-terabyte of SSDs.
Alas, I hate to be the one to break the spell created by WD’s tortuously (for writers) long-winded name, but the My Passport, Works with USB-C isn’t a Type-C drive, as might be surmised by a quick glance of the package.
It actually sports the traditional SuperSpeed Micro-B connector and WD bundles a Type-A to Type-C adapter (hence the “works with”) for the Micro-B to Type-A cable.
What are the WD My Passport’s features?
For simplicity, let’s call it the My Passport going forward. The drive is a 5Gbps, external 2.5-inch USB hard drive that’s available with up to 6TB of capacity. It measures approximately 4.2-inches long, by 2.95-inches wide, by 0.8-inches thick, and weighs 7.7 ounces sans cable.
<div class="scrim" style="background-color: #fff" aria-hidden="true"></div>
</div></figure></div>I’ll now point out that a Type-A to Type-C adapter costs around $4 and will make any drive “Work with USB-C.” If you’re looking for a true Type-C HDD from WD, look for “Ultra” in the name. But really, WD? SEO with product titles?
The drive is a great deal, nevertheless, and a good performer for its ilk, and while I’m giving WD a hard time about the awkward name, it’s not a lie, just possibly misleading.
How much does the My Passport cost?
The My Passport is available in 2TB/$85 ($42.50 per TB), 4TB/$135 ($33.75 per TB), 5TB/$150 ($30 per TB), and 6TB/$185 ($30.83 per TB) flavors. That makes the 5TB model the sweet spot in price per terabyte, but unlike with some of WD’s pricier external HDDs, just barely. Go for the 6TB.
By way of comparison, current pricing for even the cheapest external SSD is around $65 to $70 per terabyte, and performance with those can drop to almost HDD-like speed during long writes. Also, note that the WD My Passport Ultra series with actual Type-C ports is no faster than this drive, and a bit pricier.
If you need a lot of portable space for backup, or storing a multimedia collection, you won’t find a better deal than the My Passport, Works with USB-C.
How fast is the My Passport?
As mentioned, the My Passport hard drive is a 2.5-inch model. While 3.5-inch hard drives can sustain transfers at around 250MBps, 2.5-inch models, especially those in external USB enclosures, generally deliver about half that. You want speed? Get an SSD. You want cheap capacity, get an HDD and live with the performance you see documented below.
All three of the drives in the chart are WD 6TB units, hence the almost identical scores, though 2.5-inch external HDDs in general read and write between 110MBps and 140MBps.
The G-Drive ArmorATD displayed a slight advantage in all the tests, but not enough to concern yourself about. On the other hand, it’s ruggedized and IP65-rated.
<div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="" class="wp-image-2350525" width="1200" height="606" loading="lazy" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The My Passport is about average for an external 2.5-inch SSD with sequential transfer. Longer bars are better.</figcaption></figure></div> </div></figure></div>The 4K random reads weren’t actually zero, but so slow (0.3MBps to 0.4MBps) that they rounded down to that non-number. CrystalDiskMark 8 is slanted towards modern SSDs, but still valid for HDDs.
<div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="" class="wp-image-2350526" width="1200" height="582" loading="lazy" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The 4K random reads weren’t actually zero, but so slow (0.3MBps to 0.4MBps) that they rounded down to that non-number. As you can see, random performance is not a specialty of hard drives. Longer bars are better.</figcaption></figure></div> </div></figure></div>The My Passport was faster than the My Passport Ultra for Mac, but fell behind the G-Drive ArmorATD in the 48GB transfers.
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