WD My Passport Slim 1TB Portable Metal External Hard Drive USB 3.0

WD My Passport Slim 1TB Portable Metal External Hard Drive USB 3.0

WD is known for making excellent quality hard disk drives. I have owned several WD internal desktop and external drives in the past and never had any drives fail till date. This Passport Slim portable 1TB capacity with metal top is very well made and will provide years of service. I do like the new dual tone metal design. The drive is small enough to fit in your shirt pocket and has large 1TB capacity.

The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface makes the drive work even faster on PCs and Laptops that have USB 3.0 interface and is fully backward compatible with older USB 2.0 interfaces. I ran some benchmark tests using HDTUNE application and here are the results:

Using USB 2.0 Read Speeds: Min: 29.2 MB/s, Max: 31.2 MB/s

Using USB 2.0 Write Speeds: Min: 14.5 MB/s, Max: 22.6 MB/s

Using USB 3.0 Read Speeds: Min: 96.6 MB/s, Max: 106.3 MB/s

Using USB 3.0 Write Speeds: Min: 54.6 MB/s, Max: 79.2 MB/s

The spindle rotational speed reported by HDTUNE application is 5400RPM. The drive runs cool even after extended period of time as the metal surface helps dissipate heat evenly. This is an 'USB BUS' powered drive. You do not need any external power adapter to run the drive and this makes it very portable.

PROS

• Very attractive dual tone design, Slim portable and comes with a carrying pouch.
• Does not need external power source. Runs with USB bus power.
• Speedy especially when used with SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface.
• 3 years warranty

CONS

• It does not have rubber feet on the bottom and could scratch the bottom surface eventually.
• This drive uses WD proprietary hardware interface. Data recovery could be challenging if the interface were to fail especially if you enable hardware encryption.

When it comes to software included in the drive, you get 'WD Drive' Utilities, 'WD Security' and 'WD SmartWare Pro' backup software. These apps allow you to choose when and where you backup your data, The apps also allows you to password protect and encrypt the files on the drive or run disk drive diagnostics etc; You can also use your 'Dropbox' account to back up your files to the 'cloud' as an offsite backup.

Overall this drive performs well. It is priced right for 1TB capacity. Four Star Product! recommended.

You can buy this from Amazon by using the link below:

WD My Passport Slim 1TB Portable Metal External Hard Drive USB 3.0