The WD Elements and the WD My Passport external hard drives are targeted at the portable drive, on the go market place. The WD Elements is positioned as their entry-level drive for the portable consumer and Western Digital is quite open in saying it is a basic drive. The WD My Passport drive is aimed at the market above the Elements drive and classed as the start of their premium external hard drive range. And the WD My Passport comes in a 'for Mac' guise, but more on that later. Then the questions you may have in mind are; If there isn't a special offer on at the moment is it worth paying the extra to move up to the My Passport drive? And when there is a price premium.
Is the My Passport drive worth it? Let's dig in deep and find out. Nope they come in identical drive sizes, we'll have to look elsewhere other than drive capacity to separate the two. The important thing to remember when you are planning to buy an external hard drive is to work out how much capacity you need for your Mac and not to scrimp. For example If you are planning on using the drive as a backup for Time Machine then calculate how much disk you are backing up and times by two and that way you will have the capacity you'll need as a minimum for use with Time Machine.
In some cases it pays to have a product that has been on the market a while. In the case of the this drive was released to the market in 2013. It is a strong seller and has been consistently amongst Amazon's best sellers in the portable external drive market. It's well priced, reliable and flexible in that you can attach it to a Mac, PC or connect the drive to a games console.
Western Digital WD USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive. WD My Book External Hard Drive. 1 x USB Cable (#39). Super Speed USB 3.0 A to Micro-B Cable. The Western Digital Passport provides expanded storage space and backup features for Windows-based and Macintosh computers. Format your Passport so the drive is compatible with the backup tools available in Mac OS X and so it can perform the common task of transferring files between the external hard drive and your Mac's internal hard drive.
Yes, it's basic and that means there are no frills that come with the drive. And the painful truth is that sometimes those frills can look attractive but they can get you into trouble. More on that later. The My Passport drive is the newer product, released to the market in 2016, positioned by WD to be the next step up compared to the basic Elements drive. The product has also sold well, has proven to be reliable and has the same flexibility in that you can also plug the external drive into a Mac, PC or a games console. What is it about the WD My Passport drive that justifies the higher price?
Well let us see. The USB standard is backwards compatible, thanks be. This means that if you have a newer Mac, say a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro with Thunderbolt connections you will need to purchase for yourself a USB C to USB A adaptor, or a USB cable that is USB C at one end and USB B Micro at the other end. Neither the nor the My Passport drives are Thunderbolt drives and won't read and write at Thunderbolt speeds. But Hey, you do pay a price premium for Thunderbolt drives and if you are not a power user - and you would know if you are one. A Thunderbolt drives speed isn't needed for backup or for storage of normal everyday files, pictures or music. Armed with your adaptor USB cable you plug into your new Mac and due to backwards compatibility your Mac will send the information down to the Elements or the My Passport at USB 3.0 speed.
It may sound obvious to state but neither of these drives are classed as rugged in any way. Yes, they are sold as portable but there is little to protect the drive from shakes, drops excessive heat or cold. If you are truly porting these drives around then a protective case is a must to protect the drive and your data. These are laptop class drives, which is why they are a convenient size and weight to carry around. But they are not the most robust of drives.
This means that when in use place them on a solid surface before powering up. The My Passport user manual clearly states this. Knocks or shakes in use are particularly damaging and there is no ramp loading technology as on the to offer some protection. Hitting all the primary colors and what's more the USB cable provided matches the drive. So apart from matching to your other accessories or clothing there is a practical aspect, when you have multiple drives. You can buy a drive color and team it with the function you want it to serve.
Spare backup drive - blue. Drive for your music - yellow A drive color for particular types of projects you're storing on it. The LED indicator light on the My Passport drive provides indications for;. When the drive is being accessed - fast flashing.
On standby - Slow flashing. Idle - steady constant light. Off - the LED is off Other considerations, the My passport has squared corners, I guess helpful for stacking purposes but some users have disliked the angular sharp corners Personally I think it depends on your personal preference here, The drive comes with a smooth end which some have said shows fingerprints and can look grubby quickly. The other end being patterned.
I think you would have to go some to put scratches on the plastic outer, that said I really wouldn't recommend just putting the drive in a bag loose as the WD advert for the drive seems to suggest. It is not a ruggedized drive, knocks, shakes being tossed about in a bag with no protection will shorten the life of these portable drives. The WD Elements at the other end of the look spectrum is practical, black, rounded corners - there is little to offend. My favorite site for this data is the usb.userbenchmark.com. Where for this comparison they have over 3,800 User Benchmarks recorded. The speed test and results are taken as an average of all these tests.
The My passport was 4% faster on USB 3.0 performance When the My Passport 1TB is compared to the WD Elements 1TB. The pure read performance was 101 Mb/s. 3% faster, versus 98 Mb/s on the WD Elements Portable.
Write performance was 103 Mb/s 4% faster, versus 99.2 Mb/s On the random write speed. This test probably more accurately reflects real world use as a typical consumer user would write files of various sizes. The My Passport got the crown At around 9% faster overall than the WD Elements Portable Here is a. Both are USB powered so this mean's that all you need to do is power up your Mac, Macbook Pro or Macbook Air and plug in the USB cable. Note that by default the drives come with USB 3.0 cables and an adaptor cable or USB C to Micro USB B cable will be needed for the Mac's with Thunderbolt connections. After a few seconds your Mac will recognize the drive is connected.
The drive will appear as an Icon on your desktop. So that's it in terms of physical connection what about using the external drive. By default the WD Elements Portable is NTFS formatted as is the My Passport drive. Your Mac running Mac OS reads and writes to disks formatted as;.
Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system, also known as HFS+ or. ExFAT file systems or. the new Apple File System (AFS) newly available with Mac OS High Sierra. But don't let that put you off, because Mac ready formatted drives come at a price premium and you may need to reformat them anyway as Mac OS can be pretty picky about how its formatting is done.
And the act of reformatting both drives is quick and easy. I have instructions here on the site depending on what you plan to use the external drive for. Would like to find out how to format the WD Elements for Mac?. Would like to find out how to format the WD My Passport for Mac?.
The 'for Mac' guise of the WD My Passport comes ready formatted as HFS+ (known on the Mac as Mac OS Extended (journaled) file system). A nice to have for those Mac users who really do not want to go to the trouble of formatting a drive no matter how easy it is. You plug this drive in and it's there ready to drag and drop your files to or connect up to Time Machine. This drive is a USB 3.0 drive the same as the other My Passport drives however it is supplied with a USB-C cable ready for connection to the newest Macs.
Saving you purchasing an adaptor cable. You won't get the snazzy colors I'm afraid. This drive is only available in black. You can download a version of the WD Discovery software that runs on Mac directly from the Western Digital support site. The Mac version doesn't include the backup software. Mac has its own backup software - Time Machine. So not only will the WD backup software not work on your Mac you don't need it and Western Digital knows this and does not supply this software for Mac.
Mac OS also has Disk Utility which allows you to run a check on the external drive health, repair transient errors and of course reformat the drive. Largely your Mac has you covered for the utilities the WD Discovery software provides. The My Passport is supplied with inbuilt 256-bit AES hardware encryption on the drive itself and that teams with the WD Security software.
As I said earlier the software supplied is PC only however, You can download the Mac version of the WD Security software direct from the Western Digital support site. The Mac version of this software is supplied on this drive by default on the 'for Mac' version of the My Passport drive - if you pay the extra for that flavor. You then use the WD Security interface to manage the password and electronic hardware encryption. Great you say There are some buts. The WD Security software needs to be on all the Mac's you are connecting the My Passport drive to so you can manage the password protection. Bit of a pain if you are swapping the drive between Macs.
Say your Mac had a major failure and you can't boot up normally. You could always boot up to Mac OS Recovery and use your Time Machine backup to completely restore your system. Even to a replacement Mac. But if your stuck with a drive that needs the security system unlocked, before you can get to your Time Machine backup, but you can't unlock it because you can't get to the WD security software. You may as well not have a backup. A 'handy' feature is, forget your password and type it in five times wrong and your My Passport drive erases everything on it. To be fair, forget your drive encryption password under Mac OS and you are in trouble too but at least you can play around to remember it.
Your Macbook Pro or Macbook Air hasn't been used for a little while and goes onto standby. The password for the drive needs to be re-entered if not set up on that Mac to automatically open the drive on your Macbook waking up. You do pay extra for these software features, and you may like them for your particular case. All I am trying to do is to outline where it may trip you up.
If you use Mac OS to manage your security then your Mac and the Mac's recovery software understands all about it. Both the WD Elements and the My Passport external hard drives are manufactured by Western Digital - it's where they get the WD part of their names. Started their company in 1970 so have been around for nearly 40 years. I would say any company that has been around that long must be doing something right. Their products have a great reputation in the market place for reliability, going head to head with some of the best names out there in the consumer market place. They have sold thousands and thousands of external drives covering a raft of industry areas from, networked attached storage, solid state drives through to drives targeted at specific markets.
This is the on-the-go photographer’s dream gadget I was originally introduced to a wireless drive for photographers back in early 2017. It was a device I found while looking at the tech products at CES that year and I was highly impressed with the concept. That particular product lacked some advanced features but soon after I learned about the My Passport Wireless Pro from Western Digital.
I had the opportunity to use it while I was at CES 2018 as my portable backup drive. Sadly, the main problems I had with it was because it was using spinning, mechanical drives. That made the battery drain quicker and it also kept me from backing files up while on the move since the spinning drive needed to remain stable while transferring data. I found its transfer speed to be quite slow and the drive also lacked a CF card slot. I saw potential in the WD device and looked forward to the day when they would swap the mechanical drive for an SSD.
Needless to say, while at CES 2018, Western Digital showed off the new My Passport Wireless SSD, which is a substantial update to the My Passport Wireless Pro. I was simply in love with this device. DETAILS The My Passport Wireless SSD is an all-in-one portable drive. It has a built-in SD 3.0 card reader with a convenient one-touch copy button. The battery lasts up to 10 hours and a durable, shock-resistant SSD is housed inside the outer case.
With the My Passport Wireless SSD, you can wirelessly stream 4K videos and view photos from connected devices. The drive has the power to import media from USB card readers and it also has a built-in power bank for charging mobile devices, too. One of the most impressive specs of the My Passport Wireless SSD is that it has file preview support of RAW photo files. The drive comes in four different capacities — 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The My Passport Wireless SSD creates a secure 802.11ac WiFi connection so you can wirelessly connect to your drive to access stored files.
You can also connect it directly to your computer using USB 3.0 (cable included with the drive). You have the ability to use the My Cloud app to view media and some third party apps — like and — will talk directly to the My Passport drive as if it were an external drive for your mobile device. Each drive ships with a drop-protection bumper, a USB cable, and a USB power adapter. It’s compatible with Windows 10, 8.1 or 7 and Mac OS X El Capitan, Sierra, or High Sierra. Plex-enabled or DLNA/UPnP devices are needed for streaming.
USER EXPERIENCE The My Passport Wireless SSD arrived in a standard Western Digital branded box, which uses dark grey and yellow as its main colors. The box had some product information included and the device was well identified. When you open the box’s cover, you will find a quick start guide of sorts that illustrates the main features of the My Passport and how to use them. Inside the box, you will find the drive itself, a quick start card, power adapter, and USB 3.0 cable.
Set-up of the drive is pretty straightforward. It can be done using the mobile app (iOS version in my case) or your desktop computer. Aside from learning how to connect to it wirelessly, the main purposes of the initial set-up are to assign preferences for the drive. You will be asked to approve the license agreement, select whether or not you want contents to automatically copy from an SD card or USB device when they are plugged in, and review the Enhance Your WD Experience screen, which includes automatically updating the WD SSD software. All of these settings can always be managed later from your Dashboard. There are several ways to connect/manage the content stored on your WD My Passport Wireless SSD device — wirelessly through the mobile app, Mac utility app or as a Shared drive, through the web interface, or through a wired connection directly through a USB 3.0 connection. I tested all of these options along with transferring data through SD card and USB 20 to make sure I ran a thorough testing process for this review.
I will break down the experience I had with each feature. USB 3.0 This was probably the most natural connection I could have used. WD provides a USB 3.0 Micro-B 10-pin to Type A cable with the drive. The Micro-B end plugs into the drive while the Type A side plugs into your computer. I have a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar so I only have USB-C ports on my machine. Because of this, I used a dock with a USB 3.0 connection.
When I plugged in the drive for a wired data transfer, I used one of those ports. When you plug the drive in using a cable, it mounts like any other external drive would. You can see a disk image on your desktop and access the files using a standard Finder window interface. If you are using a Mac, you will need to use Paragon NTFS for Mac in order to read and write to the drive. WD includes this software on the drive for users to install without any hassle.
When I installed it, I was still having some issues with being able to write to the drive. I discovered that after you install the software, you must restart your computer in order for the utility to work properly. After my restart, I could access files quickly and easily.
WiFi (Desktop) When you connect to the My Passport drive wirelessly on a Mac, you can view the contents of it one of two ways. First, the drive will show up as a shared device and you can open the files in a Finder window as usual. The other way is to use the WD Utility App, called WD Access. If you already have a WD app like WD Sync installed, both the WD apps will appear in the WD App Manager in the menu bar. From this menu, you can open the direct file window for managing the contents of the drive. Another option when you connect to a desktop computer via WiFi is to access the drive’s dashboard through the WD web interface. In this area, you can configure the FTP access, security, battery usage optimization, and Plex server, as well as several other settings Mobile App The mobile app for iOS is very easy to use.
The sign-on process is very similar to how you get online on the Desktop. First, you find the secure WiFi network broadcast from the drive. “My Passport” is in the name of the network. Then, you enter the passkey provided by WD and printed on the identification sticker on the top of the drive.
Once you are connected, you can view your files by selecting your storage device and reviewing the material stored there. You can open files to preview them including RAW image files. SPEED TESTING Given that there are a lot of different ways to access and store files on this drive, I completed a lot of different speed tests based on the different input options on the device.
I used a single MP4 file that is 2.36GB in size. I have included the results below. BUILT-IN SD CARD READER. Standard SD card (SanDisk 8GB Class 6 30MB/s): File transferred in 52.11 seconds. Micro SD card: Did not work with SD card adapter. Tried two different SD card adapters and had transfer failures both times. This could have been caused by the age of the adapters.
USB 2.0 HOST PORT CONNECTED TO CARD READER. Card Reader (Satechi Aluminum Type-C USB 3.0 and Micro/SD Card Reader)/Micro SD card (Transcend 16GB Class 10): 1 minute, 30 seconds USB 3.0 CONNECTED TO COMPUTER: 6.6 seconds For me, the biggest problem I’ve had with the My Passport Wireless SSD was waiting for it to hit store shelves. When I saw it at CES, I wanted to use it immediately. Since I’ve received the drive, I have been using it every chance I get and it’s now a staple in my camera bag. If I take my out for a shoot, then the Western Digital My Passport Wireless SSD is coming with me. CONCLUSION Even though we live in the digital world and no longer have to wait for film to be developed to know if we got the shot, I still have some uncertainty since I shoot in the RAW format. So for me, one of the biggest benefits of this portable drive is being able to preview the RAW files and know for sure that the images I took were right on the money. Honestly, I have shot two major local events and a family vacation and without the drive, I would have gone home without knowing for sure that the images were captured correctly.
Thanks to the preview ability of the WD My Passport Wireless SSD I was able to view my images on my iPad after allowing the drive to copy all my images off the SD cards. I could see that a few of my images were out of focus and because of the My Passport Wireless SSD, I knew in time to reshoot and avoided some mishaps. With the use of an SSD, the weight of the My Passport Wireless has decreased and it feels wonderful in my hands. I don’t feel bogged down by it in my.
I felt like there was a huge difference between transferring files using the mechanical drive and the SSD — like night and day. Compared to the My Passport Wireless Pro, the My Passport Wireless SSD is outstanding.
I do still wish there was a CF card slot, but the super fast SSD makes up for the lack of that feature. This is a must-have device for all photographers and videographers. I absolutely LOVE mine and can’t ever see myself out taking photos without it. Western Digital makes a lot of fine products and since I’ve had decent success with them in the past, I felt safe that my data would be well cared for while being stored on the My Passport Wireless SSD. For more details, visit Find Western Digital on.