Final Thoughts
There are only a few options out there for a portable bus-powered (single cable) hard drive that is not a solid state drive. WD makes a compelling argument to choose the My Passport over other drives out there. First thing drive is sleek and small. While the 5TB version is only available in black, you’ll get blue and red options if you choose something 4TB or smaller. Even though this is a standard hard drive it is pretty small. It can be put in your pocket or easily thrown in a laptop bag.
When it comes to performance this drive performs like pretty much any other USB 3.2 gen 1 connected traditional portable hard drive would. At over 100 MB/s for both sequential read and write you should have no problem transferring large files or even running games off this drive. Being that the drive is 5TB you have quite a lot of space too!
WD has done the smart thing and created their own software for their external drives. So many times we see drives bundled with a trial of backup software, but WD has their own backup, utility, and security software. This means that you do not need to subscribe or buy any additional software to create backups, secure your drive, etc. Talking about security this drive does offer hardware encryption, something that many other portable drives lack.
The only bad thing I can really say about this drive is that it does not come with a USB-C cable or adapter. Being a portable drive so many new laptops only have Type-C ports so having the cable or even an adapter would be nice.
Right now the 5TB version of the WD My Passport is selling at our favorite online retailer for $128.49. Overall ThinkComputers gives the WD My Passport 5TB Portable Hard Drive a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Compact size
– Available in capacity up to 5TB
– WD software package
– Good overall performance
Cons:
– No USB-C cable included
