This is not a product designated to photographers. I know. But backups of your photography data is so important working as a photographer, that I take the liberty to review this product in that context.
I have several of these drives. I do backups at least every month and as part of my year end procedure. And do I then store it in a drawer? No, not immediately. I drive the backup far away from where I live and store it in my summer house [swapping backups with a friend also works]. That way I am safe in case of fire or theft.
You may think that no one breaks into your house or that a fire is unlikely, but recently we have had a client where half of their house burned to the ground, and this was the part of the house where the pictures they had bought from us were located. The first thing they asked us was if we could reproduce the images – and I was happy to say yes, knowing that I had several digital copies of the images in several locations.
The tin
This little 4TB drive weighs around 200 grams [a little less if you go for the 2TB or 1TB versions]. I find the price around 130 EUR here in Denmark very fair, but in the US and UK they can be bought for less than that. 4TB is a massive amount of data, and I manage to put several years of data on a single drive.
Content
There is not much to say about the content of the box: A drive, a little guide and a USB cable. That’s it. What you cannot see is that the drive is pre-formatted – you can get versions for both Windows and IOS. I got the Windows version.
There is also pre-installed software on the drive that allows you to encrypt the data and facilitate the backup process. I have not used this part – I simply use the Lightroom facility “export this folder as a catalogue”; then I know I can import it again and get all the edits etc maintained. Probably also possible with the backup software provided by Western Digital, but I prefer a process that is simple and low-tech.
Operation
The drive is quiet. If you lift it while it is working, you can feel the gyro effect of the hard disk drive spinning fast, but you can hardly hear it. The little light on the side of the drive flashes when the drive is working and is steady when not. If the drive is working, then it is vulnerable to say being dropped or bumping into something. The head of the drive will potentially touch the drive with severe consequences. So only move the drive when it is not at work.
There is no on/off switch. In the beginning I found that a bit odd. But the drive can sense the power disappearing and manages to park the head before the power runs out. It took me a little while to get used to.
I backup using Lightroom as I previously stated, and the combination of Lightroom and this drive is no speedy Gonzales. It takes time. But as it says very little, you can have the backup running while you are working in Lightroom; it seems to me the backup process takes very little energy from Lightroom, and as such the time required to do the backup is not issue for me.
Verdict
You may have guessed that I really like this product, as I have several of them. It provides an astonishing amount of room for data [4TB] at a reasonable price of 130 EUR, the operation is silent and the drive is only 18mm thick, and 7,5 x 10,5 cm in size. The USB connector is not USB-C, but it still manages to get the data safely across and power the drive at the same time. HDD may not be the latest and most fancy technology, but for backups I prefer proven technology, and that it certainly is. I can recommend this product.
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Frederik is a photographer, blogger and youtuber living in Denmark in the Copenhagen region. Outdoor photography is the preference, but Frederik can also be found doing flash photography applied to product shoots and stills. View all posts by Frederik Bøving
At the 4TB capacity, the WD My Passport SSD is a fantastic solution that offers both performance and reliability in a small footprint.
Late last year, WD refreshed its My Passport SSD lineup to include a new chassis design several colorways and swap out the drive used internally to drive up the top capacity to 4TB. At launch, we were able to get the 1TB model sent over for review but had the word in waiting on the 4TB model to be released as well.
Earlier this year, around the beginning of February, WD reached out with samples of the 4TB model, and now a few months past that, we have the drive in-house for testing. The latest My Passport SSD is offered in several capacities that include 500GB along with 1,2, and 4TB models. Connectivity is pushed via USB-C with a background in USB 3.2 Gen 2; this gives the drive performance up around 1050 MB/s read and write.
MSRP of the WD My Passport SSD in the 4TB capacity comes in at $649.99 with a five-year warranty.
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My Passport SSD is delivered in standard packaging. Capacity top right along with performance. An image of the drive is displayed centered on the packaging.
On the back, we have box contents and compatibility listed and down below marketing performance in several languages.
Unboxing, the drive is accompanied by the USB-C cable that includes a Type-A adapter.
The My Passport SSD enclosure is both plastic and aluminum, a new wave design on top with WD branding.
The edge of the drive offers a USB-C connection.
I first ran the My Passport SSD through testing on the MacBook Pro. Results came in at 675 MB/s read and 730 MB/s write.
Moving to Windows, we fired up the Xenia Xe and came away with 1060 MB/s read and 1061 MB/s write.
Sustained performance testing had the My Passport SSD at 659 MB/s on average over the 200GB file operation.
My Passport is one of the longest living product lines from WD, and in its latest iteration, it's a top-tier drive that offers pretty solid build quality with a mix of plastic and aluminum for the enclosure and, internally, an SN550e NVME solution. This offers both the capacity we all crave at 4TB along with the performance needed for quick backup operations.
In testing, the drive landed 1060 MB/s read and write from CDM while numbers came in a bit lower on our MacBook Pro M1 at 675 MB/s read and 730 MB/s write. Sustained performance was quite good, 659 MB/s average over the 200GB file write operation; this was good enough to make the drive a top 10 solution in our charts.
Pricing at $649 MSRP for the 4TB model is slightly high, but for those interested, Amazon is shipping them out the door at $599 at the time of writing.
Is the WD Passport any good?
Overall it's an excellent evolution to a 5 star predecessor and continues to be a very good external storage choice. For making improvements in small file write performance and correcting the 2016 bad case design issue this new 2019 generation of My Passport drives is worth 5 stars in my opinion.
How fast is Western Digital 4TB passport?
ACCELERATED PERFORMANCE The My Passport SSD delivers read speeds of up to 1050MB/s* and write speeds of up to 1000MB/s*, so you can access your digital world anytime, anywhere. *As used for transfer rate, 1 MB/s = one million bytes per second.
Is WD 4TB hard drive good?
The overall look and feel of this device just screams quality. Affordable, durable, and reliable, the WD 4TB My Passport HDD is quite simply the best bang for your buck when it comes to external hard drives.
How fast is Western Digital 4TB?
Summary.