As you know, the market is filled with a variety of portable hard drives from many manufacturers. At the same time, most of them do not manufacture drives themselves, but only develop the final device, taking care of its appearance and providing a number of advantages.

As for the Western Digital company, in addition to the development of internal hard drives, it is also engaged in the creation of external drives on its own. Thus, the range of 2.5-inch solutions includes three lines, models of each of which are presented in a volume of up to 2 TB with a high-speed USB 3.0 interface. One of the representatives of this segment got to us for testing - a 1 TB drive, which we will get acquainted with in the current review.

Specification

Manufacturer and model		Western Digital My Passport Ultra
Form Factor
Interface		USB 3.0 (backward compatible with USB 2.0)
Volume options (designations are for black models)		2 TB WDBMWV0020BBK 1 TB WDBZFP0010BBK 500 GB WDBPGC5000ABK
Maximum baud rate	USB 3.0, Gb / s
	USB 2.0, Mbit / s
Operating / storage temperature, ° C		5… +35 / -20… +65
Overall dimensions, mm		110.5 x 82 x 15.4

Available drive colors		Black, Titanium, Blue, Red
OS Compatibility		Windows 8/7 / Vista / XP
Limited manufacturer's warranty, years
Products webpage

All prices for WD + WDBZFP0010BBK

The line of WD My Passport Ultra drives is quite diverse. So, a choice of solutions is offered with a volume of 500 GB to 2 TB, while they differ slightly in weight (from 130 to 230 g) and body thickness (from 12.8 to 20.9 mm). The terabyte version is in some way a golden mean and a compromise between the internal volume of the drive and its dimensions.

Portable hard drives of all volumes are available in four colors: black, titanium, blue and red, which will allow you to choose a brighter or, on the contrary, a restrained solution, depending on the preferences of the buyer.

The manufacturer did not indicate the technical characteristics of the inside hard disk, therefore this information we can only find out with the help of additional utilities during testing.

Appearance and packaging

The Western Digital My Passport Ultra drive comes in a cardboard box through which the customer can evaluate appearance the device itself. The front side of the package contains: the name of the new item, its volume, as well as notes about its various features, which should attract the attention of a potential buyer. The back side, unfortunately, turned out to be not so informative - the possibilities of data protection and backup are briefly described here.

Let's take a closer look at the features mentioned by the manufacturer:

USB 3.0 - The drive uses a high-speed USB 3.0 interface that remains compliant with the USB 2.0 standard. The presence of the first will allow more efficient use of the speed potential of the tested model, and compatibility with previous version will make it possible to use it in legacy systems as well.
PC Ready - the drive is originally formatted as a single volume with the NTFS file system, which makes it compatible with Windows operating systems.
Auto Local & Cloud Backup - The WD SmartWare Pro utility allows you to set up data backups, including placing a copy on the Dropbox cloud service. This software we will consider in more detail in the corresponding section.
Security — The WD Security software allows you to set a password to access information and use hardware encryption to protect your data from unauthorized use.
WD Drive Utilities — Use this software to register your drive, set a sleep timer, diagnose it, or format it.
3-year limited warranty - New product comes with a 3-year limited warranty.

As you can see, the manufacturer has properly taken care of additional features software. Note that they are inherent only in the WD Passport line, but, for example, the 2.5-inch WD Elements Portable solutions do not support the above software.

The sidewalls are marked with compatibility with Windows 8, the presence of four colors, the approximate amount of content that can fit on a terabyte drive, and a list of received certificates.

The top cover informs us about the configuration of the device, as well as about compatibility with operating systems (the manufacturer does not mention support for Linux).

There is a blister shape inside the carton to ensure additional protection portable hard drive during transport.

The Western Digital My Passport Ultra package includes everything you need:

USB cable 3.0;
user guide;
warranty brochure;
storage pouch.

The latter is a small, but very nice bonus, contributing to the longest possible maintenance of the presentation of the drive. Also note that the hard drive comes with the WD SmartWare Pro, WD Security, and WD Drive Utilities software.

The body of the novelty is made of plastic. The front side is matte, with a small glossy border around the edges. The design is quite original, while quite restrained. The reverse side of the device is significantly rougher, which makes it practical, but it does not look so elegant. It contains the following information: the name of the novelty, the list of certificates, the serial number and the indication of the country of origin (Thailand). Four small rubber feet will allow you to more reliably fix the novelty on the work surface and protect the latter from possible scratches.

For data transfer, the drive has a micro-USB 3.0 Type B connector.

Removing the top cover reveals access to the used hard drive - Western Digital WD 10JMVW. This model was created specifically for use in external drives, as evidenced by the SATA-USB bridge, soldered directly on the HDD board. Therefore, replacing the drive, if necessary, seems rather difficult.

To power the novelty, a voltage of 5 V is used with a current of 0.55 A. That is, the consumption of the hard disk is only 2.75 W. It is thanks to such a low indicator for correct work the device does not require additional power supply.

Additionally, it should be noted the presence of four rubber washers along the edges of the HDD-drive, which help to securely fix it inside the pocket, and also absorb the vibrations generated by it during operation.

In addition to the micro-USB 3.0 interface, the board also contains 14 pins, obviously used for Maintenance drive.

Software

WD SmartWare Pro

This utility is designed to back up information.

The first setup page offers automatic selection of the file storage location or allows the owner to manually mark the necessary files and folders.

This is followed by the choice of the copying mode: a single case or a scheduled one, with the ability to set the frequency and time of regular content updates, allowing you to have a backup copy of the most current version at hand at all times.

The next window displays the number and size of files to be copied. Pressing the "Enable Backup" button starts the backup process.

Recall that the utility is capable of creating a backup copy on the Dropbox service. To do this, the user will have to enter their account details. The service has the ability to store information up to 2 GB for free.

WDDriveUtilities

WD Drive Utilities features include:

Diagnostics - diagnostics of a drive by analyzing its SMART data, as well as conducting quick or full testing;

Sleep Timer - setting the time for the drive to go into sleep mode with the ability to turn off its power;
Drive Erase - allows you to formatting hard disk;
Registration - registration of the drive in the manufacturer's database.

File system

By default, Western Digital My Passport Ultra is formatted as a single NTFS partition. At the same time, 931 GB of disk space is available to the user. The discrepancy with the indicated volume of 1 TB is due to the decimal conversion of information units that is in the storage market.

The operating temperature of 41 ° C is quite normal rate considering that the hard drive is operated in a closed case. Note that HD Tune Pro has determined the drive spindle speed (5400 RPM), the amount of cache memory (8 MB), and the internal drive interface (SATA 2.0). Therefore, the maximum speed of information exchange between the hard disk and the computer will be limited by the bandwidth of this interface (3 Gb / s), and not the external one. USB port 3.0 (5Gbps) as previously suggested. However, this will hardly affect the overall performance indicators, since the operating speed of the drive itself is much lower than the indicated values.

Testing

The following test bench was used to test the Western Digital My Passport Ultra External Hard Drive:

Motherboard	ASUS P9X79 PRO (Intel X79, Socket LGA2011, DDR3, ATX)
CPU	Intel Core i7-3930K (Socket LGA2011, 3.2 GHz, 12M Cache)
CPU cooler	ZALMAN CNPS12X (LGA 2011)
RAM	2 x DDR3-1333 1024 MB Kingston PC3-10600
Video card	AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5
HDD	Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB SATA-300 NCQ
Optical drive	ASUS DRW-1814BLT SATA
Power Supply	Seasonic X-660 Gold (SS-660KM Active PF), 650W, 120mm Fan
Operating system	Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit

Analyzing the results obtained by Western Digital My Passport Ultra, we note the high performance indicators of the new product. With sequential read / write, the data transfer rate was 108 MB / s. The average indicators are slightly lower and are at the level of 83 and 79 MB / s, respectively. The access time to the drive is 16.5 ms, which is in line with the results of other similar solutions. At the same time, the processor load was insignificant 1.4%, which indicates that the drive can work in systems with low performance.

Also worth noting is the high performance when tested in the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit. So, the new product demonstrates excellent results when playing and recording HD-video, as well as when copying files. Note comparatively high speed when playing video in 2 and 4 streams, as well as while recording and reading from a disk.

If we compare the results of new items with its predecessor in the person of WD My Passport Essential SE, then we see some positive trends. So, the novelty is noticeably lighter (160 g versus 200 g), but the speed of the device has changed the most. If the previous solution from Western Digital showed a noticeable lag behind competitors, then this model competes on an equal footing even with the most productive solutions in the 2.5-inch segment.

conclusions

The 2.5 "portable hard drive we tested has proven that the manufacturer can create not only decent internal drives, but also noteworthy portable models.

Externally, the WD solution is quite attractive, and the presence of only a small number of glossy elements makes it very practical, since it does not force you to get rid of dust and fingerprints all the time. Small scratches are also unlikely to quickly appear on the drive, since the bundle includes a pouch bag for transporting it.

The speed indicators of the new item are quite high and reach 108 MB / s, both when reading from a disk and in writing mode. The average speed is slightly lower and amounts to about 80 MB / s. We also note the high performance when working in several threads, which is not typical for all similar devices. This good performance is made possible by the use of the USB 3.0 interface, which remains compatible with the previous version of USB 2.0. The latter, combined with low CPU utilization, makes it possible to use the tested solution in not very productive and outdated systems.

A good addition to the drive is a set of programs that allow you to back up data (including cloud storage Dropbox), set a password to access your information, and choose when to turn off the device in case of inactivity.

As for the shortcomings of this model, we did not find them during testing. We will only remind you about using a USB 3.0 interface inside a drive with a soldered USB 3.0 interface, which will not allow you to connect it as a regular internal drive via SATA interface, and can also cause some difficulties in the repair process or when looking for a replacement.

Advantages:

relatively low cost of 1 GB of volume;
good performance;
use of high-speed USB 3.0 interface, backward compatible with USB 2.0;
a set of complete software allows you to organize the automatic creation of a backup copy of data, their protection, as well as perform some other actions in a few clicks;

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These external hard drives from Western Digital have entered the market relatively recently, and have already attracted the attention of many people. Someone at the cost, and someone and the volume! Of course, I am no longer surprised with drives in a 3.5-inch case with additional power, but I see 3TB in a 2.5-inch case, and most importantly, I hold it in my hands, which is important, for the first time. Now, taking out such a small hard drive from your trousers pocket, you can definitely assert in a loud voice that 3TB is enough for everyone! Let's take a closer look at the guest of this review.

Specifications

Model WD 3Tb My Passport Ultra
Color blue
Storage capacity 3 TB
Number of drives 1
Spindle speed 5400 rpm
Buffer size 8 MB
Interface USB connection 3.0
Form factor 2.5 "
Case material plastic
Package contents documentation, USB cable
Length 110 mm
Width 81.5 mm
Height 15.8 mm
Weight 230 g
The approximate retail value at the time of publication of the review is 13,000 rubles.

Packaging and equipment

Western Digital is true to itself, and the packaging design has not changed compared to the models below the volume. The My Passport Ultra series again features a blue and white box design. The cardboard packaging is dense, instills confidence in the reliability of the design and protection of the drive from damage during transportation. And by the way, the box is made of pure cardboard, so it can be easily disposed of without unnecessary worries.

The front of the package shows the drive series, its size and compatibility with the new Windows 10 operating system from Microsoft. The drive itself is also visible from the front through a transparent plastic blister.
The back side of the box describes the main areas of application of the drive, its reliability and ease of use.

The package contents are listed at the top of the box. There is also a plastic label so that you can hang the box with the drive on a hook in stores.

On the bottom edge of the box, other information is indicated, including the place of manufacture of the drive. This hard drive is manufactured in Thailand.

The list of supported operating systems is indicated on the end of the box as in the form text information, and in the form of pictograms.

And on the other side there is information that this package can be easily disposed of by the user. What I already wrote in the text above.

Inside the cardboard packaging, the drive is also packed in a transparent plastic box with a black plastic tray. This design is made in the form of snap-on halves that reliably protect the external hard drive from mechanical damage.

This My Passport Ultra comes with the drive itself, microUSB 3.0 cable, and documentation.

Appearance and features

I got a blue drive. In addition, the 3TB My Passport Ultra can be found on sale in black, white and berry colors.

The front side of My Passport Ultra is made of soft glossy plastic, which we must admit is easy to scratch and attract dust. Impractical, you might say, and you'd be right. But beauty, as you know, requires sacrifice.

The positive aspect of this design is its presentable appearance. With such a deep blue color, this external hard drive looks not only beautiful on the table, but even prestigious! With its appearance, this My Passport Ultra literally screams about its value.

Despite the impressive 3TB capacity, the My Passport Ultra drive enclosure is compact. Judge for yourself, 110x82x16 mm in length, width and thickness - this is quite a bit when there is a 3TB drive lurking inside. At the same time, the weight of this drive is only 230 grams. Some cellular telephone weighs the same! :)

The bottom and sides of the drive are cast and completely black. On three sides, the My Passport Ultra has solid walls, without any connectors. The very texture of the plastic of the lower part of the case is matte, with barely noticeable artificial irregularities.

The only fourth side of the drive houses a microUSB 3.0 connector and a hard drive activity LED.

Summing up the external examination of this My Passport Ultra, it is worth noting that, first of all, such an impressive volume and the absence of any additional power supply are striking. And the drive itself surprises with its compactness with an eye to the volume.

Test configuration

LGA1151.
1) Corsair Vengeance LPX 8Gb * 2 DDR4-2400 memory.
2) Intel Core i5-6600 processor;
3) maternal MSI board Z170A PC MATE;
4) Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E cooler;
5) power supply unit Corsair AX1200i;
6) MSI graphics card GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 2G;
7) Intel SSD 535 Series 120 GB;
8) Western Digital WD30EZRX hard drive;
9) Corsair Air 540 case.

Connection, S.M.A.R.T and drive heating

The first time you plug in a My Passport Ultra drive, the operating system immediately recognizes the device and installs standard drivers for it, so the hard drive is immediately visible in the system and therefore ready to use.

The drive is named from the factory as My Passport, and formatted in file system NTFS. This storage capacity is 2.72 TB.

On the drive itself, there is already some information, namely a program for backing up data and a user's manual in electronic form. Very often, most users delete this data as soon as they start using the disk. It is worth noting, though, that the same backup program is quite useful, as well as convenient and easy to learn. I already wrote about this software in one of my reviews, so I will not repeat myself.

S.M.A.R.T. viewer hard disk parameters reads data from the 3TB version of My Passport Ultra without problems. This allows us to conclude that the drive itself is no different in design from less capacious models of hard drives. The only difference lies in the hard disk located inside the plastic case.

During operation, this My Passport Ultra drive did not heat up much, despite its impressive volume. With a room temperature of 23 degrees Celsius during intensive recording, this drive temperature did not rise above 40 degrees.

Performance testing

I measured the performance of the WD My Passport Ultra 3Tb on a Windows PC. This is why the hard drive was formatted with the NTFS file system. In order to estimate the performance of the hard drive in numbers, I used specialized utilities to measure the performance of the HDD. The following set has been selected test programs: CrystalDiskMark, HD Tune Pro, Anvil Benchmark, and the popular ATTO Disk Benchmark software. Let's take a look at how the WD My Passport Ultra 3Tb performs in terms of performance.

CrystalDiskMark

Hello to all dear readers of this site!
_______________________________________________________________________
I propose to consider such a case. You, a modern advanced person with a wide outlook and using a large amount of information. With a bit of hoarding and hoarding, you prefer to store and share a wide variety of files with your friends. To transfer information, you need something simple, lightweight, small-sized, roomy and self-contained.

In such a situation, the choice is obvious and simple. External hard a drive without additional power will fully meet your requirements. The only thing left to do is to decide on the manufacturer and model. In this review, I will tell you about my little helper - Western Digital My Passport Ultra volume on 2TB.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra Specifications.

Colour black
Ruler WD Passport Portable
Type of HDD
Appointment external
Form Factor 2.5"
Number of HDD 1
Volume 2000 GB
Buffer volume 8 Mb
Rotational speed 5400 rpm
Interface USB 3.0
External baud rate 4800 Mbps
Width 82 mm
Height / Thickness 21 mm
Length / Depth 110.5 mm
The weight 0.230 kg

Western Digital My Passport Ultra - packaging and packaging.

I liked the external drive right away, without unpacking the package you could see the design of the drive through the transparent plastic package. The main part of the box is made of cardboard. The manufacturer on the box emphasizes the main advantages of its disk - it is backup and a long warranty period.

After examining the packaging more closely, it becomes clear that inside Western Digital has prepared a small bonus, namely, a bag for a hard drive. Of course, this is purely a trifle, but still such concern of the manufacturer about future owners is pleasant.

The disc was made in Thailand, however, like many other devices from Western Digital.

Now, with the ubiquity of the new operating room Windows systems 8, only the lazy does not write about its support in their products, and this disc not an exception.

Not wanting to be outdone by the preservation of nature in the developed world, Western Digital is committed to taking care of nature, starting with recommendations for recycling packaging, which is kindly mentioned at the end of the box.

At the top of the box is the scope of delivery and compatibility with operating systems. In addition to Windows operating systems, Mac OS is also supported. On the same side of the package there is a special label in order to hang the disc on the display case.

Inside the cardboard box, the disc and accessories are packed in a plastic blister.

Inside the plastic blister has three compartments, each item has its own place. The drive itself is located in the center, while the interface cable and case are concentrated along the edges. Under the disc itself is the documentation.

The complete set is laid out in the photo below.

The cable that comes with the kit has a fairly small length of 30 cm. The connectors are standard, it will not be difficult to find a replacement in case of breakage or loss.

The rag cover does not pull on protective functions. For many, this will be just a nice addition, nothing more.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra - appearance.

The name of the disk was not taken by chance, the drive really has a modest size. I'm not afraid to say that it is almost one and a half times smaller than the usual passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation. Therefore, the Passport, and therefore the Ultra.

The case material is matte plastic, which I personally was incredibly happy about. Considering that this drive can often be taken with you, it is easy to assume that in a glossy design, its appearance would quickly acquire a little presentable appearance. And our matte reviewer is just handsome.

There are four rubberized feet on the bottom of the disc, so that the bottom of the case will not rub against the surface on which this disc can be placed during use.

The cable connector is located at the end of the disk. The socket itself does not wobble, and the cable is inserted quite confidently and is well fixed in the connector.

Here is such a cute and modest this 2-terabyte kid.

I propose further to get acquainted briefly with the proprietary software of the drive, as well as evaluate its performance level in popular test programs.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra - proprietary software.

Initially, the disk is already formatted with the NTFS file system.

You can find proprietary software on the external storage drive.

The first program, WD SmartWare, allows you to back up from your computer to media and vice versa, as well as use cloud services for backups.

The second program, WD Drive Utilities, is mainly used for diagnostics, setting operating modes and cleaning the disk.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra - testing.

The following hardware and software configuration volunteered to evaluate the performance of the drive considered in this review:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770k 3900MHz
Mat.board: Gigabyte GA-Z87 - D3H
Memory: Hynix 4Gb * 2 DDR3-1333
Video card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti
BP: Chieftec BPS-650C
HDD: Seagate 1000Gb SATA-3
Cooler: Scythe Mugen 3 Rev. B
Monitor: Envision 21.5 "PL2273
Programs and OS:
Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
CrystalDiskInfo
CrystalDiskMark
HDTunePro.
And by tradition, the first is S.M.A.R.T. hard drive.

HDTunePro - General Tests (Reading).

HDTunePro - additional tests (reading).

HDTunePro - random test (read).

HDTunePro - test file (read).

CrystalDiskMark - 50Mb.

CrystalDiskMark - 500Mb.

CrystalDiskMark - 1000Mb.

CrystalDiskMark - 4000Mb.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra - conclusion.

As you can see from the results that this drive showed in the tests, the drive clearly does not shine with performance. Not a slow drive, of course, but there are many USB 3.0 drives that produce 115-120MB / s at their peak. I liked something else - dimensions, weight and quiet operation of the device. And most importantly, trouble-free use - as soon as you plug the drive into a computer, router or TV, it was immediately identified as a carrier, and regularly performed its functions. It is also possible that some will like the capacity of the device. After all, judge for yourself, carrying such a compact and lightweight device in your jacket pocket that does not require power and connects only via a USB cable, and at the same time has an impressive volume of 2 TB, is by no means a bad thing. Western Digital has got a good drive that will appeal to those who like to store information and share it with others.
Liked:
design
matte plastic
3 year warranty
impressive volume
dimensions, weight, quiet operation
Did not like:
average read and write speeds compared to other drives.
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I would like to express my gratitude to the DNS company for hosting of this material on this site and thank the company's management for the competent development of the www.dns-shop.ru resource.

Not so long ago, a hard drive could not even fit into a large pocket and it was very scary to take it in hand - from any shake-up, the “hard” could easily break down, taking all your data with it into another world. A little later, 2.5 "or" notebook "hard drives appeared. Photographers began to take them with them to shooting and travel, installing them in awkward containers or docking stations. It was a breakthrough in the field of mobile storage volume, but the reliability of such solutions left much to be desired, and in terms of power supply, the first mobile drives were very capricious, occupying two USB ports or, even worse, powered from an outlet. Life began to improve only after the appearance of compact energy-efficient hard drives, but it was just as difficult to use them comfortably - the USB 2.0 interface with a maximum data transfer rate of 33 megabytes per second was desperately slowing down. Life was easier only for the owners of Apple computers - they had a slightly faster FireWire. Finally, about one and a half years ago, mobile high-capacity hard drives with USB 3.0, FireWire 800 and Thunderbolt interfaces became ubiquitous, whose volume in the spring of 2013 finally reached an impressive two terabytes by today's standards.

Introducing the My Passport Ultra

Today in the Profotos.ru laboratory there is a WD My Passport Ultra mobile hard drive with USB 3.0 interface, free from all the shortcomings of previous generations of portable hard drives and, moreover, offering the photographer many unexpected bonuses. This disc will certainly become an indispensable companion for the owner. MacBook Air or any ultrabook whose built-in SSD drives usually have a volume of 128 to 512 gigabytes. This is not enough for storing photos and, moreover, videos. With the My Passport Ultra, photographers can carry up to 2TB of data, make automatic backups and access data at comfortable speeds. How convenient is it? Let's see!

Package

Equipment for a mobile hard drive is not the last question. If the drive is always with you, the decision must be thought out to the smallest detail! Let's take a look directly at the drive itself. It's incredibly thin, lightweight and compact. Of course, not a flash drive, but already very close to it, even in size. Some of our readers will have a smartphone larger than My Passport Ultra! And here's your first bonus from WD: an ultra-compact chassis designed with essential safety in mind. This drive can be dropped! It is certainly not worth doing this on purpose, but the case will protect the hard drive from overloads of almost 200g. This is an impressive margin of safety, and the drive will survive an accidental fall with a very high probability.

In the box with the My Passport Ultra, there was a 30cm USB 3.0 cable that was thin and flexible enough not to cause any connection problems. It is important that the USB plug is narrow and does not get in the way when connecting to Ultrabooks with closely spaced switching ports. In the case of the bundled cable, we did not observe such problems.

The set comes with a branded pouch designed to protect My Passport Ultra from the harmful proximity of keys and other sharp cutting objects from your photo bag or a photo of a backpack :) Another function of the pouch is to keep the hard drive and its cable together. If the device consists of two parts, according to the law of meanness, one of them is sure to be lost! So, with a bag, the chance of losing something tends to zero. However, the My Passport Ultra connector is standard - USB 3.0, which will allow you to use any micro-USB 2.0 cable if necessary. Such cables are used when synchronizing with a computer the absolute majority of modern mobile phones... The speed, of course, will drop, but if you lose the USB 3.0 cable, you will be able to access the data.

It seems that there is nothing else in the box with the My Passport Ultra, but it is not. The fact is that WD recorded several very useful programs... For Windows, WD SmartWare (up to 3 activations) and WD Drive Utilities are available. And also the WD Security software, which can be downloaded from the Internet. So far, only one utility is available for Mac OS (or rather, a whole set of utilities in one shell) WD Drive Utilities.

Software

The first thing a My Passport Ultra customer should do is download and run the WD Universal Firmware Updater utility from the manufacturer's website. There are versions of the program for both Windows and Mac. This utility will update the drive's firmware without any difficulty. Usually, such updates have a positive effect on the compatibility of external drives with various exotic controllers, and official version have a positive effect on productivity.

If you decide to update the firmware, remember that while the utility is running, do not turn off the disk or power to the computer. In turn, the software will only update the controller firmware and will not affect the data already on the disk.

The next program in line is WD Drive Utilities. This application is a native control panel for WD external hard drives. With WD Drive Utilities, you can: diagnose your drive, set a timer to automatically hibernate the hard drive to conserve battery power in your laptop, format the hard drive to a suitable file system, securely erase all data from it, and finally register your purchase with WD to receive technical support(very prompt, by the way!).

WD SmartWare PRO software is the pride of WD programmers. This application is a powerful and reliable backup tool for your data (pictures, videos, mail and documents). The application is able to do backups on a schedule, or run continuous backups when changes are recorded on the fly. Moreover, this software remembers the history of changes even when the drive is disconnected, recording updated information the next time the drive is connected.

At first glance, reservation is a minor issue, but when you have access to 25 latest versions recently changed files and when copying from almost any source is supported, such as memory cards and flash drives, and the backup can be stored not only on any external drives, but on any WD NAS, it becomes obvious that the feature is useful and should definitely be activated immediately after purchasing the drive and registering.

The backup takes place both to an external WD drive and, if the user wishes, to the DropBox cloud service. WD SmartWare is available for all current Windows versions Mac users don't need such software - My Passport Ultra is compatible with Apple's built-in Time Machine backup without installing patches or additional drivers.

The WD Security utility for Windows allows you to password protect your My Passport Ultra data while securely encrypting it. Unfortunately, in Russia, the use of hardware encryption with a 256-bit key is limited by law, therefore, only password protection is available on officially imported disks.

Also worth noting is the WD Quick View utility, which, while in Windows tray, displays the amount of free space on all WD removable drives available to the system, temperature, information about the availability of new firmware and password lock status. It also provides convenient safe ejecting and quick access to manage WD NAS, if available on your local network.

In work

Of course, any photographer is interested in how fast his storage device works. We tested the My Passport Ultra with a 15 ”MacBook Pro Retina equipped with USB 3.0 ports. We chose the My Book 3TB from WD, also equipped with a USB 3.0 interface, as a competitor to the mobile drive. For the tests, the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test program was used, and the confirmation of the correctness of the data was given by the control measurement in the Aja System Test. A characteristic feature of both programs is the algorithm for loading an external drive, which is typical for working with photo and video files of various formats. The numbers are not absolute, but they give an excellent idea of the actual performance of the drives.

It is worth noting that the My Passport Ultra is formatted at the factory to the NTFS file system, which can cause problems for owners of computers with operating Linux systems(Android), iOS or Mac OS. At best, the data will be readable, but the record will most likely not be available. At worst, the disc will not be recognized at all. Therefore, at the first opportunity, My Passport Ultra was formatted in the exFAT file system that most operating systems understand (using WD Drive Utilities, of course). If you need total compatibility, formatting in Fat32 is possible, but in this case it is worth remembering that you will not be able to write a file larger than 4GB to the drive (for example, videos or movies in high resolution). It was in exFAT that the main measurements of the drive's performance were made. However, if you only use Windows and "Macs" were not found nearby, you can get a little better performance by leaving the formatting in NTFS. Likewise, for avid mac-growers who do not recognize Wintel as a platform for creativity, formatting into the proprietary HFS + J file system is available.

As you can see, read and write speeds consistently exceed 100 megabytes per second. For example, even about five years ago, these were outstanding figures for a good storage device in a desktop computer. Today, this speed is enough for comfortable work with complex PSD files or a large volume of images in JPG formats and RAW. You can also see that for a full-fledged work with video high resolution the performance of the USB 3.0 drive may already be insufficient. This is confirmed by the test of the large My Book 3Tb drive. Although it turns out to be almost a third faster than the My Passport Ultra, it is practically not noticeable in real tasks, which is confirmed by the number of green checkmarks in the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. Of course, there are other drives for working with high-definition video, but they are equipped with FireWire 800 and Thunderbolt interfaces, and we will test them in the following materials.

conclusions

Why does a photographer need a portable hard drive? Quite simply - there is almost certainly not enough free space on a modern compact laptop. The extra 500GB-2TB will definitely come in handy for storing and cataloging photos and videos. At the same time, you can comfortably work with photos directly from the drive.

If your laptop has a large hard drive, then the My Passport Ultra will come in handy as an automated backup tool, which will significantly increase the safety of storing photo and video archives, because it is mobile computers that expose built-in drives to dangerous loads. Have you ever moved a working laptop from place to place? But it is precisely such a simple action that can be the last for your data every time.

We can safely recommend additional software from WD for permanent use. Don't forget to add these programs to your startup! You will be immediately notified of possible problem with the drive, and many of the routine maintenance of the drive and data backup will be significantly automated.

Unfortunately, residents of the Russian Federation are losing the ability to encrypt their data in hardware, but it still remains possible to protect themselves with a password using WD Security, thus providing enough high level security for your data.

Greetings to all readers of the Expert Club!

Today we will continue our acquaintance with the updated series of external hard drives from Western digital entitled My Passport Ultra... The new drives have undergone minor changes - the case has been restyled, the hard drive inside has been updated. Today we will try to find out what these changes have led to.

As a small digression, I will say a few words about the manufacturing company. Western Digital was founded back in 1970, in the first time of its existence it was actively engaged in the production of various computer components, the course for the production of hard drives was taken in 1988. Since then, the company has grown to over 100,000 employees worldwide. The main office is located in California. At the moment, the company ranks first in the production of hard drives ahead of Seagate.

WD My Passport Ultra Specifications:

Dimensions: 110 x 81.6 x 20.9mm;
Weight: 230 grams;
Interface: USB 3.0 / USB 2.0;
Theoretically possible data transfer rate: 5 Gb / s via USB 3.0, 480 Mb / s via USB 2.0;
Power supply: from the USB port;
Spindle speed: 5400 rpm;
Buffer size: 8 MB;
Compatible OS: Windows 8/7 / Vista / XP, Mac OS 10.6.5 and later;
Working temperature: 5 - 55 degrees Celsius;
Capacity: 2 TB;
Color: black (models in blue, red and white are also available);
Body material: plastic;
Service warranty period: 36 months.

Packaging and equipment

The disc comes in the usual packaging. The cardboard is painted in white and blue colors typical of Western Digital. On the front side there is a large transparent plastic window, through which you can perfectly see the appearance of the device and evaluate the materials of the case. Also on the package there is a mention of the fact that this drive is of the highest class (where without marketers) and the extreme simplicity of setting up data backup, by the way, this is close to reality. On the other sides of the box, there is a description of the features of the device and its characteristics.

The drive itself is packed in a reliable plastic blister that protects it well during transportation.

The delivery set is standard, except for My Passport, we managed to find a short microUSB-USB cable of the third revision in the box, as well as quite a bit of documentation (a short user manual and a warranty card).

Appearance and features

The body is made of matte black plastic, there are also models of more "fun" colors, for example, white or red. The top cover is made of plastic similar to a soft-touch, it looks good, but gets pretty dirty.

As often happens, there were also glossy inserts. All of them are located on the top cover. On the left, there is a small decorative element with the company logo and model name, and along the perimeter there is a narrow edging. Why it is impossible to abandon such solutions remains a mystery, because an external drive is the device that very often happens in a bag or pocket, and there the gloss will quickly collect minor scratches.

The bottom cover is made of a more practical matte plastic with an uneven structure. In the center there is a sticker with serial number, batch number and so on. There is also a mention of the country of origin of the device - this is Thailand, where the main production of both Western Digital and many other manufacturers of hard drives is located.

To prevent sliding and damping vibration, four rubber feet are glued around the perimeter of the bottom cover. They are quite small, but they work well. Due to the fact that the legs are quite soft, the disc does not slip even on a glass table.

The sides of the case do not stand out for anything remarkable. They are made of the same matte plastic as the bottom. There are practically no elements, except for one end.

On the left, or at the bottom, depending on how you put the disk, there is a dual microUSB port of the third revision, next to it is a barely noticeable LED that glows white when the hard disk is working. The location of the port is quite convenient, there were no problems with this during use.

In the case of portable technology, compactness is not the last issue. The new 2TB My Passport Ultra is quite small. The dimensions of the case are 110 x 81.6 mm, and the thickness is only 20.9 mm, which is an excellent indicator for a two-terrabaytnik. For comparison, let's put next to My Passport Ultra 2 TB and, which has already become the reference, My Passport 1 TB. It can be seen that the dimensions are almost identical, only the thickness differs, and even then not much. But the volume of the first is twice as large.

The declared weight of the drive is 230 grams, the scales showed 1 gram more, which is within the margin of error. Overall, the drive isn't all that light, especially when compared to the recently tested My Passport Ultra 1TB, but it can and should be carried around in your bag nonetheless.

Proprietary software

Since this line of drives belongs to upper class, the manufacturer is simply obliged to equip them with proprietary software. In our case, several programs are already recorded on the disc, or rather three, which are designed to simplify the use of the disc and expand its functionality. I will tell only about two of them, since last program WD Quick View offers little or no value to the user.

So, WD Buckup is the software that makes backing up to your WD drive as easy as possible. Indeed, it is very easy to use and does not require any special knowledge and skills. The program consists of two sections - Backup and Recovery. In the first, you can easily set the frequency of backups to disk (once an hour, two, and so on), and in the second, you can recover lost data if something happens.

The second utility, WD Drive Utilities, is for hard drive maintenance. With it, you can check the drive for various errors, set a sleep timer during idle time, or completely format the entire amount of device memory.

In general, the complete utilities cannot be called irreplaceable or very useful, you can find much more functional solutions. But for an ordinary user, they will certainly be interesting, and may even be useful sometime.

Testing

Let's move on to testing the drive directly. First, let's check the volume, and suddenly we were deceived :) Out of 2 TB, 1.81 TB is available to the user and this is normal. Since 1 GB is still equal to 1024 MB, and not 1000 MB as manufacturers and sellers are trying to convince us.

Let's check SMART parameters in CrystalDiskMark. The drive is new, which means that there shouldn't be any problems here initially. From the screenshot, we see that a 2.5-inch hard drive from Western Digital with a code name WD20NMVW-11AV3S2 with a volume of 2 TB is installed inside. SATA connection interface, 8 MB buffer, rotation speed 5200 rpm.

As test bench made by a stationary PC based on Intel processor Core i5-2500k, motherboard AsRock board Pro3 P67, RAM DDR3 Samsung 1333 MHz 4 GB x 2. The hard drive was connected to the USB3.0 connector on the rear panel motherboard... The following utilities were selected for a visual performance assessment - CrystalDiskMark, ATTO Disk Benchmark and AS SSD Benchmark. The rivals for the tested hard drive will be a set of WD drives of various sizes that I tested earlier.

CrystalDiskMark

I propose to start with the popular CrystalDiskMark test suite, almost no hard disk or solid-state drive testing can do without it. This package offers to evaluate the speed capabilities of the disk when working with different types and data volumes, sequential and random read operations are used for the load, data blocks of 512 KB and 4KB. I ran tests with all datasets from 50MB to 4000MB, with 3 runs for each dataset. The graphs show the average values for each of the data types.

We are most interested in the sequential read / write test. Here, a slight disappointment awaits right away, the operating speeds are very modest and lose to most of the previously tested samples. Reading was about 83 MB / s, writing was about 82 MB / s.

When randomly reading / writing different blocks (from 512KB to 4KB), the result is similar. The speeds are slow and comparable to the legacy WD My Passport 1TB.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

This test is a favorite of almost all manufacturers. solid state drives and conventional hard drives. It is he who demonstrates the maximum numbers, which then proudly indicate on the boxes and in the sections technical characteristics... ATTO, due to its specifics of working with data, almost always demonstrates the maximum result. In this test, I took exactly the maximum read and write speeds for each of the disks.

But ATTO showed a good result, reading was at 115 MB / s and writing at 114 MB / s. What is noteworthy, when switching from 1 MB blocks to 2 MB blocks, this very jump took place from 80 MB / s to 115 MB / s. I can only associate this with some features of the USB controller.

AS SSD Benchmark

This benchmark shows both traditional results of the speed of work with linear data, in 4 KB blocks, as well as more interesting tests of access time and file copy speed / time. It is on the latter that I will dwell in this case.

The access time for writing is good, about 15 ms, but for reading as much as 24 ms.

This test also makes it possible to test the speed and latency when working with files of three types - ISO, Program and Game. As you can see, WD My Passport Ultra loses to almost all previously tested drives.

Temperature

The temperature was measured under prolonged load in tests. The temperature in the room was about 26 degrees. The following results were obtained: during idle time, the temperature of the drive was about 32 degrees Celsius, at a load of 44 degrees Celsius. The results are not record-breaking, but quite good. You should not worry about overheating.

Eventually

The WD My Passport Ultra did not surprise me with anything, moreover, it disappointed me a little, as it became even slower than the previously tested My Passport Ultra Metall Edition. Well, in general, it is a good solid two-terrabaytnik, with a very compact size, low weight, low operating temperatures and a solid case.

The price of this drive is about 8000 rubles (CSN stores in Nizhny Novgorod). This is, of course, expensive and cheaper alternatives can be found. But here the name of the manufacturer and the freshness of the model do their job, after all, the disc is still quite a novelty.

Pros:

Large volume;
Stylish appearance;
High-quality body materials and good build;
3 years warranty.

Minuses:

Average speed indicators;
Glossy inserts;
High price.