The new generation of MyPassport SSDs from Western Digital – with encryption – shows impressive specifications.
Western Digital’s new MyPassport SSD is a slim and compact portable box in a beautiful and robust design for data storage. The storage medium is available in five different colours: blue, gold, dark and light gray and red. The dimensions are 10 x 5.5 x 0.9 cm with rounded corners. Internally, an M.2 NVME SSD is built in, the capacity of which can vary: 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB and 4 TB. The whole is shock-resistant and can survive a fall of up to approximately 2 meters without any problems. It is a Plug and Play device that is formatted exFAT by default so that it can be used directly from a Windows or macOS system. Reformatting to another format is of course possible. The SSD is equipped with AES-256 hardware encryption and can be provided with a strong password, so that the data cannot be accessed in the event of loss.
The unit comes with a USB-C (USB3.2 Gen2) connection and a fairly short (15 cm) and stiff USB-C/USB-A cable and a USB-C/USB-A adapter for connecting on older systems. Optimal data transfer is obtained when using a USB3/10Gbps port on the computer or laptop. We measured a sequential data rate of 1057 Mbps for read and 955 Mbps for write on this 2TB test model – with Crystal Disk Mark and connected to a USB3/10Gbps port. That’s twice the speed of an internal hard disk or SSD connected via SATA! This is a very nice speed for storing data, but – for us hobbyists – also very useful for installing an extra operating system with optimal speed and all functionality.
We connected the MyPassport SSD to a USB3/10Gbps port on a Shuttle DS10U Mini-PC and installed a recent version of Windows 11 on it. We did that with Hasleo’s WintoUSB utility with a W11 ISO that we downloaded via Media Creation Tool. Through the Boot Manager, in this case with the F7 key, we can select the MyPassport drive with the Windows 11 operating system that will allow us to test applications. In this way we have built a test environment with super fast access and all functionality, while it is separate from the production environment.
The optional and most recent WD management applications for SSD testing, password creation, and limited Acronis backup must be obtained from the WDC download site support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detail/ p/2233 to be installed. However, these apps do not excel in quality and user-friendliness.
Product: WD MyPassport SSD
Pros:
* good speed in combination with USB3/10GBps port
* compact version
* short connection cable
* management applications could be better