Western Digital My Passport USB3 2TB review

Hard disk capacities have increased dramatically in the space of a few short years. Western Digital’s latest My Passport external hard drive is a great example of this – despite being small enough to slip in a pocket, it has a whopping 2TB capacity that should ensure you’ll never need to leave an important file behind.

The disk inside is one of WD’s own, and it spins at 5,200RPM. This is slightly slower than most portable disks, but with USB3 support it should still be able to manage some swift performance figures. In our large file transfer test, it could write at 91.2MB/s and read at 100.6MB/s. The small files test was unsurprisingly a tougher challenge, where it managed 23.7MB/s writes and 32.1MB/s reads.

Western Digital bundles a fairly comprehensive software suite with each My Passport disk, which includes a backup wizard to monitor and save your important files. You can choose between individual files, whole disks or specific file categories, so your music and photos take priority over videos and emails. It creates incremental backups, so once it’s enabled you won’t need to re-run the program just to duplicate a single file. The only downside is that you need to use the app to restore your files from their backup directories, but it’s still very useful for free software.

If you absolutely need to carry 2TB of data with you when out on the move, the My Passport is an excellent choice. It’s competitively priced, with very few other manufacturers currently making 2TB drives. It’s compact, fast and comes with a useful software bundle, making it a Best Buy.