We’ve checked out Western Digital’s My Passport a couple while back and we walked away very satisfied with the overall build and performance of the product and especially the variety of design and capacities it offers. WD is back in our labs again to show love to Mac OS users with their Apple-inspired variant of their highly-acclaimed My Passport product line with the WD My Passport for Mac.
[toggle title=”Specifications”]| Model # | Interface | Capacity | Operating System | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WDBKKF0020BSL | USB 3.0 | 2 TB | Windows/Mac |  |
|
| WDBGCH5000ASL | USB 3.0 | 500 GB | Windows/Mac | |
|
| WDBGCH0010BSL | USB 3.0 | 1 TB | Windows/Mac | |
Compatibility
- Formattedรย HFS+ Journaled for Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion
- Can be reformatted for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
Package Includes
- Portable hard drive
- USB cable
- Quick install guide
CLOSER LOOK
[singlepic id=9810 w=550 float=center]Western Digital ships the My Passport in a simple cardboard box with a thermo-formed plastic shell protecting the portable drive inside.รย Opening up the packaging, we have the portable hard drive, a cable and some documentation.
The My Passport for Mac, omes in a distinctive MacBook Pro styling clad in a silver body with black trim on the sides. The 1TB model is around an inch thick and is quite lightweight and compact for easy carrying.
[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6760 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half][one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6761 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]The USB cable is compatible with both USB2.0 and USB3.0 and is around a foot in length.
PERFORMANCE
As this is a Mac OS-targeted product, the pre-formatted file system is in HFS but it is possible for anyone to just format it for Windows use. Since this drive is mostly a cosmetic redress of the My Passport line we’ve checked before, most of the numbers should be in line with what we’ve seen before. In the interest of fairness though, we will not be including the results we got from the 2TB My Passport for consistency purposes.
[tabs tab1=”Crystal DiskMark” tab2=”ATTO Disk Benchmark” tab3=”File Transfer Test”] [tab]Crystal Disk Mark is a storage benchmarking software was developed by รขโฌลhiyohiyoรขโฌย of Japan, and is available for free. Crystal Disk Mark รย measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.
USB3.0
[singlepic id=9817 w=560 float=center]USB2.0
[singlepic id=9818 w=560 float=center]These benchmark test can give us a good idea on what to expect from these drive on more realistic scenarios. Looking closely at the USB3.0 performance, we’re seeing some very good numbers for a portable hard drive as these are easily going to tie the drive if it was on a SATA interface. USB2.0 performance for the most part is quite impressive and should be predictable from what the numbers we gather from the USB3 test.
[/tab] [tab]ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a driveรขโฌ™s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them.
[singlepic id=9820 w=560 float=center]This test shows us how the drive scales along with file sizes and we can see the drives shows us it manages to scale effectively with varying workloads.
[/tab] [tab]To test out real-world copy performance, we use TeraCopy and record the time it takes to copy our 2.4GB of varying file sizes and types to and from the drive. These files are the same ones we use for our image resize and compression tests.
[singlepic id=9819 w=560 float=center]Anyone who has transferred or deals with these kinds of file transfers will know immediately that these are very respectable numbers. Note that there are some files in the 1KB-64KB ranges so these test excercises the drive very much.
[/tab] [/tabs]CONCLUSION
[singlepic id=9815 w=560 float=center]Priced at around Php4,900, this drive should be around the price range of most 1TB solutions with the 2TB and 500GB variants coming in for Php8,990 and Php3,790 respectively. We known its rude to generalize or stereotype, but Mac fans tend to have a bit more to spend than PC users so its good to know that WD isn’t riding the Apple Tax bandwagon by overcharging for these things. Even more so is the performance we’re seeing is still very respectable so we’re giving this drive both straight 10s for Performance and Value.
Everything’s not all sunny for the WD My Passport for Mac though. To make it jive with Mac products, the WD employed a silver coating on the case which sadly gets easily marred and scratched. Another oversight is the cable color of choice as most Mac fans would surely go want a white cable. We’re docking 2 points for Quality for these.
All in all though, Western Digital manages to deliver a great performing product with this one. The slim profile, large capacity and reasonable price makes it an easy choice for anyone looking for a portable storage solution for their MacBook, Ultrabook or basically any use. We give the WD My Passport our Value award. And for a Mac-targeted product, that’s rare. It also comes backed by a 3-year global warranty.
[singlepic id=8979 w=300 h=225 float=center]EDITOR’S NOTE:
I wouldn’t use any other drive other than ones that have my name on it. – BossMac
