I have been an exclusive user of Western Digital rotating magnetic drives for over 15 years because, in all that time, I've never had one of their products fail. Not one. My two most important considerations for any storage product are reliability and then performance as I work with digital video, images and audio. I cannot afford to lose any of my files or I'll be the target of my clients' wrath and I cannot afford that. I like my clients and strive to keep them happy. In all the years using WD, I've had more than 20 WD drives, internal and external, without a single failure.
My backup regime is fairly rigorous, with multiple backups of every file, and I rely upon WD to keep my files safe.
Backup is the reason for my latest Passport purchase, which brings my total of these drives now to four. And there soon will be a fifth which will bring my total Passport storage to 15 terrabytes. They serve me well beyond reliability by their simplicity, size and relative speed. Speed for drives of this type is excellent, however they would not be my first choice as as the online storage for a project in production/post-production. For that need I use a 3TB WD Black (7200 RPM) drive which is their top line for speed and performance.
The Passport performance is at least a step lower than the Black. When I investigated what drives WD put inside their My Book products a few years ago, it appeared that they were using 3.5", 3600 RPM drives which is OK for HD video from a DSLR. I'm moving to working with 4K, RAW (uncompressed) video shortly. I suspect that the Passport would be too slow for my needs.
Bringing this discussion back to ground, where most of you likely are, the Passport is an exceptional, all around, portable disk. It's small enough to easily fit in almost any bag and the hard drives are laptop drives which are designed to get knocked around without issue.
Here's one final "top tip" that works for me. Each of my Passports are different colors which makes it easy to pick the drive that I need from the stack on my desk without having to look at the label. It might seem a little silly but anything that speeds up my workflow is a plus.
Buy one of these. Buy two. They're small and inexpensive.
| Hard Drive | 4 TB Portable |
|---|---|
| Wireless Type | Radio Frequency |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
