Amazon.com: Customer reviews: WD 1TB My Passport SSD External Portable Drive, USB 3.1, Up to 540 MB/s

Top positive review

Easy SSD upgrade to Mac Mini

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2018

I purchased this WD My Passport SSD drive to use as a boot drive for my Apple Mac Mini (2012). Essentially cloning the existing hard drive to the SSD was very easy (just Google it...) and worked flawlessly with MacOS High Sierra.

This 512GB SSD drive is essentially the same size as the drive already in my Mac Mini. Because it comes ready to go as an external drive there's no need to purchase any cables or enclosures to use it. It will work for both Mac (High Sierra and El Capitan) and PCs (Windows 7, 8's and 10) too.

The drive comes with a USB-C and an adapter for USB-C to USB-A. Backwards compatible to USB 2.0 it is USB 3.1 compatibility rated.

The drive does come with WD Discovery software for backup and security installed. To use this as a boot drive, users will need to format (erase) the drive prior to installing their own computer's operating system on the drive.

The drive is very small and lightweight. It's in a shock-resistant case that probably would be OK if dropped a few times from 3-4', but I'd not expect it to be abuse-worthy. It does get warm on the silver part of the drive case, but not hot to the touch. It is powered by its connection to your PC or Mac - there's no external power source needed to power the drive.

The drive has a 3 year warranty through Western Digital, with the serial number on the back of the drive which is needed for registration.

The drive can reach speeds up to 540MbS, but that will depend upon how the drive works with your existing system. The Mac Mini I have didn't reach those transfer speeds with a core i5 processor (2.1Ghz) and 16GB of memory, but I didn't expect it to. I was pleasantly surprised by the boost in speed over the internal hard drive though.

Using BlackMagic Disk Speed Test app, I had speeds of 71MbS write and 73MbS read with the internal hard drive. Using the WD My Passport SSD I was able to get 370MbS write and 420MbS read speeds. A fantastic leap to 5-6x's faster speeds overall using the WD SSD!

Boot time was also cut in half using the USB connected SSD (USB 2.0 connection) versus the internal drive.

I'm very pleased with this drive. It's compact size, speed and the ease with which I was able to upgrade and bring new life to an aging Mac have me singing this drive's praises and looking to buy another one.

Highly recommend this drive for anyone who wants a speedy connection or a way to boost the performance of their Mac Mini.

42 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Aamir Husain

Amazing size, okay performance

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2019

I love this little beast, but sometimes it can be very frustrating to use. I use this drive with a 2015 MacBook Pro that usually works fine unless either (1) the computer dies with the hard drive still plgged in, or (2) the drive is not safely ejected. In either case, the drive is no longer recognized when I plug it in again and I need to run a disk repair using the Disk Utility app. Sometimes the repair fails and I need to either restart my computer or unplug/replug the drive several times for the repair to work. Thankfully, this does not happen often and none of my files are lost/corrupted. However I haven't seen this behavior with other hard drives.

Other than that it is a great product - super fast transfer speeds and it comes in an amazing size. Overall, I'd still recommend this product.

55 people found this helpful

2,863 total ratings, 826 with reviews

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From the United States

Andrea Polk

Easy SSD upgrade to Mac Mini

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2018

Capacity: 512GBVerified Purchase

42 people found this helpful

Helpful

Nom de Plume

Incredible drive for physical size, capacity, and speed

Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2018

Capacity: 512GBVerified Purchase

Computer drives are "transparent" to the user when they work correctly, thus making them more of a commodity.

That in mind, this is a great drive. Simple to use as a plain drive. It also provides WD features for encryption and cloud backup ...these services require registration but registration is NOT required in order to use the drive itself (and the drive can be encrypted with other methods than the WD method...so for paranoid types who don't want to register their encrypted drive up to the cloud do not need to do so).

The physical size of the drive itself is much much smaller than I was expecting; much smaller than a standard laptop-type hard drive in an enclosure. It's like a box of matches. No complaints though! Makes it highly portable.

The combination of low cost, large capacity, speed of USB-C interface makes this a very appealing drive.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Alexis

Fast, portable, stylish, good value!

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2020

Capacity: 1TBVerified Purchase

I love this little SSD. It's probably the fastest external drive I've ever had the pleasure of using, and it doesn't even get hot during use. It's small and lightweight, and plugs in to any USB-C port on any computer and works with no hassle. So far it's been an absolute treat, and it's smaller than a credit card!

One person found this helpful

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BrianL

Fast backups with my Mac backup software

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2020

Capacity: 1TBVerified Purchase

I purchased this SSD for the sole function of backing up Macbook Air computers used by my wife and me. The backup program which I had installed on the computers had ceased to work with earlier Passport devices for some arcane reason that I really didn't understand (something to do with new Mac OS and interplay with the backup program). The good news is that backups to this unit are faster, it had double the capacity of the two prior Passport devices (I had one 500 GB drive for each computer) so I need only this one drive to backup both laptops, this Passport is much more compact than the older 500 GB drive (that is, it is smaller than one of the older drives so our backups now consume far less than 50% of the space needed previously) so it will be handy for extended travel as we are very oriented to traveling with one carry-on size suitcase each for trips that are up to 4 months in duration.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Ron

Great while it worked

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2023

Capacity: 1TBVerified Purchase

I bought this back in 2019, and it worked great with my Intel MacBook Pro right out of the box. It didn't (and still doesn't) have the best capacity-to-dollar ratio, but I trusted the WD brand name. It was super fast, it's very compact, and I like the hardware encryption. I carried this drive because I ran out of space on my computer, and it was great to store my photos library. It was fast enough to edit videos off of, and even run an Ubuntu virtual machine.

However, about two years in, I started noticing a problem where it would randomly eject and reconnect to my computer, This became particularly problematic because it started happening during large file transfers like syncing photos, and would eventually corrupt the data. Unfortunately, the problem was manageable until just a month after the three-year warranty expired, which was a bummer. Luckily, I had taken backups of my data, but recovering everything was a real pain.

I recently decided to crack the drive open, remove the physical mSATA SSD module, and put that in a different SSD-to-USB enclosure--turns out, the drive itself was fine. My guess is that the USB board was faulty. So, if you're tech savvy and willing to risk that outcome, this drive will do you just fine. But, there are other faster, cheaper (per terabyte), and potentially more reliable than this.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

A. Meyer

Four Years On My WD SSD's Still Work Great

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2023

Capacity: 2 TBVerified Purchase

I bought two of these WD 2TB SSD external drives in 2019. I use them for music archiving and playback on my internet radio show. I take good care of them, store them in a cool place, never have dropped them and don't expose them to temperature extremes or crazy high humidity. I can say with confidence that with reasonable care these will give you great, reliable.service for years. On another note I also own an older WD desktop external drive that I bought in 2015...it continues to work well and without issues. As an archivist I always say that if you're going to put all your valuable stuff on external drives, buy two and keep them identical. Never put all your eggs in one basket!

Helpful

Conor Doherty

This thing is tiny!

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2020

Capacity: 1TBVerified Purchase

The first thing I noticed was that it was much smaller than I imagined. But it is fast and big enough for me to clear up my main boot SSD a bit. Everything is working perfectly so far, just an easy plug and play experience. My one gripe is how short the cable is that comes with it. For my desktop I would like it to be a bit longer, but for laptops it probably doesn’t matter.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Jeremy J. Pettitt

Amazing tiny drive

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2019

Capacity: 2 TBVerified Purchase

I've had this tiny SSD for about 9 months now and love it! It works great and doesn't come with the requisite hum of regular external hard drives with moving parts that will inevitably break down sooner than an SSD. Silent and extremely portable. I've got about 4 other WD Passport external drives and this little guy blows the other ones away. Wish I had the money to buy more of these pricy little buggers. Expensive, but totally worth it

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2-bit reviewer

Use the USB-C, Luke

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2019

Capacity: 1TBVerified Purchase

I was THIS close to returning the drive. When I put it through its paces today, the write speed was terrible (started around 45 Mbps and dropped to 5) and it would randomly disconnect after about a couple of minutes of writing, all the while getting rather toasty.

"All right, let's not be hasty. Maybe it's a bad cable or USB-A adapter, because there's no shortage of absolutely garbage quality or even electrically dangerous ones on Amazon." I pulled off the adapter and hooked it up to the USB-C port on my lappy that I normally use for charging. About a minute later I'd transferred 50 gigabytes of stuff, easily beating the pants of all my external drives. The drive was getting pretty warm in the process, unsurprisingly.

So, lesson learned. Use the USB-C cable directly (making darn sure it supports USB 3.1 data transfer) for maximum performance, and maybe pick apart the adapter for educational and scientific purposes. Or just to rip it apart for fun.

... And upon closer inspection, the adapter is keyed, as is the cable. I'd plugged the darn thing in backwards (defeating one of the best parts of USB-C), thus ensuring that the plug wasn't completely seated. Once I plugged it in the correct way, the transfer speed was 100 MBps, which is totally acceptable. Hey WD, maybe next time make an adapter that can work both ways? I can live with a fat adapter.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

David Dobbs

Will keep up with Lightroom Catalogs and retouching.

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018

Capacity: 512GBVerified Purchase

This review was written from the perspective of professional photographers who use the unit for Lightroom catalogs/retouching while traveling using a Surface Pro 4. The unit we purchased is the latest iteration of their portable SSD and is slightly more expensive than the other unit we were considering, the Samsung T5. The WD unit is slightly smaller and lighter, but only by a tiny amount. The main difference beside the price point is the latest version of the WD drive boasts that it is USB Type-C and USB 3.1 Gen 2 ready and does include the type-c cord which has type-c connectors on both ends. But it also includes and adaptor for the standard USB 3.0 connector, which is what the Surface Pro 4 has. The read and write times are about 4X as fast as our previous HDD and it is able to keep up with Lightroom to the point where I cannot tell a real difference between using the internal or external (WD) SSD. Read and write times run in the 400 Mb/s range with no hiccups noted. One thing I did notice is the case does heat up under heavy use, but it is just warm to the touch. Not hot at all. The unit itself feels well built but I do recommend getting the case for it as it is so small and light I do worry about it getting lost!

In conclusion, if you are needing a portable external storage solution with fast read and write times, it is well worth investing in the WD My Passport SSD.

149 people found this helpful

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