Western Digital My Passport Ultra Review

Portable external USB hard disks are a pretty common sight nowadays. In the last year, there is an increasing demand for such gadgets to be more than simply  functional. I don’t mean just value-added features. Just like notebooks are now svelte and fashionable, users now expect their USB hard disks to be stylish too. Be it performance, features, or style, the latest My Passport Ultra from Western Digital will appeal to everyone.

The first impression you’ll get when you see the My Passport Ultra portable USB hard disk is its slim, compact, and sleek design. It’s likely going to be smaller than any other portable USB hard disk you’ve had or seen. There are four colours to choose from, black, red, blue and titanium, so you can pick one that catches your fancy, or simply so that you can tell your disks apart if you have several of them.

The My Passport Ultra has a USB 3.0 interface and comes in disk capacities of 500GB, 1TB and 2TB. This gives you both maximum transfer speed in as much capacity as you need. As a portable hard disk, the My Passport Ultra does not require separate power supply, but draws its power from the USB interface.

Western Digital helps you secure you data by providing password protection and hardware encryption. The WD Security program allows you to configure password and the hardware encryption, assuring peace of mind. The program is available for both Windows and Mac OS X (although I could

The WD SmartWare Pro program helps you perform backup to the local disk or to DropBox cloud storage. It’s nice and convenient. However, you only get a free trial for 30 days, after which you have to pay for a one-time license.

Western Digital has included a nice soft carry pouch to protect the My Passport Ultra when it’s being transported. Also included in the box is a USB 3.0 cable.

In terms of performance, the Blackmagic Disk Speed test reports read speeds of 107MB/s and write speeds of 55MB/s. These are about in the ballpark of other USB 3.0 portable hard disks.

Conclusion

The My Passport Ultra not only works great but also looks good to carry around. There are also some useful features such as hardware encryption.

Pros:

• Compact, stylish design
• Hardware encryption

Cons:

• Extra software features need to be paid for