With no moving parts, you’d have to hit most portable SSDs with a hammer to damage them. Largely due to file system and operating system overhead. Now there’s at least … The 2020 WD My Passport SSD not only aced the synthetic benchmarks, it also proved cream-of-the-crop in our real-world 48GB transfers. The front surface has a smooth metallic finish while the back surface has a matte finish, and we felt like it hid fingerprints and resisted scratches quite well. The design is not the only thing that is new with the My Passport SSD, WD also made big improvements to the performance. 20990, Samsung Exynos 1080 to be announced on November 12, RedMagic Cyberpods truly wireless low latency gaming earbuds announced, Samsung Galaxy M31s gets One UI 2.5 update with November security patch, Secure Folder in India, Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Cryptomic air purifier capable of filtering formaldehyde launched in India, Samsung Exynos 1080 5nm EUV SoC with built-in 5G, support for up to 144Hz displays announced, PUBG Mobile India customized for Indian gamers to launch soon, ASUS ExpertBook P2 Review: A versatile laptop for business users, Realme 7 5G to be announced on November 19, Google Photos announces end of free unlimited photo backups starting June 2021, OPPO to showcase new technological advancements at INNO DAY 2020 on November 17, Netflix, Amazon Prime, other OTT platforms now under government regulation. The new My Passport SSD about the same size as the previous generation, only ever so taller and wider, but slimmer, measuring in at 100x55x9.0mm. This time around, Western Digital has updated the design for their My Passport SSD drives, shifting away from its box-y shape that looked like a miniature version of its bigger external HDDs. The latest in their portfolio of external drives is the new My Passport SSD (2020), and here is our review of its 1TB model. You will receive a verification email shortly. The landscape has seen some consolidation as well as the emergence of a whole raft of smaller, nimbler storage vendors that are not afraid to slash margins to the bone. Also as expected, the drive can be secured using password protection and 256-bit AES hardware encryption using WD Security. Even then it’s not a given. This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best external drives. It adds grip and style to an otherwise smooth, low-friction body. Until WD’s My Passport SSD showed up on our doorstep, Samsung’s T3 USB 3.1 (Gen 1, 5Gbps) portable SSD was the last word in super-svelte, high-capacity storage. If you are looking for archival type of storage with large capacities, I would recommend going for WD’s own external My Passport drives. WD has refreshed its mainstream portable solid state drive, the My Passport SSD, giving it a new design, better internal components and a competitive price tag. Certainly interesting. Liquid won’t damage them either if they’re not plugged in, assuming you give them time to dry completely before further use. We’d probably still choose it ahead of the two aforementioned rivals as the overall balance makes it a compelling choice. The second thing you notice is how thin it is; at 10 x 5.5 x 0.9cm for a weight of 46g (without the bundled USB Type-C cable), it rivals some of the bigger (physically) large capacity USB flash drives that we’ve seen in the past (most notably the Kingston 2TB DataTraveler Ultimate GT Flash Drive USB 3.1). The WD My Passport NVMe SSD is the newest addition to the company’s popular series of portable storage and the first of the series to utilize speedy NVMe technology. Don’t worry about dropping the My Passport SSD, either. But if you constantly move data around and require the fast speeds, then the My Passport SSD is an easy recommendation. Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. To access this feature, you’ll need to install the WD Discovery software, which will be included with the drive. Marry those two best-in-class attributes to affordable pricing, and you might say that WD has itself a winner. WD’s sister brand, Sandisk, has what looks like repackaged versions of the My Passport portable SSD complete with encryption software and five-year warranty but for a more active audience. Other benchmarks delivered the same range of results but transferring a single 10GB file proved to be slower than expected, far slower at about 280MBps. And there is an option to import data from another cloud storage account or social media account. Alas, those require the rare USB 3.2 Gen 2X2 (Superspeed 20Gbps) bus, cost twice as much, and don't fare much better in our 48GB transfer tests. We’re partial to it as it does the job and improves grip, plus it reduces the chance of causing damage to anything else thanks to its curvy, pebblesque shape. However, the 2TB model is about Rs. The drive utilizes a Type-C connector, and a Type-C to Type-C cable with Type-C to Type-A adapter are included in the box. It also delivered 0.08-millisecond seeks while reading and 0.8 ms when writing. So here we have it, a fast, compact portable SSD with a large capacity and a very long warranty. PCWorld helps you navigate the PC ecosystem to find the products you want and the advice you need to get the job done. The warranty is a reassuring five years, though there’s no TBW rating, i.e., TeraBytes that may be Written over the life of the drive. It hits the nail on the head for the average user. TechRadar is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. The SanDisk Extreme Pro is more expensive - at $190, $40 more - than its brethren but is far more rugged with an IP55 rating to back it, making it an interesting alternative (assuming the price difference remains constant). 6,999. Also part of the lot is WD Discovery, the default storage software suite that comes with the drive and is available for Windows and Mac. In ATTO, we got similar scores as CrystalDiskMark. No status light to indicate if the device is operating, which is an odd omission. jjacobi@pcworld.com. Western Digital is no stranger to the storage business, with years of experience in both internal and external storage drives for computers. Note that this image skews dark—the silver unit the company sent me is quite a few shades lighter. The WD My Passport SSD is priced at an MSRP of Rs. When sold separately, SN550 SSD inside the My Passport SSD is rated fr 300TBW per 500GB of capacity. For the average user, this is currently the portable SSD to buy. Internally, this is the SN550E, a PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe drive that pairs an ASMedia ASM2362 bridge with a SanDisk 20-82-10023 controller and SanDisk BiCS 4 96L 3D TLC flash memory. On the top right corner of the front is a WD logo that is slightly raised with a rough texture. It’s also extremely light in your pocket—its feathery heft was the first thing I noticed about it. You might, I am. There’s a couple of issues to be resolved before it reaches storage nirvana. The 48GB large file performance still works out to a cool 550MBps writing and 750MBps reading. You can get a faster drive if you go USB Gen 2x2 (20Gbps), but you'll also pay a whole lot more. The 2020 cuvee of the WD My Passport external SSD is a decent one with some salient features like the long warranty and great performance. Perplexing to say the least even if we account for the OS and the file system overheads. That’s a boon for travelers, but if I’m completely honest, I like things with a bit more heft to them. Visit our corporate site. Vivo V20 SE with 6.44-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, 48MP triple rear cameras, 32MP front camera launched in India for Rs. The My Passport SSD sports rounded corners and seashell sculpting across half the drive. WD’s latest round of redesigns has spread throughout its portable storage lineup, replacing the bold, bright, sharp design-led identity with rounded edges, muted colours, and simpler plastic bodies. However, it stumbles where it perhaps matters … It can also go all the way to 2.4GBps which would make it a candidate for a theoretical USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 version of the drive that would adopt a 20Gbps interface (and potentially USB4/Thunderbolt 3). When it comes to data storage, faster is the name of the game. It comes in 3 colours — Space Gray, Midnight Blue and Gold. A $130 price tag will leave you with more than just pocket change but you lose out on the warranty. It is worth noting the SN550 tops at 1TB whereas the My Passport SSD goes to 2TB. Receive news and offers from our other brands? 8999 for 500GB, Rs. Rivals to the My Passport external SSD will be fast (1GBps speeds or more), relatively affordable and quite compact. Author Milan Nair … Stick with the 2020 My Passport SSD unless you've got money to burn. 6,999. While it uses the same USB 3.2 Gen 2 connector as its predecessor, the read and write performance have massively improved, bringing it very close to the theoretical 10Gbps limit of the connector. That's more data than the average user is likely to write to an external drive in two decades.In other words, don’t worry about it. Other minor niggles include the cable length and the fact that it dissipates a lot of heat which may affect the longevity of the device. iPhone 12 Pro Max pre-orders: the best deals in Australia, Darkest Dungeon is the best Nintendo Switch game for self-care right now, PS5 usable storage confirmed – and it's much less than 825GB, Zoom is set to eliminate one of the worst aspects of video conferencing, 6 new TV shows and movies on Netflix, Disney Plus, HBO and more this weekend, How overseas app developers can thrive in the Chinese market, This extraordinary laptop comes with features we’ve never seen on a notebook this size before. 4000 cheaper, so if you need higher capacity, the My Passport SSD is definitely the way to go. Copying 15GB of video data to and fro from the device took about 15 seconds, which is super impressive. Jon is a Juilliard-trained musician, former x86/6800 programmer, and long-time (late 70s) computer enthusiast living in the San Francisco bay area. With the advent of SSD storage technology, the word “speed” for drives got a whole new meaning and Western Digital was definitely at the forefront of bringing SSD drives to market. © Gone are the all sharp edges, and instead it is all smoothly curved and rounded, making it much more friendly to hold and a bit easier to store in pockets and bags. Longer bars are better. Here’s how the WD My Passport (2020 edition) portable SSD performed in our suite of benchmark tests: CrystalDiskMark: 1046MBps (read); 1013MBps (write), Atto: 999MBps (read, 256mb); 959MBps (write, 256mb), AS SSD: 455MBps (seq read); 465MBps (seq write). I already gave away the majority of the performance story, but by the numbers, the My Passport SSD 2020 (gold bars in the charts) scored just over 1GBps reading and writing under CrystalDiskMark 6. The drive does feature support for password-enabled 256-bit AES encryption, giving you the capability to secure the data in your drive. Note that real world performance is always slower than what you see with synthetic benchmarks. 15,999 for 1TB and Rs 28,999 for 2TB, but you can get it on Amazon.in starting at Rs. With this software, you also get access to My Cloud, which is a useful piece of software to access your data online anywhere. Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors?