The WD My Passport Ultra is another 2,5 inch external hard drive from the house Western Digital. It is available in many different colors and has a somewhat idiosyncratic design. Among other things, these points are addressed in the test. Our test device is black and has a storage capacity of 1GB (2 TB , 4TB and 5 TB are also available). You can find out here in the current test whether the purchase is worthwhile and what the supplied backup software is good for.
- The external hard drive offers you fast storage for...
- With the My Passport Ultra you have an HDD hard drive with a stylish...
- The external HDD hard drive includes downloadable software,...
What's in the box
- WD My Passport Ultra
- USB-C data cable (USB 3.0)
- WD SmartWare Pro (Software)
- Manual
processing / design
As already mentioned at the beginning, the design of the surface of this WD hard drive is a bit unusual. A basically matte plastic housing has been provided with a dot pattern in a high-gloss finish. This finish is unique to the top only, the sides and base are molded from a single piece of plastic. So the patterned top becomes something like a lid and is therefore also slightly sharp-edged. You can't cut yourself, but you can easily tell. The WD My Passport Ultra is available in black, titanium, red and blue. Rubber nubs are attached to the underside, which ensure a firm hold on the Table guarantee and absorb vibrations. Overall, the hard drive's workmanship doesn't appear as high-quality as some of its competitors from the price segment.
The USB port is attached to one of the short sides. There is also a white indicator light at this point, which lights up continuously when there is a connection, and when reading or writing, it flashes. Compared to other hard drives, this one is very bright and can almost serve as a flashlight. The USB cable has an average length of a good 30 cm.
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Hardware
In our test device there is one Western Digital WD500LMVW Hard drive in 2,5 inch and 500 GB installed storage capacity. It comes with a buffer of 8 MB and a rotation speed ofRPM 5.400 fitted. With that, she managed to connect one to our USB 3.0 port on the Windows 7 notebookWrite speed of 90 MB/s and an Read speed of 118 MB/s. The writing speed is comparatively low, but the reading speed is very decent.
Specifications
| Format | 2,5 inch |
| Color | Blue, silver |
| Storage | 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 5TB |
| Speed | RPM 5400 |
| cache | 8 MB |
| Tender | 90MB/sec |
| Read | 118MB/sec |
| Connection | USB 3.0 |
| cable length | 30 cm |
| Power Supplies? | No |
WD Smartware Pro
A setup file called WD Apps Setup is stored on the hard drive. There is an installation file for both Windows and Mac. When installing on Windows, you have the choice to install WD Drive Utilities, WD Security and/or WD SmartWare. The latter is responsible for automatic backups, which is also advertised on the packaging. WD Drive Utilities is designed to help delete utilities and register the hard drive. WD Security offers some security settings such as password protection.
The WD SmartWarePro software makes it extremely easy to create automated system backups both on the hard drive and on a linked Dropbox account. Certainly a good free way to protect yourself against system crashes.
Benchmark test results
USB 3.0
Write Speed: 90MB/s
Read Speed: 118MB/s
USB 2.0
Write Speed: 26MB/s
Read Speed: 35,4MB/s
Conclusion
The appearance of the WD My Passport Ultra is certainly a matter of taste, but what we didn't like so much was the somewhat average workmanship of the case. As far as the read speed with USB 3.0 is concerned, there is absolutely nothing to complain about, the write speed of 90 MB/s is rather below average. Basically you get a solid external 50 inch hard drive for the money of about 2,5 euros. We therefore give a purchase recommendation for this model from WD.
- The external hard drive offers you fast storage for...
- With the My Passport Ultra you have an HDD hard drive with a stylish...
- The external HDD hard drive includes downloadable software,...
