Once a drive is protected, it includes a built-in software opener, allowing you to type in the password even on computers that don’t have WD Security installed. WD Security worked very well in my testing. Once turned on, only those with the password can access the drive - if you lose the password, there’s no way to recover the data, by the way. This software tool works with the drive’s 256-bit AES hardware encryption feature to protect your information from prying eyes. If you intend to use the new My Passport to store important data, the WD Security will come in handy. You don’t need these tools, but it’s always nice to be able to know what’s going on with your drive. These include checking the drive’s condition, testing for bad sectors, reformating, adjusting sleep time, and so on. The WD Drive utility application includes a few handy tools that you can use to manage the drive. And in my trial, WD Backup used more system memory and CPU power than File History during a backup job. On the downside, using third-party software means you’ll have to sacrifice the system’s resources. Read this Western Digital's WD_BLACK Portfolio Now Has PCIe 4.0 and More You can’t do that with File History since it automatically suffixes individual files with the date and time information.
As a result, you can quickly browse the backup and copy your files back using Windows Explorer without using the backup software for recovery. There’s one thing WD Backup is better than File History: The latest version of data is kept identical to the original. The software will automatically keep many versions of the data for you on a schedule, as often as every hour.
There’s no system imaging function, but you can choose which files or folders you’d like to backup. The WD Backup is a backup solution for Windows which works similarly to Windows’ built-in File History. WDBPKJ0040BBK (Black) WDBPKJ0040BBL (Blue) WDBPKJ0040BRD (Red)īundled Software WD Discovery (Backup, Utilities, and Security) I tried them all out and found them valuable.
Keep in mind that you need to have a live Internet connection to install the apps. The suite includes three applications, including WD Backup, WD Drive Utilities, and WD Security. The drive comes with the installer of the WD Discovery software suite for both Windows and Mac. You can use it with Mac, but you’ll need to reformat it. Out of the box, the new drive is formatted in the NTFS file system to work immediately with Windows. The 1TB and 5TB versions are available only in black, while you can find the others also in blue and red. The new My Passport is available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB capacities.
The three colors of the new WD My Passport portable drives. You can turn this light off using a software tool, however. The drive has one little white indicator light near the USB port that flashes during operation. The drive is bus-powered and doesn’t require a separate power adapter. It has a regular micro-USB 3.2 Gen 1 (formerly USB 3.0) port - it has no USB-C support - and comes included with a standard USB cable. So, you can’t remove it from the new My Passport shell to use with other standard purposes, like inside a laptop.įrom the user’s perspective, the new My Passport is still quite similar, however. It’s a 15mm-thick, 1TB per platter, 5400 RPM drive with 128MB cache that uses USB 3.0 interface. The new portable drive uses a not-for-resale internal hard drive designed specifically for mobile applications.įor example, the 5TB version uses a hard drive model WD50NDZW-11MR8S1. It’s slightly thinner and narrower on all sides. The new WD My Passport looks a bit different from its predecessor with a more compact design. WD My Passport: The same drive that’s different WD My Passport Portable External Hard Drive's Rating.WD My Passport: The same drive that’s different.