Western Digital My Passport Ultra 1TB HDD First Impressions

External hard drives are becoming more of a necessity nowadays than an option. With the increase in file size of games and media content, you’ll be hard-pressed to look for a storage option other than your PC or laptop’s main hard drive. Luckily we have a lot of choices out there with storage capacities ranging from 500GB up to a staggering 5TB. What we’re taking a look at here is a 1TB hard drive, which is now the minimum recommended capacity, from manufacturer Western Digital. Say hello to the Western Digital My Passport Ultra 1TB Hard Drive.

Western Digital Utility Apps

Western Digital was kind enough to include installers of their utility apps and program in the portable drive. These apps include WD Security, WD Back-up, WD Drive Utilities and WD Discovery. Here’s a quick rundown of what each app and program does.

WD Discovery – Western Digital’s main proprietary program for their portable drives. It is a tool to easily access and operate your Western Digital hard drives, it also includes WD Back-up, WD Drive Utilities and WD Security shortcuts and update buttons on its dashboard for easier and centralized access.

WD Back-up – A quick one button back-up and restore tool for your Western Digital portable drives. Users could either back-up their files to a Western Digital drive or to a cloud-based storage, apart from that you could also set-up a backup plan where your files will be stored automatically depending on your chosen schedule. The app is only available on Windows, Mac users are advised to use Apple’s own backup program.

WD Drive Utilities – An app for drive diagnosis and easy reformatting.
WD Security – An app for setting up passwords and hardware encryption to your portable drive.

Performance

Now on to the crucial part, the Drive’s performance.

Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.4

Sequential Read: 147.0 MB/s
Sequential Write: 133.5 MB/s
512kb Random Read: 48.40 MB/s
512kb Random Write: 121.4 MB/s

These are average numbers for an external 7200rpm as the standard speeds nowadays are between 80-160Mb/s. We tested the real world performance of the device by checking the transfer times of a 13.4GB folder to and from the PC and portable drive. The drive was connected to a USB 3.0 port, expect lower speeds when connected to a 2.0 port.

It took exactly 4 minutes and 59 seconds to copy the 13.4GB folder into the device and 2 minutes and 19 seconds to copy the same folder from it. The transfer times when copying from the device are good, but the same could not be said when transferring files to it as it took almost double the time. For better visualization, a drive should, theoretically, take at most 20-30% longer when copying files to it compared to copying files from it. Nevertheless, these are still respectable transfer speeds.

Western Digital’s My Passport Ultra 1TB is certainly a good hard drive, not to mention it has a slim design and a very appealing look. It will fit in any small sized bag or even a small purse as it has a very small footprint and weight. Although the drive’s gray brushed metal finish portion is a smudge and fingerprint magnet, so it is recommended to either have a microfiber cloth ready at all times or get it a pouch or case.

We’ll also give Western Digital plus points for including the installers to most of their assistive apps and programs out of the box. If you’re in need of an elegant looking portable hard drive then be sure to check this one out. Also, the portable device has three other storage options (2TB, 3TB, and 4TB) in case you need more than 1TB.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra 1TB specs:
2.5-inch Drive
USB 2.0 & 3.0 support
1TB, 2TB, 3TB, or 4TB storage options
Black-Gray and White-Gold colors
110 x 81.5 x 13.5mm (1TB variant)
110 x 81.5 x 21.5 (2TB, 3TB , 4TB variants)
140g

The Western Digital My Passport Ultra 1TB is available at Lazada (See listing here) for Php 3,990USD 68INR 5,764EUR 65CNY 495.

Speaking of, we’re also giving away this hard drive to one lucky reader, read below for instructions:

1. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

2. In this YouTube video, leave a comment: Why do you deserve to win this WD MyPassport Ultra?

The last day for entries is on December 1 and the announcement of the winner will be on the following day (December 2), so join away!

Special thanks to the folks at Lazada for providing this for our readers!

Zen Estacio

Zen Estacio is a Multimedia Producer for YugaTech. He is the team's laptop guru and one of their resident gamers. He has a monthly column compiling the latest and greatest the Nintendo Switch has to offer. Aside from that, he regularly writes gaming news, reviews, and impressions. You can hit him up at @papanZEN

17 Comments

Jericson Caday says:

7 years ago

Joined! Hoping to win. I want to have one, it will be my first. It would be a great help for my studies.
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Angelito De leon says:

7 years ago

I truly deserve to have this Western Ultra Digital Passport 1 TB because I love to download HD Movies and having this on my side, I can now store all of them and easily play it on my TV..
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Marlon Serquiña says:

7 years ago

I badly need this Western Digital My Passport Ultra 1TB, I’ve been saving for a portable storage since my cp can’t handle all the movies and TV series for a movie marathon when I will be going home in the province for the long Christmas holiday vacation. # Yugatechwinit #ChristmasGift.
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Ricarido Ang Lasquety Jr. says:

7 years ago

ngayon lang ako magkakameron ng ganto sana manalo para mas madami pang picture at video nmin ng asawa at anak ko ang mailagay ko at xempre ng mga movies at music :)
- Reply
Mark Jayson Deri says:

7 years ago

I can’t seem to find the video on Youtube. Can you please help my by providing the title of the video so I can leave a comment? Thanks!
- Reply
DANIELYN CAZAS says:

7 years ago

sana manalo ako pra pang gift ko sa asawa ko gsto kasi niya ang ganyan kso hndi nmin afford kulang sa budget.. pang gatas lang ang meron.. sna manalo sigurado magugustohn nya yn lalo na kng e susurprise ko sya nyan..
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Rence says:

7 years ago

Gusto ko matry tong wd, halos seagate plang natry ko and un ang tingin ko pnakareliable kaso last 4 months ngkaproblem 2tb ko nagcorrupt tas naplitan n kso pansin ko nababa ang health kaya prang nag iba tngin ko s seagate.. :( sna manalo ako at matry tong wd if mas mgging okay
- Reply
Cecilo Bayang says:

7 years ago

I’ve been longing to have a portable hard disk drive and I never been become a winner to any competition I think its now time to break the curse.
- Reply
Mics says:

7 years ago

Ayoko umasa sa wala. Penge na lang po ng Isa ?
- Reply
Angelito De leon says:

7 years ago

Finally, commented on the videl already. Hope to win this ???
- Reply
Docalfred says:

7 years ago

I have been using WD My passport for a long time now. And all my data is still there and secured.
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Kaaaaat says:

7 years ago

My wd passport doesnt have any wd discovery etc. No intallers ?
- Reply
Earl says:

5 years ago

Hi Yugatech! Do u still remember yung merchant ng My Passport Ultra? (Broken link)
- Reply