Western Digital has introduced an NVMe version of the WD My Passport portable SSD drive that reads data at 1,050MB/sec and writes at 1,000MB/sec – almost twice the speed of its immediate predecessor.
The palm-sized WD My Passport SSD comes in 500GB, 1TB and – soon – 2TB capacity points and plugs into a PC or laptop. The drive connects to its host across a USB 3.2 Gen-2 link with a USB-C cable and a USB-A adaptor.
The drive features AES-256 bit encryption. It comes with backup software to move stored files to a host or to a public cloud account but must be reformatted to work with Apple’s Time Machine backup.
The new drive joins the 400MB/sec My Passport Go in WD’s lineup. My Passport Go is also an SSD drive but features a wrap-around rubber bumper and USB 3.0 connectivity. It sold in 500GB and 1TB capacities.
The prior My Passport SSD delivers speeds up to 550MB/sec through its USB Type-C connector and came in a combination silver and black case. Its capacity points were 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. The new model offers more capacity, more speed and more colours – grey, blue, red and gold. It is also drop-resistant to 6.5 feet.
The WD My Passport SSD is currently available worldwide in the 500GB and 1TB capacities, but only in grey, at select e-tailers and retailers. It has a five-year limited warranty and WD’s suggested prices are $119.099 for 500GB and $189.99 for 1TB. Additional colours and capacities will be available later this year.
For comparison a 5TB My Passport portable product is a disk drive spinning at 5,400rpm with a Micro-USB Type-B connector. This is priced at $47 for 1TB and $125.99 for 5TB. For that you get 131MB/sec read speed, which is eight times slower than the NVMe My Passport SSD and four times cheaper at the 1TB capacity point. You get faster and drop-resistant TB with the My Passport SSD but you sure have to pay for it.
