Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
WD ’s new portable My Passport Ultra for Mac 2.5 - inch USB grueling parkway is usable with up to 6 TB of computer memory – for far less cash than any SSD .
Best Prices Today: My Passport Ultra for Mac
permit ’s confront it : external portable HDDs such as the WD My Passport Ultra for Mac put up dull speed by today ’s SSD standards . That said , they still cater by far the most storage capability for the smallest outlay , to the tune of 6 TB for only $ 200 in this example .
As to the operation I referred to at the start of this revaluation , faster is of course better , but the 110MBps reads and writes the My Passport Ultra delivers are fine for medium cyclosis as well as Time Machine backups running in the background . It ’ll get the job done .
WD My Passport Ultra for Mac: Features
The My Passport Ultra for Mac ( Could we have a longer name , please ? ) is a 2.5 - column inch external USB hard parkway gambol a USB - nose candy port that ’s on the same death as the small power / bodily process lighter . The drive enclosure is title in dark gray and silver and measures about 4.3 inch long by 3.2 inch across-the-board by 0.86 in thick .
Weight is around 8.9 ounces include cable , which , along with four anti - skid pad on the bottom give it a adequate luck of not being knocked about the screen background or other smooth control surface .
Until very of late ( i.e. , this drive ) , external 2.5 - column inch USB hard driving force unanimously used USB micro - B SuperSpeed connectors ( for extra power ) on the drive and USB - A The old USB porthole that used to be on Macs and other computing machine ) on the other end of the transmission line . To oblige the old as well as current connexion scenarios , WD bundle a USB - C to USB - C cable , plus a USB - C to USB - A transcriber .
The Type-C connector and power/activity light are on the end of the My Passport Ultra for Mac.
When you first attach the WD My Passport Ultra for Mac and open up it in Finder , you ’ll see a .dmg file ( a Windows .exe file is also present ) for installing WD ’s Discovery screen background / carte du jour bar program ( show below ) .
Discovery will import your data from your Dropbox , Google Drive , or OneDrive accounts , and provide download links for the WD Drive Utilities , WD Security ( encryption , countersign aegis ) , and a branded version of Acronis ’s rightful Image backup software .
That ’s a pretty fair software bundle though True Image will only back up to a WD local drive . I was , however , capable to also back up with unfeigned Image to a non - WD NAS corner , so there ’s that . I presuppose there ’s no way to differentiate . you could , as always , decide to not expend the software package at all and erase it .
The Type-C connector and power/activity light are on the end of the My Passport Ultra for Mac.
WD My Passport Ultra for Mac: Performance
The My Passport Ultra for Mac is a 2.5 - inch hard drive . In a world rapidly accustomed to 3GBps speed on USB4 / Thunderbolt external SSDs , the approximately 110MBps this hard drive delivers could never be considered as dissipated ( or perchance notas tight , butfast at all ) .
However , as I said previously , a transportation rate of 100 to 110MBps is fast enough for several audio or movie streams . Hence , the My Passport Ultra for Mac is still a with child reposition gimmick for a big multimedia system appeal . ( My collection is on arduous drives in a NAS box , albeit 16 TB 3.5 - inchers with 250MBps transfer rate . Several people can stream across the net ( 2.5Gbps ) at the same time with no issue . ) 100MBps is also plenty fast enough for background backup with Time Machine or the bundled Acronis True Image .
As to the actual public presentation number , Disk Speed Test showed intimate hard drive - similar execution : 102MBps pen , and 107MBps read .
WD loads its Discovery software on the drive that can download your data from popular online storage services, as links to Acronis True Image and other downloads.
AmorphousDiskMark 4 delivered a more or less sunnier picture of the My Passport Ultra for Mac ( Geez , I ’m tired of drop a line this long - wind soubriquet ! ) with almost 110MBps reading and 107MBps writing .
As I ’ve pointed out several clip now , the WD My Passport Ultra for Mac and its brethren are all about affordable capacity . Note that while hard drives slow a bit as they make full up , it ’s not to nearly the degree that some SSDs will . Hence , you do n’t have to overbuy in full term of capacity as we recommend with NAND - base entrepot technology .
WD My Passport Ultra for Mac: Price
Here are the prices for the My Passport Ultra at the time of this inspection . Yes , you pay a flake of a agio for the highest capacities .
Should I buy the WD My Passport Ultra for Mac?
The My Passport Ultra for Mac is topnotch affordable storage for multimedia playback as well as neglected or background operation . The 5 TB social unit currently offers the good clap for your buck at $ 28 per TiB , make it our top recommendation . But the 6 TB poser is $ 33 per terabyte – not a bad deal at all .
See how it compares to otherhard drives for Macin our round - up of the best .
Macworld: How we test storage devices
Macworld runs Blackmagicdesign ’s Disk upper Test and AmorphousDiskMark 4 with the private road formatted to APFS . But we also put drive through sister publication PCWorld ’s barrage of tests as follows :
IDG computer storage testing presently utilizes Windows 11 , 64 - bit run on an X790 ( PCIe 4.0/5.0 ) motherboard / i5 - 12400 central processing unit jazz band with two Kingston Fury 32 GB DDR5 4800MHz module ( 64 GB of retentivity totality ) . Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are integrated to the back panel and Intel CPU / GPU artwork are used . The 48 GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58 GB of the 64 GB of total memory . The 450 GB file is transferred from a2 TB Samsung 990 Prowhich also runs the OS .
Each test is performed on a newly NTFS - arrange and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimum . Note that in normal use , as a effort fills up , performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching , as well as other factor . This is less of a factor with the current crop of SSDs with their far faster NAND .
WD’s version of Acronis’s True Image backup program.
caution : The performance numbers designate go for only to the drive we were shipped and to the capacity tested . SSD performance can and will variegate by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads / writes across and the amount of NAND available for petty caching . Vendors also on occasion switch component . If you ever note a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we cover , by all means , let us know .
Blackmagicdesign’s Disk Speed Test showed hard drive-like performance. 102MBps writing, and 107MBps reading.
AmorphousDiskMark 4 delivered a slightly sunnier picture of the My Passport Ultra for Mac–almost 110MBps reading and 107MBps writing.
