Conclusion

With so many choices in the marketplace, external hard disk drives have become somewhat of a commodity, differentiated mainly by their storage capacity and price. When that happens - it becomes a race to the bottom. The emphasis shifts from making better products to making cheaper products. Performance and quality suffer as a result. That's why it's always nice to see any attempt to arrest, if not reverse, this downward spiral.

The 2 TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition (WDBEZW0020) is an evolutionary upgrade of the venerable 2 TB Western Digital My Passport, which is already renown for its high speed and spacious storage capacity. You can think of it as a faster version of the 2 TB Western Digital My Passport clad in a new aluminium top case with a premium version of Western Digital's SmartWare software preloaded.

While the My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition may look superficially like a nicer version of the original My Passport, it is certainly much faster in the most important performance characteristics - the speed at which you can copy files into and out of the drive. Copying files from the My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition was 8% faster but copying files into the My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition was 30% faster!

In practical terms, filling up the entire drive would take just under 6 hours, instead of 8 hours 48 minutes. That is a huge difference. This alone is reason enough to pay more for this drive, as opposed to the cheaper but much slower commodity-grade portable hard disk drive.

The move to an aluminium case not only makes the drive look more stylish, it also allowed the drive to be slightly smaller. In addition, the case doubled as a heat sink, helping to dissipate heat from the hard disk drive within. The downside though is the higher case temperature, especially after copying files into or out of the drive for long periods of time.

In addition to all those features, Western Digital also provides the drive with their useful SmartWare Pro software. The current version doesn't just perform simple backups - it can actually perform automatic, continuous backup of files that change as you work. It can also be used to backup your files to the cloud. Unfortunately, at this point in time, they only support Dropbox. We hope they will eventually support other cloud storage providers.

Right now, this drive commands a price premium because it is one of the fastest 2 TB portable drives in the market. However, we certainly think that their much better performance is well worth the price premium. To top it off, Western Digital is offering a 3-year warranty, which sure beats the 1-year warranty on commodity-grade drives.

We continue to be impressed with Western Digital's efforts. This drive deserves our Editor's Choice Award! Congratulations, Western Digital!

For the lowest current prices on Western Digital My Passport Ultra Metal / Anniversary Edition portable USB 3.0 hard disk drives, click here!

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