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Sustained Read Transfer Rate
External Drives |
Interface |
Large Files |
Small Files |
Average |
Difference |
2 TB WD My Passport Ultra (2015) |
USB 3.0 |
104.5 MB/s |
49.0 MB/s |
76.8 MB/s |
Baseline |
2 TB WD My Passport |
USB 3.0 |
102.7 MB/s |
49.1 MB/s |
75.9 MB/s |
- 1.2% |
1.5 TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex |
USB 3.0 |
88.6 MB/s |
52.1 MB/s |
70.4 MB/s |
- 8.4% |
2 TB WD My Passport |
USB 3.0 |
94.1 MB/s |
45.2 MB/s |
69.7 MB/s |
- 9.3% |
1 TB WD My Passport Slim |
USB 3.0 |
90.4 MB/s |
44.0 MB/s |
67.2 MB/s |
- 12.5% |
1 TB WD Elements |
USB 3.0 |
35.4 MB/s |
20.8 MB/s |
28.1 MB/s |
- 63.4% |
1 TB WD My Passport Slim |
USB 2.0 |
33.3 MB/s |
22.3 MB/s |
27.8 MB/s |
- 63.8% |
2 TB WD My Passport |
USB 2.0 |
30.0 MB/s |
20.2 MB/s |
25.1 MB/s |
- 67.3% |
1.5 TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex |
USB 2.0 |
25.2 MB/s |
18.5 MB/s |
21.8 MB/s |
- 71.6% |
The 2 TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra is definitely a very fast USB 3.0 hard disk drive, beating even the My Passport Metal / Anniversary Edition. It was particularly fast at large reads, delivering a sustained throughput of almost 105 MB/s! At that speed, it only needs 5 hours and 20 minutes to completely read through its entire storage capacity of 2 TB.
Sustained Write Transfer Rsate
External Drives |
Interface |
Large Files |
Small Files |
Average |
Difference |
2 TB WD My Passport Ultra (2015) |
USB 3.0 |
99.7 MB/s |
46.7 MB/s |
73.2 MB/s |
Baseline |
2 TB WD My Passport |
USB 3.0 |
93.6 MB/s |
48.4 MB/s |
71.0 MB/s |
- 3.0% |
1 TB WD My Passport Slim |
USB 3.0 |
64.0 MB/s |
49.8 MB/s |
56.9 MB/s |
- 22.3% |
2 TB WD My Passport |
USB 3.0 |
63.1 MB/s |
35.4 MB/s |
49.2 MB/s |
- 32.8% |
1.5 TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex |
USB 3.0 |
59.1 MB/s |
12.7 MB/s |
35.9 MB/s |
- 51.0% |
1 TB WD My Passport Slim |
USB 2.0 |
25.6 MB/s |
21.7 MB/s |
23.6 MB/s |
- 67.7% |
1 TB WD Elements |
USB 3.0 |
29.2 MB/s |
17.8 MB/s |
23.5 MB/s |
- 67.9% |
2 TB WD My Passport |
USB 2.0 |
23.3 MB/s |
18.6 MB/s |
21.0 MB/s |
- 71.4% |
1.5 TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex |
USB 2.0 |
21.5 MB/s |
11.8 MB/s |
16.7 MB/s |
- 77.2% |
The 2 TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra did even better at writes, delivering a sustained write speed of almost 100 MB/s with large files. Its small file write performance deteriorated somewhat, compared to the My Passport Metal / Anniversary Edition, and the My Passport Slim.
This is a big deal because writing 2 TB of large files to the standard 2 TB My Passport would take 8 hours 48 minutes, but only 5 hours 35 minutes with the 2015 My Passport Ultra!
This test also shows the importance of buying high-speed drives over commoditized drives like the WD Elements. It may be cheap, but filling up the WD Elements with 1 TB of large files would take 9.5 hours - 3.4x longer than the 2015 My Passport Ultra.
Maximum Surface Temperature
We monitored the surface temperature of the 5 external drives during their benchmarks. The following chart shows their operating temperature range, from idle to maximum load. Please note that instead of giving you the absolute numbers, we are showing the temperature delta, which is the difference between the actual temperature and the ambient room temperature.
All that performance does come at a cost - heat. The 2 TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra had a much higher surface temperature. It gets really toasty after a long period of activity. Even when it idles, it is quite warm to the touch. If you intend to bring the drive somewhere, you should disconnect it and let it cool down for a few minutes before handling it.
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• A Closer Look, Hardware Encryption |
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• IO Meter Random Access Performance |
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<<< A Closer Look, Hardware Encryption, Usable Capacity, Testing The Drive : Previous Page | Next Page : IO Meter Benchmark Results >>>
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