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Portable Heavyweight
The first thing that you would notice is the heft the My Passport Pro packs - it weighs just under half a kilo, or about a pound. If you are used to slim, light portable USB drives, the My Passport Pro is going to feel chunky. Inside lies two 9.5 mm mobile hard disk drives which allow the My Passport Pro to be configured as :
- a 2 TB RAID 0 drive (in Stripe mode for maximum capacity and performance),
- a 1 TB RAID 1 drive (in Mirror mode for maximum data protection), or
- two 1 TB independent drives (in JBOD mode for maximum storage capacity).
This is the kind of flexibility that no other portable drive offers. Of course, most users are just going to select one of the two RAID modes and stick with it for the lifetime of the drive.
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Here's a quick comparison of its size and weight versus those of other 2.5" external drives :
2.5" External Hard Disk Drives |
Height |
Width |
Length |
Weight |
12.3 mm |
80 mm |
110 mm |
134 g |
|
18.5 mm |
83 mm |
124 mm |
180 g |
|
21 mm |
82 mm |
111 mm |
230 g |
|
22 mm |
89 mm |
120 mm |
280 g |
|
22 mm |
89 mm |
120 mm |
280 g |
|
Western Digital My Passport (2 TB) |
28.7 mm |
88.5 mm |
143.4 mm |
460 g |
In the pictures below, we compared the 2 TB My Passport Pro to the 2 TB My Passport (middle) and the 1 TB My Passport Slim (right or bottom).
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The reason for the My Passport Pro's greater size and heft is its use of two separate hard disk drives. There is a reason behind this "madness", and that reason is to allow you to leverage the two drives to either deliver twice the performance or twice the reliability of a single drive.
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A Closer Look
The Western Digital My Passport Pro 2 TB portable hard disk drive uses the Thunderbolt interface to deliver a peak throughput of 10 Gbits/s (1.2 GB/s). While Thunderbolt offers twice the throughput of USB 3.0, it is not necessary to allow the drive to achieve a rated transfer rate of 233 MB/s because even USB 3.0 is fast enough for the job. In fact, the use of Thunderbolt prevents the My Passport Pro from being used with most PCs, because Thunderbolt support in Windows-based PCs and notebooks are extremely rare.
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Instead of using a separate cable, Western Digital integrated the Thunderbolt cable into the drive itself, wrapping it around the edge. When fully extended, the Thunderbolt cable is about 35 cm (~13.5") long, excluding the connector. The design does have its advantages - it allows for better grip whether the cable is locked in place or not. But it also has a disadvantage - if the cable fails for any reason, you will need to send the drive back to Western Digital to have it replaced.
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While the sides offer more than enough grip, the textured matte finish on the base is bad for grip, so they added four rubber feet to make sure the drive doesn't move around on the table. The base of the drive is also where the drive's label is located, with information on the drive's place of manufacture, part number and serial number.
You will also find ventilation holes on the underside, which helps to passively cool the drive. If it gets too hot, the integrated fan, which is located next to the Thunderbolt connector socket, spins up to keep the drive cool.
How Loud Is The Fan?
After we posted this review, we received queries about the My Passport Pro's noise level when its cooling fan is running. So we recorded this video. Check it out :
As you can see, the My Passport Pro's fan did not spin up while it's idling. In fact, it only started spinning after about 38 seconds of running it at full load. Once it started up though, it was pretty loud. After the drive idles long enough to cool down, it will automatically turn off the fan.
Do remember that the My Passport Pro has two hard disk drives inside, so it can get really toasty inside. Without a fan to keep them cool, the My Passport Pro could fail pretty quickly.
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• Portable Heavyweight, A Closer Look |
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• Testing The 2 TB My Passport Pro |
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