New 'My Passport SSD' Is Western Digital's First Portable SSD

Western Digital entered the portable SSD market with the new My Passport SSD.

My Passport SSD is available in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage capacities and supports USB 3.1 Type-C to enable fast data transfers. The product is compatible with the WD Backup software that allows you to automatically back up your files and, if you own a Mac, create Time Machine backups. (Just know that you'll have to reformat the drive to use Apple's recovery feature.) An included USB Type-A adapter enables connections to older PCs.

Western Digital said the My Passport SSD reaches 515MBps transfer speeds via the USB Type-C port. That's slower than MyDigitalSSD's Boost, which was revealed at CES in January with up to 830MBps sequential read and 730MBps sequential write speeds, but faster than the Adata SD700 portable SSD we reviewed in February with its 440MBps read and 430MBps write speeds. Western Digital didn't break out read and write speeds.

My Passport SSD debuts shortly after Western Digital announced the first SSD under its flagship Black lineup in January. The company revealed that the WD Black PCIe SSD would come in 256GB and 512GB models with $109 and $200 price tags, respectively. Besides the differences in capacity and price, the models also varied with their transfer speeds, with the 256GB model offering up to 2050MBps sequential read and up to 700MBps sequential write performance. The 512GB model upped that sequential write performance to 800MBps; sequential read performance is the same.

My Passport SSD is available from Best Buy in the U.S. for $100, $200, and $300 for the 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB models, respectively. Western Digital said in a press release that the product will be "available worldwide at select e-tailers and retailers" this quarter. The 256GB WD Black PCIe SSD is available now from Western Digital's online store; the 512GB model is out of stock. All models of the My Passport SSD offer three-year warranties, whereas the WD Black PCIe SSDs are covered by a five-year warranty.