WD My Passport Edge 500GB Portable Hard Drive Review

WD My Passport Edge

Back in 2011 we reviewed the WD My Passport Essential 500GB USB 3.0 portable hard drive and found it to be an amazing product that worked as advertised. Western Digital introduced its newest version of the My Passport line of portable hard drives with the debut of My Passport Edge in September 2012. The My Passport Edge still features 500 GB of storage and a USB 3.0 interface for fast read/write speeds, but it uses a faster hard drive and the enclosure has been updated. Let’s dive right in!

Western Digital currently offers the My Passport Edge portable hard drive in just one capacity, 500GB. The My Passport Edge comes in a model for PCs and another for Mac. Both drives are virtually identical other than the formatting and software that comes on them(NTFS for PC and HFS+ for Mac), but there is also a price $10 difference. The WD My Passport Edge for PC runs $89.00 shipped and the My Passport Edge for Mac is $99.00 shipped. The drive that we are looking at today is a WD My Passport Edge for PC and it has model number WDBK6Z5000ATTNESN. WD only offers this drive in one color, so picking one out is pretty easy.

Inside the retail box you’ll find the portable hard drive, 1.5-foot USB 3.0 cable, warranty card and the Quick Install Guide. WD lists that the WD SmartWare software, WD Security and WD Drive Utilities are included in the box, but don’t freak out when you can’t find the software disk as the software is already on the portable hard drive.

Flipping the My Passport Edge over we see that Western Digital placed four rubber pads on the bottom to keep the portable hard drive from sliding around the surface that you place it on. The designers of this enclosure obviously know that, and made indentations in the housing for the feet to sit down into. The back also lists the part number, serial number, where it was produced (Thailand) and a whole bunch of logos that don’t mean much to the general public.

Western Digital went with a grey plastic casing on the My Passport Edge that is adorned with a circular pattern and the WD logo and product name. The My Passport is quite small and measures in at just 110mm x 81.6mm x 12.8mm or 4.34″ x 3.21″ x 0.50″ with a weight of 4.8 ounces. The finish on the My Passport appears to be semi-gloss and it does not show finger prints and smudges.

Rotating the drive to the other side we can see the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port and just to the right of that there is a hidden white LED activity indicator light. Even if you don’t have USB 3.0 today you can use this drive and then down the road when you invest in a PC that has USB 3.0 it will work and actually be faster. Western Digital says that the transfer rates will be up to 3x faster with USB 3.0 over USB 2.0 on the My Passport. Since the WD My Passport uses a derivative of a notebook hard drive it gets it power from the USB port, so no power adapter needs to be plugged into the wall. This means the only cable that you need to bring with you when traveling is the USB 3.0 cable that comes with the drive.

As you can see the WD My Passport Edge has a sleek, ultra-slim design that makes transport easy and convenient. Let’s fire this drive up and take a look at the backup software as that is the main reason you are likely looking into buying this drive.