WD My Passport Essential 500GB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Review

Performance w/ CrystalDiskMark and ATTO

CrystalDiskMark v3.0.1b

CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive
that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write
speeds.

1000MB Files Test Benchmark on the My Passport 500GB:

With the latest Etron USB 3.0 drivers installed on our test system we were seeing the WD My Passport Essential 500GB USB 3.0 portable drive reached 92.79 MB/s read and 92.06 MB/s write in the sequential test.

ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46

ATTO is one of the oldest hard drive benchmarks that is still used today. ATTO measures transfers across a specific volume length. It measures raw transfer rates for both reads and writes and places the data into graphs that you can easily interpret. The benchmark was run with file sizes from 0.5kb through 8192kb with the total length being 256mb.

Benchmark Results: The My Passport Essential 500GB USB 3.0 drive hit 93 MB/s read and 92 MB/s write, which is respectable for a 5400 RPM notebook hard drive in a USB 3.0 external enclosure!