WD 256GB My Passport SSD External Portable Drive, USB 3.1, Up to 540 MB/s - WDBKVX2560PSL-WESN

This review was written from the perspective of professional photographers who use the unit for Lightroom catalogs/retouching while traveling using a Surface Pro 4. The unit we purchased is the latest iteration of their portable SSD and is slightly more expensive than the other unit we were considering, the Samsung T5. The WD unit is slightly smaller and lighter, but only by a tiny amount. The main difference beside the price point is the latest version of the WD drive boasts that it is USB Type-C and USB 3.1 Gen 2 ready and does include the type-c cord which has type-c connectors on both ends. But it also includes and adaptor for the standard USB 3.0 connector, which is what the Surface Pro 4 has. The read and write times are about 4X as fast as our previous HDD and it is able to keep up with Lightroom to the point where I cannot tell a real difference between using the internal or external (WD) SSD. Read and write times run in the 400 Mb/s range with no hiccups noted. One thing I did notice is the case does heat up under heavy use, but it is just warm to the touch. Not hot at all. The unit itself feels well built but I do recommend getting the case for it as it is so small and light I do worry about it getting lost! In conclusion, if you are needing a portable external storage solution with fast read and write times, it is well worth investing in the WD My Passport SSD.

Best drive ever, blazing speed on my MacBook Pro, I highly recommend it for timeMachine backups and restores Even while encrypted is light speed fast. A MUST have in my opinion. Ohh almost forgot, it is really small y light

Its a 1 TB SSD. It looks like the picture in the listing. It was the correct color. It supports USB3. The only thing I dont know is how long it will be in service.

All works fine, only thing is that it just doesnt get to the max speed listed in the specs, not real life proof... There are some lexar SSDs that go up to 900mbps... This one is listed as 540mbps but it often works at 300 or so... Yet I give it 4 stars because who needs that stupid high speed, it works fine.

I have this hooked up as an external for my MB Pro 2018, and was hoping to use this consistently with reads/writes. The problem is any time I do any substantial work (software dev, not even image/movie editing) the drive tries to overheat on me. Ive gotten corruption twice already in the month Ive been using it. Id be surprised if it lasted a year before it bricked.

I have backed up two desktops and my laptop on this unit. It was a snap to set up, and move between the computers. Its a hard drive that allows me to share my thousands of photos simply.

This drive runs hot and fast. Having a 2 TB capacity is also a major plus. If your system has SSD for main storage you need a fast drive like this for backups and such.

The external drive works great so far no complaints. The price was a little high, but that is common place for a SSD drive compared to a HDD. I like the compact size, it doesnt take up much space when I use it my for my desktop or laptop.

Transferred 200+ gigs of photos in a matter of minutes, haven’t had any issues with it besides it didn’t come with the activation/serial code for the software registration (not a big deal)

I love this little beast, but sometimes it can be very frustrating to use. I use this drive with a 2015 MacBook Pro that usually works fine unless either (1) the computer dies with the hard drive still plgged in, or (2) the drive is not safely ejected. In either case, the drive is no longer recognized when I plug it in again and I need to run a disk repair using the Disk Utility app. Sometimes the repair fails and I need to either restart my computer or unplug/replug the drive several times for the repair to work. Thankfully, this does not happen often and none of my files are lost/corrupted. However I havent seen this behavior with other hard drives. Other than that it is a great product - super fast transfer speeds and it comes in an amazing size. Overall, Id still recommend this product.