WD 2TB My Passport SSD External Portable Drive, USB 3.1, Up to 540 MB/s - WDBKVX0020PSL-WESN

I purchased this WD My Passport SSD drive to use as a boot drive for my Apple Mac Mini (2012). Essentially cloning the existing hard drive to the SSD was very easy (just Google it...) and worked flawlessly with MacOS High Sierra.This 512GB SSD drive is essentially the same size as the drive already in my Mac Mini. Because it comes ready to go as an external drive there's no need to purchase any cables or enclosures to use it. It will work for both Mac (High Sierra and El Capitan) and PCs (Windows 7, 8's and 10) too.The drive comes with a USB-C and an adapter for USB-C to USB-A. Backwards compatible to USB 2.0 it is USB 3.1 compatibility rated.The drive does come with WD Discovery software for backup and security installed. To use this as a boot drive, users will need to format (erase) the drive prior to installing their own computer's operating system on the drive.The drive is very small and lightweight. It's in a shock-resistant case that probably would be OK if dropped a few times from 3-4', but I'd not expect it to be abuse-worthy. It does get warm on the silver part of the drive case, but not hot to the touch. It is powered by its connection to your PC or Mac - there's no external power source needed to power the drive.The drive has a 3 year warranty through Western Digital, with the serial number on the back of the drive which is needed for registration.The drive can reach speeds up to 540MbS, but that will depend upon how the drive works with your existing system. The Mac Mini I have didn't reach those transfer speeds with a core i5 processor (2.1Ghz) and 16GB of memory, but I didn't expect it to. I was pleasantly surprised by the boost in speed over the internal hard drive though.Using BlackMagic Disk Speed Test app, I had speeds of 71MbS write and 73MbS read with the internal hard drive. Using the WD My Passport SSD I was able to get 370MbS write and 420MbS read speeds. A fantastic leap to 5-6x's faster speeds overall using the WD SSD!Boot time was also cut in half using the USB connected SSD (USB 2.0 connection) versus the internal drive.I'm very pleased with this drive. It's compact size, speed and the ease with which I was able to upgrade and bring new life to an aging Mac have me singing this drive's praises and looking to buy another one.Highly recommend this drive for anyone who wants a speedy connection or a way to boost the performance of their Mac Mini.

Computer drives are "transparent" to the user when they work correctly, thus making them more of a commodity.That in mind, this is a great drive. Simple to use as a plain drive. It also provides WD features for encryption and cloud backup ...these services require registration but registration is NOT required in order to use the drive itself (and the drive can be encrypted with other methods than the WD method...so for paranoid types who don't want to register their encrypted drive up to the cloud do not need to do so).The physical size of the drive itself is much much smaller than I was expecting; much smaller than a standard laptop-type hard drive in an enclosure. It's like a box of matches. No complaints though! Makes it highly portable.The combination of low cost, large capacity, speed of USB-C interface makes this a very appealing drive.

I purchased this SSD for the sole function of backing up Macbook Air computers used by my wife and me. The backup program which I had installed on the computers had ceased to work with earlier Passport devices for some arcane reason that I really didn't understand (something to do with new Mac OS and interplay with the backup program). The good news is that backups to this unit are faster, it had double the capacity of the two prior Passport devices (I had one 500 GB drive for each computer) so I need only this one drive to backup both laptops, this Passport is much more compact than the older 500 GB drive (that is, it is smaller than one of the older drives so our backups now consume far less than 50% of the space needed previously) so it will be handy for extended travel as we are very oriented to traveling with one carry-on size suitcase each for trips that are up to 4 months in duration.

It is small and compact and works well so far!

Still works after so long since purchased

I bought this back in 2019, and it worked great with my Intel MacBook Pro right out of the box. It didn't (and still doesn't) have the best capacity-to-dollar ratio, but I trusted the WD brand name. It was super fast, it's very compact, and I like the hardware encryption. I carried this drive because I ran out of space on my computer, and it was great to store my photos library. It was fast enough to edit videos off of, and even run an Ubuntu virtual machine.However, about two years in, I started noticing a problem where it would randomly eject and reconnect to my computer, This became particularly problematic because it started happening during large file transfers like syncing photos, and would eventually corrupt the data. Unfortunately, the problem was manageable until just a month after the three-year warranty expired, which was a bummer. Luckily, I had taken backups of my data, but recovering everything was a real pain.I recently decided to crack the drive open, remove the physical mSATA SSD module, and put that in a different SSD-to-USB enclosure--turns out, the drive itself was fine. My guess is that the USB board was faulty. So, if you're tech savvy and willing to risk that outcome, this drive will do you just fine. But, there are other faster, cheaper (per terabyte), and potentially more reliable than this.

Buen disco SSD, feliz con la compra

This is a great ssd, light and fast, without moving components like normal external hdds that can get scratched or wrecked. If you want a high quality drive to back up to once and then retrieve quickly later with good life expectancy, this is a great bet (if you are over-writing daily or weekly, you probably should skip SSD's).It is, however, pretty expensive. That said, it's fairly comparable to similar drives and Western Digital has a long track record of quality. It just is maybe worth looking for this on sale if your need is longer term and not immediate.