WD My Passport Ultra vs My Book

[mohdzarif]

Both of these external hard drive use USB 3.0, but what's the difference between them.

Sorry I'm just a noob. My Book is a lot larger in its physical size and look more "sophisticated" so I assume that the performance is somewhat better than the portable My Passport Ultra.

But both of them use USB 3.0, so what exactly makes the difference in performance of these two if any? What other properties of external hard drive that determines their performance?

I'm choosing between these two:
WD My Book
WD My Passport Ultra

 

[casper1973]

My Passport drives are designed to be portable. They use 2.5" (laptop) hard drives and are powered entirely through a USB connection so are very easy to carry around and use on the fly.

My Book drives are designed for "desktop" use (ie. not being moved very often). They use full sized 3.5" hard drives and usually require a mains power connection. You usually get better performance from desktop drives, but at the sacrifice of portability.


Between these two drives there isn't going to be a huge difference since they both use 5400RPM hard drives. It really just depends on how you are using it - portable or not.

 

[jossrik]

External drives are just internal drives with a box and an interface. The larger WD probably has a 3.5 in drive while the smaller of the two has a 2.5 in drive. Differences are the same as with internals, one or both are probably 5200 RPM drives. I would expect that's the main difference. More 3.5s are 7200 than the smaller drives which are normally 5200, some lower than that. Shouldn't have too much of an effect on performance though, which is to say, both will be adequate, neither blazing fast, but then, you probably don't need blazing fast transfer speeds.

 

[mohdzarif]

I'm a little confused.

These 2.5 and 3.5 sizes are for mechanical HDD isn't it?

I'm not sure if the portable My Passport Ultra is mechanical but My Book is certainly mechanical am I right?

Prior to asking my question, I thought that both of them are solid state. :/

 

[jossrik]

They're both mechanical. If you could get a 2, 3, 6TB SSD for under a couple hundred dollars, no one would pay the 500$+ for 1TB, and 1TB SSDs wouldn't be rare. They do make external SSDs, they are small and fast, and the price premium is there too. Expect to pay at least 100$ for a 256GB