WD My Passport Pro 4TB Thunderbolt Portable Storage Review

Introduction & Pricing, Availability and Specifications

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For the longest time, the WD My Passport line-up has been one of the most popular portable storage solutions. To further this, WD has now advanced the line-up with a Thunderbolt enabled solution dubbed the My Passport Pro.

The My Passport Pro is, like I said above, a Thunderbolt enabled storage solution. Internally, you will find dual 2TB 15mm 2.5-inch HDDs, and even though they chose to go for capacity over top-tier performance, WD has managed to make this solution bus powered as well.

Compatibility of the My Passport Pro extends to OS X 10.7+.

Pricing, Availability and Specifications

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MSRP for the 4TB My Passport Pro is set at $429.99 with a three-year warranty. Availability is high at this point, and many online retailers have the unit in stock.

PRICING: You can find the WD My Passport Pro for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The WD My Passport Pro (4TB) retails for $429.00 at Amazon.

Canada: The WD My Passport Pro (2TB) retails for CDN$385.41 at Amazon Canada.

Australia: The WD My Passport Pro (4TB) retails for $657.99 AUD at Mighty Ape Australia.

New Zealand: The WD My Passport Pro (4TB) retails for $699.99 NZD at Mighty Ape NZ.

WD My Passport Pro 4TB

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Packaging for the 4TB My Passport Pro is rather extravagant. Here we have a double box package.

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Opening up the box, we found the drive elegantly packaged inside.

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Scope of delivery includes the drive and reading materials.

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Here we put our My Passport Edge next to the Passport Pro.

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The side of the Passport Pro carries a small fan to cool the drives inside. Also notice the Thunderbolt cable is attached directly to the unit and tucks into the side.

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Here you can see the backside of the PCB and the ASMedia controllers used for the SATA connection.

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Internally, the Passport Pro uses two WD20NPVX HDDs.

Test System Setup

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In testing the performance of Thunderbolt storage solutions, we utilize the Apple MacBook Pro Retina Late 2013 model, which, as of this article, is running OS X 10.9.1. Full system specifications are available above. To create RAID volumes in OS X, I use Apple Disk Utility with 64K stripe size for RAID volumes.

Black Magic Design Disk Speed Test

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Disk Speed Test is an easy to use tool to quickly measure and certify your disk performance for working with high quality video. Simply click the start button, and Disk Speed Test will write test your disk using large blocks of data and display the result. Disk Speed Test will continue to test writes and reads from your disk, so you can evaluate both performance and readability over time.

AJA System Test

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Check the performance of any drive on your system to ensure it is tuned for the performance you need.

Benchmarks – Black Magic Design Disk Speed Test and AJA System Test

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In testing the My Passport Pro, we decided to test just RAID 0 to get an idea of the maximum performance of the unit. As you can see, in Black Magic, the Passport Pro was able to hit 211 MB/s read and 194 MB/s write.

Benchmarks – AJA System Test

All testing with AJA System Test is done with a 16GB file size.

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In our first test with AJA, we test 720p, and the Passport Pro came in at 230 MB/s read and write.

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Over on 1080p RAID 0, we found the drive hovering around 230 MB/s read and write with spikes up to 250 MB/s read.

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With 4K in RAID 0, the Passport Pro showed similar results to what we found during 720p and 1080p. Here we have 230 MB/s read and write with some spikes towards 240 MB/s.

Final Thoughts

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The WD My Passport Pro is one of the better Thunderbolt storage solutions for those that want top-notch capacity. With the unit being bus powered, it takes the pain away from carrying around a large power brick and adds to the portability of the unit. On the other side of things, the WD Passport Pro is a hefty unit and does take up quite a bit of space for a portable solution. Of course, being an OS X storage solution, the Passport Pro is Time Machine compatible and should allow for rather quick backups.

Performance of the Passport Pro was quite good, touching 240 MB/s read and write in our AJA testing. Over on Black Magic, we found the drive capable of 211 MB/s read and 194 MB/s write.

The WD My Passport Pro in the 4TB capacity carries an MSRP of $429.99 with a three-year warranty.

PRICING: You can find the WD My Passport Pro for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The WD My Passport Pro (4TB) retails for $429.00 at Amazon.

Canada: The WD My Passport Pro (2TB) retails for CDN$385.41 at Amazon Canada.

Australia: The WD My Passport Pro (4TB) retails for $657.99 AUD at Mighty Ape Australia.

New Zealand: The WD My Passport Pro (4TB) retails for $699.99 NZD at Mighty Ape NZ.