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

Test System and Drive Info

Before we look at the numbers, here is a brief glance at the test system that was used. All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. All benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running.

Intel Z68 Platform

The Intel Z68 platform that we used to test the Intel Pentium Processor G620 was running the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard with BIOS F4
that came out on 6/22/2011. This board uses an Etron EJ168 controller for USB 3.0 and we ran driver version 1.0.0.105 (8/23/2011) on the test system. The Kingston HyperX T1 8GB 1866MHz memory kit was set to 1866MHz with 1.5v and 9-10-9-28 1T memory timings.

Intel Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Pentium G620	Click Here
Motherboard	Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3	Click Here
Memory	8GB Kingston HyperX 1866	Click Here
Video Card	n/a	Click Here
Hard Drive	Crucial C300 256GB SSD	Click Here
Cooling	Intel	Click Here
Power Supply	Corsair HX850W	Click Here
Operating System	Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit	Click Here

Detailed Information with HD Tune Pro 4.61:

I fired up HD Tune Pro to take a look at the health of the drive and to see the drive attributes. I noticed that the drive features a 1MB alignment out of the box on a NTFS file system. I also noticed that WD is using a 5400 RPM 2.5″ SATA notebook hard drive inside.

Detailed Information with CrystalDiskInfo 4.0.2:

I also fired up CrystalDiskInfo and it showed basically the same information, but I know some readers prefer one over the other, so both were included.