Western Digital My Passport Essential SE USB 3.0 External Hard Drive: Small on the Outside, Big on the Inside!

A couple of days ago, the Western Digital My Passport Essential SE external hard drive landed on our desk. In a glimpse, it may look just like any other external hard drive. At least until you notice the USB 3.0 logo on its package box. That gave us enough reason to plug the drive into our benchmarking rig immediately. We don’t see too many slim, USB 3.0 external drives around, so the My Passport Essential SE is an interesting specimen. The 2,5 inch hard disk inside has a 1 TB capacity by the way.

The USB 3.0 interface should allow the hard drive inside to deliver its maximum throughput. At 5 Gbps, USB 3.0’s bandwidth is way higher than USB 2.0’s 480 Mbps rate, which usually translates to an actual speed of 33 MB/s per second.

Seen from the sides, the My Passport Essential SE appears a bit “thick”. It’s still small enough to fit inside a shirt pocket though, making it a handy travel companion that could contain large amounts of data should the need arrives.