The world of external storage is divided into two camps. On the one hand you have established mechanical hard disc drives (HDDs) that offer oodles of capacity at great price points. On the other, mind you, there are solid-state drives (SSDs) that excel in ruggedness, near-instant access, and transfer speeds. Yet even today you pay a privilege for those virtues.
Contextualised this way, those of you looking to back up ever-expanding game libraries or store Plex movies and shows are better served by the more amenable price-per-GB availed by HDDs. Industry heavyweight WD certainly believes this to the case as it has an impressive 91 models to choose from.
WD My Passport Ultra Emerald 6TB
£180 / $199
Pros
- Great build
- Good looks
- Useful utilities
- USB-C connectivity
Cons
- Limited capacities
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Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the venerable My Passport portable range, WD’s released the attractive Ultra Emerald. Available in 2TB and 6TB capacities, I’m taking a closer look at the latter.
Told you it was attractive. Housed inside a white plastic casing topped by an anodised aluminium green lid, aesthetics sure beat the all-black offerings of old. The top uses sloping thickness that flares out on the right-hand bottom side. It’s a nice touch complementing industrial design well.
Looking Good
At the moment, the special-edition drive is only available in a green-and-white colourway. I reckon it’d be cool if WD sold different-coloured aluminium lids, though I don’t believe it will happen because they’re not designed to be prised away from the lower section.
Size is predicated by storage technology. Measuring 110mm long, 81.6mm wide 14mm thick, and weighing 240g, I find it pocketable and easy to slip into a laptop bag along with your other accoutrements. It’s good to know that WD uses more than 50% recycled plastic, while packaging uses in excess of 50% post-consumer recycled pulp and is fully recyclable.
This back design is specific to the 20th anniversary model dubbed Emerald. That perhaps explains why it’s a two-capacity range with only 2TB and 6TB options. Regular Ultra drives feature a different look and are available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 5TB, and 6TB. Go for one of those if Emerald’s capacity doesn’t fit in with your needs.
HDDs by their very nature cannot be as bombproof as SSDs. Nevertheless, WD’s casing feels good in my hand and resilient enough to take a knock or two. Furthermore, WD backs it up with a three-year warranty for that extra piece of mind.
Keeping up with the times, WD plumbs the drive with a single USB-C port adhering to the 5Gbps 3.2 Gen 1 specification. Being a mechanical drive, it won’t reach the breach the 500MB/s interface limit, and I’ll show you just how fast it is later on. The only disruption on the chassis is a matching white activity LED.
Four rubberised feet provide good stability when on a desk. Furthermore, there’s little user-felt vibration when reading or writing large files, and the casing doesn’t become overly warm to the touch.
My Passport Ultra doesn’t look out of place when surrounded by high-performance SSDs from WD’s large stable. The bundle includes a three-year warranty, bundled Acronis True Image software, built-in 256-bit AES encryption, a footlong USB-C cable, and a USB-C-to-A adapter for use with older systems not featuring latest connectivity.
Formatted with exFAT filing system out of the box, the drive can be used on Windows 10/11 and, when formatted, macOS 11+ PCs.
Testing
Inside, the drive is identified as WDC WD60NDZM-11BTZS1, equipped with a total 6001.1GB capacity formatting down to 5.46TB in Windows.
You’ll notice WD includes software for both Windows and Mac on the drive. Clicking them downloads the latest versions from the cloud.
Once loaded, you’re presented with two options: storage and apps. Drive utilities runs status checks or scans your drive if problems surface. Security, meanwhile, offers unauthorised access protection through near-unbreakable AES 256 encryption.
Set up one time by activating the WD Security app, you’re prompted for a pre-configured password that’s up to 25 characters long. There’s a handy auto-unlock feature for an approved computer, saving you entering it every time on your main work PC.
In terms of performance, writing a 67GB large-file folder over from my PC to the WD My Passport Ultra takes a shade over 10 minutes, resulting in an average transfer rate of 109.4MB/s. The transfer is consistent from start to finish – no cache-related dips here – and reading them back to my host SSD takes 9 minutes 41 seconds.
Point is, you can transfer around 400GB per hour in either direction, so while it might take a good while to fill the drive, you’ll probably do this infrequently.
The drive runs at 4,800rpm, which is consistent with transfer rates of this ilk. In an ideal world, I’d like to see faster rotational speeds – I fondly remember the days of 7,200rpm HDDs – but rpms have steadily declined as areal density increased.
Straight-line performance is consistent with other portable HDDs I have in the office, including WD’s own My Passport 2TB and WD_Black Game Drive 5TB.
Conclusion
Though we’re fast approaching 2025, I believe there remains a place for the traditional hard drive. Best suited to users who demand a healthy cost-per-GB metric, WD’s My Passport Ultra Emerald Edition 6TB acts a giant repository for multimedia files.
Looking good in a two-tone finish, this is evolution rather than revolution. Type-C connectivity brings it up to date, while the build quality and aesthetic are both first class. Acronis True Image and 256-bit hardware encryption are both useful value-adds, too.
Verdict: A large-capacity external hard drive that’s great for storing all your multimedia files.
