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Just got a My Passport Ultra, and some queries

ithehappy

ithehappy

Senior member
Hi I received the My Passport Ultra 2 TB drive today which was ordered day before yesterday, which I but let me ask some things.
Firstly, usually it came with some bloats, and should I install them? I mean those SmartWare, SES driver setup etc etc?
Also when I am transferring data to the drive via USB 3.0 the speed is tremendously slow, never crossed 50 MB/s. Is that because I didn't install those stuffs? I just reformatted it with NTFS, that's all.

Thanks in advance.
 
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Those utilities are not needed, I never used them but do have them backed up if i ever do need them. USB3 has bandwidth far greater than the 5400rpm HDD or controller chipset is capable of so portable HDD's average 40-50MB over USB3 and about 25-30 over USB2.
 
Okay, so I can skip them. But I don't think you are right about USB 3.0 and portable drives, cause my Sony external one provided 90 MB/sec from very beginning. Anyway, I just copied stuffs with Fastcopy and it reached 85-95 MB/sec, which is good.
I am not happy with the cable length of this hard drive, it's at least 3 inches shorter than my Sony 🙁
 
I have a few passport drives, and the speed varies quite a bit, as with any hard drive. I've seen anywhere from 45 -90MB speeds depending on the circumstances. There are a lot of variables when it comes to hdd speed. The source drive can be slow, or an application could be accessing one of the drives at the same time as the transfer is happening, slowing them down. Transferring a lot of small files (like documents or an mp3 collection) will slow it down a lot as well.

Also, the speed is faster on the outer edge of the platter, and on a 5400 rpm drive they can get noticeably slow towards the center.

I reformatted NTFS on mine as well. I don't know if the WD software is useful for anything, and the short stiff cables are a bit irritating. Ignore the misinformed reviews that say they are a proprietary cable, I got a couple cheap 1ft micro usb3.0 cables and don't use the short WD ones.
 
Thanks and you are totally right about the speed variation. And those long 1 ft cables, do they hamper the USB 3.0 transfer rate by any margin?
 
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