How To Set Up Wd External Hard Drive

If you're researching the all-time external hard drives to purchase then it's very likely that both the WD My Passport and the Seagate Fill-in Plus models have come up in your search: they both offering splendid performance, solid design, key features and long-term reliability.

We're happy to recommend them both – and then how do you choose between them? Here nosotros're going to compare the 2 models in all the key categories that affair, and that should give y'all a amend idea most which external hard drive best meets your needs and budget.

Read on for the definitive WD My Passport vs Seagate Backup Plus external hard bulldoze head-to-head comparison: whether yous want to know nigh the maximum capacities on these drives or how much room they'll have upwardly on your desk, we've got all the answers.

WD My Passport vs Seagate Backup Plus: design

Perhaps the showtime word that comes to mind when you look at the WD My Passport is "compact" – this is an external difficult drive wrapped up in a thin, low-cal package. The 2GB version measures 107 mm 10 75 mm ten 11.2 mm (that'south four.two inches x 3 inches x 0.44 inches) and tips the scales at just 120 grams (or 0.26 pounds). If y'all're looking for a bulldoze that yous can carry effectually with a laptop and hands sideslip into a pocketbook, the WD My Passport might be information technology – although it works just too attached to a desktop calculator.

It'south likewise worth pointing out that the WD My Passport comes in a choice of three different colours for the meridian of the casing (the dorsum of the casing is always black): black, blue and red. Equally a result, the aesthetics of the bulldoze stand out from the oversupply just a little flake, with the textured terminate on the tiptop or the front of the device calculation to its entreatment. If you lot like your external hard drives to wait adept, the WD My Passport fits the neb.

The Seagate Backup Plus is more serious and business organisation-like than the model from Western Digital. This drive is but available in black, and while it'due south past no means ugly, it sticks to the basics every bit far equally visual appeal goes. It measures 198 mm 10 118 mm x 41 mm (7.8 inches ten iv.half dozen inches x 1.61 inches), and weighs 1.06 kilograms (that'south 2.34 pounds), so you're going to have to detect more room for it on your desk.

Nosotros like the slightly curved corner where the Seagate logo is, and the USB ports on this drive are well placed and hands accessible also. The grilles for keeping air flowing around the drive are also well done. Overall, nosotros take to requite the toll for design to the WD My Passport model, though there'south nix wrong with the Seagate Fill-in Plus in terms of its shape and size – it just looks a bit more tiresome.

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WD My Passport vs Seagate Backup Plus: features

Maybe the key difference between the WD My Passport and the Seagate Backup Plus external hard drives is that the WD model is USB powered – so you lot can but plug it into a laptop or desktop and get going – whereas the Seagate bulldoze needs a split up mains power supply in improver to the connexion to your computer. In terms of portability, the Western Digital model wins out.

External drives requiring their own power supply accept advantages too though: they're typically faster, and offering greater capacities. In the case of our WD My Passport vs Seagate Fill-in Plus comparison, the read and write speeds seem to be broadly the same, but y'all can get more than infinite with the Seagate drive: it maxes out at a massive 14TB of capacity rather than the 5TB maximum offered by the WD unit of measurement.

Another reward of a bigger, separately powered hard drive is that you can run other devices off it – and the Seagate Backup Plus comes with two USB-A ports on the front that let you connect up other accessories, like flash drives or card readers. Claw up a smartphone or a tablet, and you can charge them from the power coming through the Seagate model, something which you can't do with the WD My Passport.

Both these drives come up with USB 3.0 ports, so in terms of connecting upward to your desktop or laptop computer there's not much to choose between them. Both these drives come with bones backup software you lot can use to assistance yous transfer files over from other locations, either included on the drive itself or available to download for gratuitous via the Western Digital and Seagate websites.

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WD My Passport vs Seagate Backup Plus: verdict

As we said at the outset, these are ii of the best external hard drives that you tin can get hold of at the moment – whichever one you buy, you're going to be getting reliable external storage, fast transfer speeds, and plenty of room for your files and folders. Neither i of these models is going to let y'all downward, which makes the decision of choosing between them a little bit easier – there'south no 'wrong' choice really.

The main consideration here is that the WD My Passport runs entirely from a USB connection to your calculator, and so it's great for taking on the road with you and for quickly swapping between different desktops and laptops. It's also significantly smaller and lighter than the Seagate model, which once more is an advantage if y'all're going to be using a lot while you're on the move between dissimilar places.

What you practise get from the mains-powered Seagate Fill-in Plus is a lot more capacity, if you're willing to pay for it – all the style up to 14TB (though you might struggle to find some configurations). There'southward also the advantage of two USB ports on the front of the unit, which you lot tin use in whatever mode you lot want. If your drive is going to stay stock-still in the same place, then perhaps the Seagate option is the 1 to go for.

Pricing is something else to retrieve about as well of form, and you can check the widgets embedded on this folio for the cheapest deals currently available on the web. At the time of writing, the WD My Passport is slightly more than expensive than the Seagate Fill-in Plus for the same capacity, because information technology packs its tech into a smaller bundle – but it's the case that whichever drive you go for, the more storage space you buy, the cheaper the price-per-gigabyte gets.

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