To test the performance of the Western Digital My Passport Elite I ran a series of benchmarks using HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, SiSoftware Sandra Professional Business XII.SP2c and ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.02. To get a feel for the "real world" performance, I also copied and pasted 30GB of random files and directories in Windows Explorer. For comparison, I've also included test results from an older 250GB Passport drive.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Using HD Tach, we can benchmark a drive's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that while the Elite was a little slower when writing, its read and burst speeds were faster than the older 250GB drive.
SiSoftware Sandra - File System and Physical Disk Benchmarks:
While I am not a big fan of SiSoftware Sandra's optical drive benchmarks, it is a great tool if you want to test a system's performance quickly and easily. One of Sandra's more useful tests is the File System benchmark. This benchmark gives each drive an overall score, or "Drive Index," based on the results of its read and write tests.
| WD My Passport Elite 320GB |
WD Passport 250GB |
|
| Drive Index: | 28.08 MB/s | 29.62 MB/s |
| Buffered Read: | 31.68 MB/s | 34.13 MB/s |
| Sequential Read: | 31.87 MB/s | 34.47 MB/s |
| Random Read: | 24.72 MB/s | 25.14 MB/s |
| Buffered Write: | 25.38 MB/s | 25.86 MB/s |
| Sequential Write: | 26.21 MB/s | 27.03 MB/s |
| Random Write: | 21.61 MB/s | 22.33 MB/s |
| Random Access: | 9ms | 11ms |
Unfortunately, the Elite didn't do quite as well in this test. While its access time was better, it was slower than the older 250GB drive when both reading and writing.
Designed with hard disks in mind, the Physical Disk benchmark tests a drive's read and write speeds along with its random and full stroke access times. As with the File System benchmark, this one gives each drive an overall score, or "Drive Index," based on the results of the tests.
| WD My Passport Elite 320GB |
WD Passport 250GB |
|
| Read Index: | 29.41 MB/s | 32.04 MB/s |
| Write Index: | 22.95 MB/s | 25.22 MB/s |
| Random Access: | 13ms | 17ms |
| Full Stroke Access: | 14ms | 18ms |
The results here were similar to what we saw with Sandra's File System benchmark. While the Elite's access times were better, it was again slower than the older Passport when reading and writing.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.02:
Like HD Tach and Sandra, the ATTO Disk Benchmark is used to test a drive's read and write speeds. The big difference here is that the tests are run using files ranging in size from 0.5kb to 1024kb. For greater accuracy, the total length has been set to 32MB.
WD My Passport Elite 320GB
WD Passport 250GB
Looking at the two screenshots, you can see that the Elite was the faster of the two drives when reading. Unfortunately, when it came to writing, it wasn't able to keep with the older Passport drive.
"Real World" Benchmark:
To test the "real world" performance of Western Digital's new portable hard drive, I copied and pasted 30GB worth of randomly generated files and directories. All of the files are between 27 KB and 32MB in size and no more than four directories deep.
| WD My Passport Elite 320GB |
WD Passport 250GB |
|
| Write: | 27:06 | 27:59 |
| Read: | 26:48 | 25:58 |
The Elite yielded some surprising results in this test. While the synthetic benchmarks indicated that it was the slower of the two drives when writing, it came out on top, beating the older Passport by 53 seconds. Unfortunately, the Elite didn't do as well as I expected when reading back our test data. On average, it was 50 seconds slower than the other drive.
Those concerned about noise will be happy to know that the Elite was very quiet throughout my tests. It was noticeably quieter than my older Passport drive and there was considerably less vibration. The Elite also remained relatively cool and became only slightly warm to the touch after repeated benchmarks.
