WD 3TB My Passport X for Xbox One Portable External Hard Drive Game Storage – USB 3.0 (WDBCRM0030BBK-NESN)

Pros: The WD My passport X is a sharp looking external expansion for the Xbox or PC.
It’s a few mm higher then my older passport but they are pretty much identical.

Small white LED on the back is not obnoxious.

Plug and play for PC or Xbox, mine was already formatted for PC.

Runs cool [86F idle] and is dead silent.
The carbon fiber look is classy even if plastic.

3 year warranty.

Cons: None, priced in comparison vs competition for size and capacity.

Overall Review: Power/data cable is the usual 1m in length which is fine for Xbox but can be short for PC.
For simple expansion 4/5GB 3.5″ externals can be bought
for $20-40+ more and can be used with Xbox just as well.

5200 RPM, 8MB cache thus one can assume but I can’t confirm it’s a 2.5″ blue and not black which runs hotter.

The Passport-X is not the fastest but it’s consistent.
Same speeds using Intel and Renesas USB 3.0 controllers.

CDM:

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 116.028 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 113.560 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.746 MB/s [ 182.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.336 MB/s [ 570.3 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 114.716 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 112.624 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.610 MB/s [ 148.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.216 MB/s [ 541.0 IOPS]

Test : 50 MiB [E: 0.1% (2.5/1863.0 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]

HDtune 5.50

Minimum 44 MB/s
Maximum 118 MB/s
Average 87 MB/s

Burst 177 MB/s

Pros: the packaging is sturdy it took a minute to get it out of the packaging. the drive its self is sturdy an looks match the xbox one perfectly. I noticed the warranty card says one year but according to western digital its a 3 year warranty. anyway hooking up to the xbox was easy mine was already formatted for xbox…I also hooked it up to the pc and it formatted it for my pc …the drive worked flawlessly and transferred files at usb 3.0 speeds…but it definitely is a must have for the xbox

Cons: transfers speeds seemed slower but reading my games from the drive was fast enough…although it works fine for the xbox I don’t think it was really designed for the pc I think it can just be formatted to do so..the performance of the drive I would say is equal to a wd green drive which is not a high performance drive its mainly for storage but when gaming I would prefer to have a performance drive…and lastly I’m not sure if the warranty will be honored past the one year wd says its a three year but the package says 1 and in my experience they usually go buy the packaging

Overall Review: this drive is perfect for the xbox and that’s really what they are advertising it for but if you want a pc drive I would go with one of their other offerings

Pros: This drive works great as an external storage unit on the XBOX One. Installation on the XB1 is extremely easy – you plug the USB 3.0 cable into the drive, and plug the other end into the USB port on the back of the console. Done! The XB1 formats the drive and you can now use it to store your large game library.

The drive’s external black plastic finish is designed to match the cross-hatched design of the top of the XB1, so it looks nice sitting on top of the console. The cord is short, but long enough to connect to the back of the XB1.

Speeds are fine, but do not seem like an improvement over the stock internal XB1 drive. This is a 5400 RPM drive (not 7200), which is the same rotational speed as the stock XB1 drive.

The drive comes pre-formatted as NTFS, so it also connects to a Windows PC natively. Due to Windows formatting, the drive shows up with 1.81 TB of usable storage. You can use this drive as a normal external USB 3.0 drive on a PC. Speeds seem on par with other external 5400 RPM USB 3.0 drives. Real world file copies moved at speeds between 60 MB/sec – 85 MB/sec.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: This drive is marketed by WD as being “tweaked for gaming performance,” but I do not notice any speed improvements over the internal XB1 drive, or any other external 5400 RPM USB 3.0 drive.

Pros: Tons of space for games and movies. I have a truckload of movies on this that I plug into my BRay Home theater system and my whole collection only takes about 250 Gb. Playback is flawless. I love having my entire collection on a mobile device.
Relatively fast to download to this, at least for a USB 3.0 device and because it’s not an SSD.
Nice small form factor and the cable is nice and sturdy though a bit short but it is long enough for my purposes.
I tried this on the X Box first and have zero issues with playing games and this can hold a bunch of them. Once I tried that I deleted and reformatted for movie files.
A very nice price for 2TB of storage with the mobility and flexibility
of this unit.

Cons: It get’s a bit warm but I guess it’s to be expected with a HDD. I don’t think it’s too warm though. I suppose I will know in a few months if the temps cause it to lose longevity.

Overall Review: Cudo’s to WD for again filling the needs of users with a quality product.

I can’t stress enough how nice it is to be able to watch my whole collection of movies almost anywhere. This will also plug right into most smart TV’s and playback 1080p movies smooth as silk.

Pros: -WD warranty
-awesome scratch resistant design
-not too heavy
-pocket size
-fast and quiet HDD
-USB 3.0 (backwards compatible with 1/2 ports)
-it’s a Passport series, so it takes power from the USB port
-personally my favorite brand and series of portable drives 🙂

Cons: -USB 3.0 cables (not only this one) tend to be very short among all manufacturers, really can’t anything be done with that for extra 50 cents or so???
-really nothing to add here and I tried being picky 🙂

Overall Review: Drive comes pre-formatted as NTFS, so Mac users beware, but again this model is designed for XBOX so what do you really expect? 😉

I don’t own an XBOX, so tested it with a high-end PC instead.

My test platform was Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H board coupled with i7-4790K CPU @ 4.7GHz and 2×8 GB RAM @ 2400 MHz. OS drive is a RAID0 pair of 240GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe drives. OS is Windows 8.1 Pro x64, all up to date.

HD Tune 2.55 benchmark results (nearly same for both Intel and Renesas USB 3.0, presented are ones for Intel

controller):
1) Transfer rates
Minimum: 51.6 MB/sec
Maximum: 114.2 MB/sec
Average: 86.3 MB/sec
2) Access Time 14.8 ms
3) Burst Rate 105.2 MB/sec

Renesas USB 3.0 hub at rear I/O:
4 GB file copied from RAID0 SSD on SATA3 to Passport X, about 30 secs, around 108-110 MB/s write speed on average (max 113 MB/s)
4 GB file copied from Passport X to RAID0 SSD on SATA3, read same as write

Intel USB 3.0 hub at rear I/O:
4 GB file copied from RAID0 SSD on SATA3 to Passport X, about 30 secs, around 110-112 MB/s write speed on average (max 114 MB/s)
4 GB file copied from Passport X to RAID0 SSD on SATA3, read same as write

Pros: For starters, the price point here couldn’t be better. I’m talking only a nickle per gigabyte of space on this drive.

Very easy to setup, simple plug it in to your xbox and it will be registered in the system, just choose this drive when it comes to installation of a new game.

An internal storage system usually isn’t very big but this hard drive quadruples most of the system hard drives out there, well worth the buy, especially in this age of installing games directly on the system for faster load times.

Take this drive with you to a friends house and play games you’ve installed on your drive, there, without having to install it on their system a second time. Saves time!

It isn’t an internal storage, just a USB connection, so installation or removal is as simple as can be.

Cons: Only works with xbox one, however I can’t imagine it wont work with other systems like the ps4. It is made specifically for the xbox system so we know it will always work flawlessly with it.

Pros: Fast Transfers, USB 3.0, nice size it fits in your pocket!, Works Great on Xbox!!!!!!

Cons: NONE

Overall Review: so far i have 1.1 TB of data on this drive, this is the fastest drive ive had so far, and works just awesome definitely worth the money!!!

Pros: This drive has a nice look to it and it’s small enough to fit just about anywhere. The aesthetics are designed to match the Xbox One, so it blends in really nice when sitting on top of the console. That’s a nice touch. Formats to 1.81 GB in total, which is plenty of space considering the cost and size of this drive.

Supports both the PC and Xbox One. USB 3.0 is fully supported so the transfer speeds are leagues above any older USB 2.0 drives. It’s literally night and day comparing them.

Sequential read and write speeds are definitely acceptable at around 120 Mb/s. Nothing wrong with that…

Not much else to say here… The Passport X works reliably and as advertised.

Cons: Random read and write speeds are abysmal compared to other similar drives (even other spinners). I’m not sure why it performs so poorly in this area, but it’s the main reason I docked the score. Any external drive that uses flash memory will trounce the random readwrite speeds on this drive.

Cannot be used interchangeably between the Xbox One and PC. You can only use it on one or the other as the Xbox One uses a slightly different file system compared to a standard PC.

The LED is insanely bright on this thing. It flashes like crazy in a dark room and is very annoying.

The default icon that shows up in “My Computer” is very ugly. This can be changed manually, but I’m not sure why WD used such an ugly low res icon for it.

Overall Review: This is a solid choice for an external drive, whether you want it for the Xbox One or the PC. It’s reliable and priced reasonably, however the performance is a bit lacking. It’s definitely not the fastest option available, but still a good choice overall.