WD redesigns its best selling My Passport Ultra portable HDDs

[HEXUS]

Seventh gen drives available in up to 3TB capacities, plus new colour Grip Packs.

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[CustardInc]

Looks about the same size as my Passport from many years ago...

[Unique]

is that a 2.5" 3tb drive? i never knew these were close to production. i presume it's not 2 drives in one caddy as otherwise you could get 4tb with 2 x 2tb drives

[crossy]

is that a 2.5" 3tb drive? i never knew these were close to production. i presume it's not 2 drives in one caddy as otherwise you could get 4tb with 2 x 2tb drives

Looks like 2.5" 3TB drives to me. Just checked the Passport Ultra's spec page versus one for a 3.5" WD Green drive and a 2.5 WD Blue: (H x D x W)
GRN: 26.10 x 147.0 x 101.60
PPU: 20.96 x 110.0 x 81.57
BLU: 9.50 x 100.2 x 69.85
As you can see, the Passport is smaller in all dimensions than the 3.5", but larger than the 2.5" by an amount that could easily be the case material and interface. Interesting to see that the 2.5 WD Green seems to have been dropped - so no "eco" option for small NAS's or laptops.

[Unique]

Looks like 2.5" 3TB drives to me. Just checked the Passport Ultra's spec page versus one for a 3.5" WD Green drive and a 2.5 WD Blue: (H x D x W)
GRN: 26.10 x 147.0 x 101.60
PPU: 20.96 x 110.0 x 81.57
BLU: 9.50 x 100.2 x 69.85
As you can see, the Passport is smaller in all dimensions than the 3.5", but larger than the 2.5" by an amount that could easily be the case material and interface. Interesting to see that the 2.5 WD Green seems to have been dropped - so no "eco" option for small NAS's or laptops.

if it means 2.5" 9mm drives of 3tb I can update my laptop again sooner than I expected, and even consider one of the combi drives with 128gb SSD+1tb HDD for the boot drive. once the price has came down a bit though

[crossy]

if it means 2.5" 9mm drives of 3tb I can update my laptop again sooner than I expected, and even consider one of the combi drives with 128gb SSD+1tb HDD for the boot drive. once the price has came down a bit though

If by "combi drive" you mean a WD Black 2 then I'd consider that decision very carefully - I've seen quite a few postings about problems with it. It's a non-starter as far as I'm concerned anyway because it's Windows-only.

I realise that this might get me horribly flamed - but I've had good experiences with the Seagate "hybrid" drives. I replaced an abysmally performing WD Black with a 1TB (3.5") SSHD for my "data" partition (where the user account files etc are stored) and the responsiveness of the machine went way up (rest of the disks are all SSDs). Good thing about the Seagate (and Toshiba?) SSHD's is that although they probably won't perform as well as a Black2 overall, they're a 1/3 of the price and work with any OS - so to me, they're a good halfway house on the way to full SSD-enablement.

Other thing to consider is whether your laptop actually needs more than 500GB of space (NAS boxes are cheap and readily available!). I actually downsized my main (Linux) machine and manage to fit my OS etc on a 128GB SSD. What I'm suggesting is that for the price of the Black2 (£179 according to Scan) you can easily get a proper SSD, albeit one of only 500GB. Less space, but also no need to go mucking around with WD's drivers etc. Sorry if I'm dissing the Black2, but I really see it as a dead-end product.

Although, if I was flush enough to be able to afford £200 for the Black2, then stretching the budget by another £100 gets me into 1TB SSD territory... just saying

[Unique]

If by "combi drive" you mean a WD Black 2 then I'd consider that decision very carefully - I've seen quite a few postings about problems with it. It's a non-starter as far as I'm concerned anyway because it's Windows-only.

I realise that this might get me horribly flamed - but I've had good experiences with the Seagate "hybrid" drives. I replaced an abysmally performing WD Black with a 1TB (3.5") SSHD for my "data" partition (where the user account files etc are stored) and the responsiveness of the machine went way up (rest of the disks are all SSDs). Good thing about the Seagate (and Toshiba?) SSHD's is that although they probably won't perform as well as a Black2 overall, they're a 1/3 of the price and work with any OS - so to me, they're a good halfway house on the way to full SSD-enablement.

Other thing to consider is whether your laptop actually needs more than 500GB of space (NAS boxes are cheap and readily available!). I actually downsized my main (Linux) machine and manage to fit my OS etc on a 128GB SSD. What I'm suggesting is that for the price of the Black2 (£179 according to Scan) you can easily get a proper SSD, albeit one of only 500GB. Less space, but also no need to go mucking around with WD's drivers etc. Sorry if I'm dissing the Black2, but I really see it as a dead-end product.

Although, if I was flush enough to be able to afford £200 for the Black2, then stretching the budget by another £100 gets me into 1TB SSD territory... just saying

yeah i meant the black 2, as 128gb (in fact less than half) would be fine for the boot and apps, and the rest for data. i did have one of the 750gb SSHDs (biggest size available at the time) and it did make a decent difference, but i replaced with a 2tb drive as the extra storage was more useful to me

i have desktops at home with all my data (and backed up) with the laptop having an extra backup of most of it which i use when away from home, and i need local access, so the NAS idea isn't suitable, and an external drive isn't either

personally i wish they had made 2tb 2.5" SSHDs or a WD black 2 in 2tb size with 64-128gb SSD would be great too. i thought they did make the black 2's mac compatible now, but i just have a 128gb SSD in my macbook which is mainly for surfing etc on the road, and has been at my feet front row at a number of gigs, so i wouldn't trust a mechanical drive for that