Older WD Elements is faster than newer WD Passport

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Hello,

I’ve two WD drives. Their info as follows:

  • WD Elements 2TB / USB 3 (purchased in august 2016)
  • WD My Passport 2TB / USB 3 (purchased in October 2017)

I have reformatted the drives a few times in the past. But the WD Elements (which is older) is faster than the newer WD My Passport drive.

Copying a 9.2GB sized folder (with large files) takes 2:35 minutes on the older WD Elements.
The same takes 3:05 minutes on the newer WD My Passport drive.

Regardless how I test it, the newer WD Passport always slower than the WD Elements. I could not locate any data sheet for the drives that would show the “factory” read/write speeds which would show is this is by design or there’s something wrong with the drive.

I’ve also run the WD Drive Utilities but it did not show any issues or problems for the WD My Passport.

Are the WD Passport drives “supposed to be” slower than the WD Elements? Is this normal?

2

Can be tested under http://www.hdtune.com/

3

My question was not how can I test it. Why would I test something that is already obvious? The drive was already tested and has no errors. (…why am I repeating that I already said…?) My question was if this is “normal”. Are Passport drives slower than Elements?

4

Hdtune can test the speed of reading and writing, so there is an intuitive comparison.