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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/10431/western-digital-my-passport-wireless-pro-wifi-hard-drive-review



Wireless storage peripherals have traditionally targeted users of mobile devices (where internal storage space is at a premium). As multimedia capture devices (both consumer and professional) become more connected, it makes sense for these storage peripherals to evolve and cater to a professional audience with premium features. Today, Western Digital is launching a suite of Pro products targeting the professional image/video capture market. This includes the My Passport Wireless Pro portable Wi-Fi hard drive, a follow-on to the My Passport Wireless introduced in late 2014.

Introduction

The Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro is a Wi-Fi mobile storage device. It essentially acts as a battery-operated wireless NAS (network-attached storage) / USB 3.0 DAS (direct-attached storage) / access point. The unit includes a capacious 2.5" hard drive (2TB or 3TB), a 6400 mAh battery for wire-free operation and a simultaneous dual-band Wi-Fi radio enabling it to act as an access point or a wireless NAS / hot-spot mode. Like the previous generation My Passport Wireless, the new unit also sports a SD card slot. In addition, we also have a USB 2.0 host port.

Compared to other wireless mobile storage peripherals, the differentiating aspects / professional features include:

  • SD 3.0 card reader (up to 65 MBps reads and 40 MBps writes, depending on the rating of the SD card itself)
  • 802.11ac (5 GHz) and 802.11n (2.4 GHz) simultaneous support (1x1)
  • High-capacity (6400 mAh) Li-Po battery - provision for up to 10 hours of battery life while streaming HD video (as per WD's claims), and ability to double up as a battery bank for phones and other media capture devices connected to its USB 2.0 host port (up to 5V @ 1.5A).
  • Plex app, allowing WD to claim the unit to be the world's first portable Plex media server (no transcoding capabilities, though)
  • Native exFAT support for external storage media handling

In terms of software features, Western Digital has retained the FTP server capabilities (which allows advanced digital cameras to directly upload photographs to the unit in the field). In addition, the mobile app (WD My Cloud) has also been updated to support the new My Passport Wireless Pro as well as the Pro NAS units being launched today.

Hardware and Platform Analysis

The My Passport Wireless Pro unit comes with a 12.24W adapter (5.1V @ 2.4A). The output is a standard A-type USB 3.0 receptacle. Bundled with the unit is a 2 ft. USB 3.0 cable (Male-A to Micro-B). The USB 3.0 cable is also used to connect to the PC for usage as a DAS (direct-attached storage) unit as well as charging the internal battery. Other than the main unit and the USB cable / charger, we have a quick start guide.

In order to get more insight into the internals, we dug up the FCC filings for the My Passport Wireless Pro. Selected teardown pictures are provided in the gallery below.

In conjunction with the information gleaned via SSH access to the unit, we can arrive at the following important internal components for the 2TB My Passport Wireless Pro unit:

  • Realtek RTD1195 Dual Cortex-A7 SoC
  • Realtek RTL871X Wi-Fi SoC
  • Realtek 8189ES 802.11n 1x1 2.4 GHz WLAN radio
  • Realtek 8811AU 802.11ac 1x1 5 GHz WLAN radio
  • WD Blue 2TB 2.5" HDD
  • 6400 mAh 3.7V Li-Po battery

The Realtek platform (originally meant for media players) is an interesting choice for the wireless NAS market. However, given that vendors such as QNAP have also used similar SoCs for the TAS-x68 lineup, it is not that much of a surprise. In any case, it is the additional components and the software infrastructure that make the product unique. Coming to the hard drive itself, we get confirmation after running CrystalDiskInfo with the My Passport Wireless Pro connected as a DAS unit over USB 3.0.

The WD20NPVZ is indeed the 2TB WD Blue drive. Looking at the datasheet (PDF), we find that the drive consumes, on an average, only 1.7W for read/write operations. At idle, it drops down to 0.8W and sleep/standby moves it down to 0.2W. This makes it perfect for a USB 3.0 bus-powered drive (since the maximum power that can be delivered over USB 3.0 as per specifications is only 4.5W). These power numbers are essentially the same as the WD Green drive used in the My Passport Wireless.

Setup Process

The setup process is very similar to that of the My Passport Wireless. Powering up the unit (after the suggested full charging routine) creates two SSIDs - 'MyPassport 2.4 GHz' and 'MyPassport 5 GHz'. Both of them are secured with the same key (available in a sticker attached to the main unit). Consumers can choose either a mobile device (with the WD My Cloud app installed) or a computer to connect to the SSID and proceed with the setup. On a mobile device, the app automatically recognizes the My Passport Wireless device responsible for the SSID and provides a way to configure it (in terms of operation mode, access password and other details). We decided to go the PC route.

The dashboard presents all the important details such as remaining hard drive space, remaining battery charge, firmware version, system time etc. The remaining pages (navigable via easy to identify icons in the top bar of the UI) allow for further configuration including setting up of additional Wi-Fi networks, administrator settings, turning on/off SSH and FTP access, diagnostics, media server (Plex / Twonky) and SD card / USB device import settings etc.

On the whole, the setup and usage was quite user-friendly. Western Digital also has excellent documentation which makes product usage simple for all types of consumers. The new features are well-integrated into what is essentially the same UI as that of the My Passport Wireless from 2014.



DAS Benchmarks

The primary purpose of the My Passport Wireless Pro device is to act as a storage extension for mobile devices. Connecting the device to a 'Home Network' SSID also exposes up to three folders as CIFS shares, Storage, SD and USB. The availability of the last two are dependent on the presence of a SD card and/or USB drive. Data can be transferred between a PC and the device via these CIFS shares. That said, the My Passport Wireless Pro also doubles up as a high-speed portable hard drive (with support for WD's custom utilities such as WD Backup). The internal disk is pre-formatted in exFAT in order to be compatible with multiple operating systems. Transfer of large-sized media collections / libraries and periodic computer backups are best done through the USB 3.0 interface and not via Wi-Fi. In order to evaluate this aspect of the My Passport Wireless Pro, we utilized the testbed outlined in the table below to test the DAS performance. The USB 3.1 Gen 2 port enabled by the Intel Alpine Ridge ontroller was used to benchmark the unit..

AnandTech DAS Testbed Configuration
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z170X-UD5 TH ATX
CPU Intel Core i5-6600K
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws 4 F4-2133C15-8GRR
32 GB ( 4x 8GB)
DDR4-2133 @ 15-15-15-35
OS Drive Samsung SM951 MZVPV256 NVMe 256 GB
SATA Devices Corsair Neutron XT SSD 480 GB
Intel SSD 730 Series 480 GB
Add-on Card None
Chassis Cooler Master HAF XB EVO
PSU Cooler Master V750 750 W
OS Windows 10 Pro x64
Thanks to Cooler Master, GIGABYTE, G.Skill and Intel for the build components

Our testing methodology for DAS units takes into consideration the usual use-case for such devices. The most common usage scenario is transfer of large amounts of photos and videos to and from the unit. The other usage scenario is importing files directly off the DAS into a multimedia editing program such as Adobe Photoshop. Prior to taking a look at the real-life benchmarks, we first check what ATTO and CrystalDiskMark have to report for the My Passport Wireless Pro. We see steady numbers around 110 MBps for sequential transfers, correlating well with WD's performance claims.

In order to tackle the first real-life use-case, we created three test folders with the following characteristics:

  • Photos: 15.6 GB collection of 4320 photos (RAW as well as JPEGs) in 61 sub-folders
  • Videos: 16.1 GB collection of 244 videos (MP4 as well as MOVs) in 6 sub-folders
  • BR: 10.7 GB Blu-ray folder structure of the IDT Benchmark Blu-ray (the same that we use in our robocopy tests for NAS systems)
Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro 2TB robocopy Benchmarks (MBps)
  Write Bandwidth Read Bandwidth
Photos 62.36 97.66
Videos 100.06 101.98
Blu-ray Folder 99.75 104.13

For the second use-case, we take advantage of PC Mark 8's storage bench. The storage workload involves games as well as multimedia editing applications. The command line version allows us to cherry-pick storage traces to run on a target drive. We chose the following traces.

  • Adobe Photoshop (Light)
  • Adobe Photoshop (Heavy)
  • Adobe After Effects
  • Adobe Illustrator

Usually, PC Mark 8 reports time to complete the trace, but the detailed log report has the read and write bandwidth figures which we present in our performance graphs. Note that the bandwidth number reported in the results don't involve idle time compression.

Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro 2TB PCMark8 Storage Benchmarks (MBps)
  Write Bandwidth Read Bandwidth
Adobe Photoshop (Light) 157.68 2.45
Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) 124.21 3.46
Adobe After Effects 79.19 2.59
Adobe Illustrator 97.34 2.50

The robocopy benchmarks were instrumented for performance consistency purposes. Instantaneous transfer rates and drive temperature were recorded.

The drive doesn't go beyond 45C even after ore than 250GB of continuous transfers. There is no thermal throttling or overheating in the system under heavy loading conditions.



Wireless Benchmarks

Our review of the My Passport Wireless loaded up video files of varying bitrates into the device and tried to stream them to various devices to determine the effectiveness of the WLAN component. The range factor was addressed using a W-Fi strength analyzer app on a smartphone. The My Passport Wireless Pro makes it necessary for us to adopt a different strategy, as the dual-band aspect also deserves attention. Fortunately, the SSH access and software capabilities of the My Passport Wireless Pro allows us to utilize iperf for benchmarking the Wi-Fi capabilities. The OS running on the unit ships with iperf v2.0.5 pre-installed.

Two of the striking differences in the WLAN specifications of the My Passport Wireless and the Pro are the presence of a 5 GHz 802.11ac radio in the latter and the downgrade from a 2T2R 2.4 GHz 802.11n solution in the former to a 1T1R one in the Pro. Western Digital indicated that they are targeting the My Passport Wireless Pro for high-performance applications in close-range scenarios, and the 2.4 GHz band is retained only for legacy reasons.

Our evaluation strategy consists of using iperf to determine TCP and UDP downlink and uplink rates at three different locations (marked X, Y and Z in blue) in a 1800 sq. ft. home, as indicated below. While the My Passport Wireless Pro (set up at location M in the floorplan) was set as the server node, an Intel D54250WYKH NUC running Windows 10 Pro x64 was used as the client at the three different locations. The NUC sports an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 2T2R 802.11ac solution.

The purpose of our benchmarking was not to tune the stream configuration for obtaining maximum possible bandwidth. Rather, we wanted to replay the same stream across multiple locations in order to determine comparative performance. iperf with default parameters was used for benchmarking. On the 'server', we ran the following command:

TCP: iperf -s -B 192.168.60.1
UDP: iperf -s -u -B 192.168.60.1

The 'client' was connected to it using the following command:

TCP: iperf -c 192.168.60.1 -P ${num_parallel_streams} -t 30
UDP: iperf -c 192.168.60.1 -u -b ${curr_bw_to_test}m -t 30

The number of parallel streams were tested between 20 and 25 for the TCP case. The maximum obtained bandwidth was recorded. For the UDP case, we altered the bandwidth to test in order to arrive at the value that resulted in less than 1% packet loss during transmission. The roles of the server and client were then reversed, and the same benchmarks were processed.

The numbers below were recorded with the unit in standalone wireless NAS mode. Using it as a Wi-Fi access point with uplink in the same band as the usage band is bound to bring down the numbers even further.4

Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro 2TB WLAN Benchmarks (Mbps)
  2.4 GHz SSID 5 GHz SSID
  TCP DL TCP UL UDP DL UDP UL TCP DL TCP UL UDP DL UDP UL
Location X 9.82 14.3 9.17 17.2 SSID Not Visible
Location Y 33.7 26.6 34.8 32.8 37.3 5.32 37.5 8.19
Location Z 80.9 67.7 84.3 75.4 183 114 197 126

Wi-Fi numbers are heavily dependent on the usage environment, and the only takeaways we have from the above are the fact that the 5 GHz SSID is handicapped by range issues, but, it outperforms the 2.4 GHz SSID when it comes to same-room usage (which is the typical use-case for the My Passport Wireless Pro). The hard drive or attached storage media access rates are unlikely to the source of bottlenecks when it comes to real-world data transfers involving the unit.



Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks

Battery life is an important aspect for wireless storage devices. Western Digital claims up to 10 hours of run-time on the battery for pure HD video streaming from the internal drive. However, usage of additional USB devices or SD cards and/or using the device as a Wi-Fi access point with uplink to another network may bring down the claimed best case numbers. To get a better idea of the actual power needed to keep the internals running, we connected the drive and its charger to a Ubiquiti mFi mPower unit. In the first pass, we recharged the battery from 0 to 100%. The graph below shows the power consumption at the wall for this process. It is close to 12W for more than 2 hours to get the unit back to full charge.

Power consumption (bus power) was recorded using the Plugable USBC-TKEY while operating the unit in DAS mode. This routine was processed for both CrystalDiskMark and the AnandTech DAS Suite.

In the traditional CrystalDiskMark benchmarks, the power consumption never goes beyond the bus limit. However there are spikes of more than 7W in the DAS Suite workload. Given the presence of an internal battery, this is not much of a concern.

Coming to the business end of the review, it is clear that Western Digital continues to differentiate itself in the crowded wireless storage market. The addition of 802.11ac support, and the continued targeting of content creators as well as consumers (with features such as Plex and support for external storage devices formatted in exFAT) are welcome aspects. The experience with the My Passport Wireless Pro was positive overall. The only quibble we have is that the WLAN radios are both 1x1 configurations. Having 2x2 radios could provide better performance. It is not outside the scope for such products, since the first generation unit did come with a 2x2 802.11n WLAN adapter.

In other related news, Western Digital is also launching new 2-bay and 4-bay NAS units in the My Cloud Pro Series. These utilize the Braswell Pentium N3710, and the internal Quick Sync engine can transcode up to four streas for simultaneous streaming. Integration of Adobe Creative Cloud further strengthens WD's market positioning for the Pro series products.

The My Passport Wireless Pro has a MSRP of $230 for the 2TB model and $250 for the 3TB one, and comes with a 2-year warranty. Street prices seem to be around $190 and $220 for the two models. The PR2100 and PR4100 MSRPs start at $400 and go up to $1650 depending on the exact storage configuration. Diskless models come with a 2-year warranty, while the populated models come with a 3-year warranty.

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