When comparing Solo G3 vs WD My Passport, the Slant community recommends Solo G3 for most people. In the question“What are the best external hard drives?” Solo G3 is ranked 3rd while WD My Passport is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Solo G3 is:
The Solo G3 can withstand submersion in water 10 feet deep for 3 days. It might not survive a prolonged flood, but it is extremely resilient to water.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Waterproof
The Solo G3 can withstand submersion in water 10 feet deep for 3 days. It might not survive a prolonged flood, but it is extremely resilient to water.
Pro Fireproof
The Solo G3 is rated fireproof at temperatures up to 1550 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. The average house fire temperature is 1100 Fahrenheit, and lasts about 30 minutes. This means that the Solo G3 will be able to survive the average house fire fairly easily.
Pro Fast read/write speeds
Using USB 3.0 you can expect 109MBps write speeds and 111MBps read speeds. If you only use USB 2.0 though, those speeds will drop to 16MBps for write and 32MBps for read.
Pro Very portable
At 0.54lbs, it's quite portable and easy to just throw into a bag and carry around.
Pro Relatively long warranty
The WD My Passport comes with a 3-year warranty.
Pro Large Capacity options
Models available to up to 4TB.
Pro Supports Mac and PC
Supports both NTFS and HFS+(needs formating).
Pro Has a backup software
Western Digital provides a backup application that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's site. You can use the application to create automated backups or manual on-demand backups.
Pro WD is generally more reliable than Seagate Drives
Cons
Con No redundancy built-in
There is just one drive inside, meaning that in the unlikely event of hard drive failure, all of your data will be lost. Some other hard drive protect against this by using RAID configurations.
Con Massive
5.0x7.1x11 inches is huge for a hard drive, and it weighs 15 pounds. It is not portable at all.
Con Relatively slow for single-file transfers
Even though it has a 201.8MB/s write speed, according to benchmarks it's surprisingly slow with single-file transfers compared to other portable hard drives.
Con Doesn't have a Thunderbolt port
If you use a Mac or a higher end Windows unit, you may have experienced the speed of Thunderbolt external devices. Thunderbolt drives are more expensive than USB drives. Though, a similar 5400 rpm drive using a Thunderbolt connection can read 1.5x faster than USB 3. But you may not care depending on your usage. It has not hurt some users, some 80% of computer users will not find any benefit to Thunderbolt.