(Old Model) WD My Passport Ultra 1 TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Auto Backup, Black

Update, 3/7/14: Amazon wont let me update my review on the older Passport model, or I cant now find that review, so this update covers it, and also has relevance to the Ultra, originally reviewed below. This update will be very important to Windows 7 users. Presumably Win8 will have the same quirk. Here goes: when I first hook up the Passport or Ultra to the machine on Win7 (I refuse to use Win8), sometimes it wont register in Windows Explorer (later named File Explorer). But the drive will be detected in diskmgmt.msc as unallocated. You will be asked to initialize it. DO NOT do that, if you want the files on the drive (driver, backup files, etc). Just back out. THEN, hook up your machine for Windows update, or even invoke it manually. You should then get the very same WD SES driver that you wanted to use, but Windows wouldnt recognize it. The update will list this driver as an optional update; note the file name, and accept it. I know, because I just did what Im telling you to do, except that I made the horrific mistake of initializing the drive, and lost the files. So I had to format the thing. No problem, really, Ive got a backup of those files from another 1TB purchased. If you dont, then search in Win7/8 for that file name, and BACK IT UP. Frankly, this is the first time Ive had this experience in Win7, but then these last two drives purchased were silver ones from Warehouse Deals (for $30 off, listed as like New) -- so they might have been wiped. Gorgeous things. Brilliantly packaged by Amazon. Im going to buy two more. :) For heres the secret with these drives: you can partition them, and have the partitions CLONED, but the remainder, as extra filespace or backup. So on one drive, you have the best of both worlds. Now of course everyone will tell you never have only one backup -- okay, but then you can CLONE THE WHOLE DRIVE using some other, less-used machine, to make your second copy, rather than go through it piecemeal again. For any kind of cloning process takes a while, when large. I use Macrium Reflect 5 Pro for this. You might prefer some other software. Clonezilla is a great choice, too, see my review on its CD, here in Amazon. I now have 12 (or more?) of these WD Passports (in black, silver, red); 2 of which are the Ultra, reviewed below. I just love them, but the above quirks (and too the cord), will remain. Its not WDs fault: Windows wont allow the driver to install in the normal manner. I dont recall having any trouble with Linux Mint 13 or Fedora 17 recognizing them, either. Original review follows, below. ==== Just like all the other 3.0 USB WD Passport drives, this one has a nuisance cord and that too-bright light. If you ever saw those keyring lights which are thumb-operated tiny but too bright to look at, then you know what kind of too-bright-light I mean. Great for the keychain. Not so great for a drive. LED would have been better, especially if mild green (no red or amber, please). Comes also with a pouch that easily snags, a cross between nylon sack and satin. Shoulda been neoprene. But, you can use it for other things. Like, covering up the Perixx dedicated Peripad Keypad sold also here in Amazon. Pouch fits it perfectly. That way you protect those nifty keys from dust. Drive doesnt need any protecting like that. For it, you can get kitchen liner, though I like to cushion my external drives within big old ladies leather wallets. Theres room for the peripherals, extra SD cards, even paper clips. Cord too stiff, so you cant easily position the drive to avoid the light searing into your eyes; cord not long enough for the best deployment of the drive, which is to hook it up to a HUB MONITOR, so the power supply is not the computer. So buy the Tripp Lite 3.0 blue superspeed cord (3ft, sold here in Amazon), or I suppose some other one (but dont go for cheap, if you want durability and predictability). I did that, and my blue WD Passport Ultra works just fine. The Ultra emits much more vibration than its earlier cousin the WD Passport. The Ultra is maybe 20% thinner, too. I got a pair of blue Ultras on sale for Cyber Monday. Not sure Id buy them again, as the earlier cousin is heftier (I have four of the older ones, now maybe a year old, all are fine). The lighter the drive, the more problems it will have; but thats a guess. Will edit out this claim if it proves wrong. Bear in mind that most monitor hubs are 2.0, so you wont get the 3.0 throughput. Your computer must also have a 3.0 port, for that high throughput to work. Most computers dont have them; even if you get a separately powered 3.0 hub, it also wont operate at high speed, if the computer itself doesnt have the same 3.0 USB port for the powered hub. All that being said, the throughput is reliable. I have a 3.0 port in one of my laptops, and yes, its faster then. Else, you get 2.0 speeds. Important: the problem with larger external drives, is they need power. So you cant just expect your computer to support all that size when the drive itself is not separately powered. So you must hook up the drive to a separate hub, be it on a monitor or hub you buy, that itself IS powered. If you dont do this, your WD Passport wont always work. So dont blame WD, as some reviewers have. Blame ignorance, and then correct it. One more hint: WD is like a Ferrari or Jaguar; it needs TENDER care. Dont bump it. For extra protection, I line these drives either by putting the white plastic packaging they came in, underneath; or, lay underneath some fruit foam (after all, its Christmas) or camp foam or even kitchen drawer liner (the squidgy waffle kind that sells in varied-color rolls at Walmart for $4, or maybe even here in Amazon, I didnt yet check). That way, even if you bump the table the drive will stay put. (I swear by kitchen liner, for all electronics. That, feathers, and unused makeup brushes.) Finally, the WD SES driver will be needed. Usually in XP or Win7, this need is detected, but sometimes not. Eventually, if not detected, though the drive still works, sometimes it will seem NOT to work. In that case, use the driver. Microsoft knows about it, and will install it for you from its online driver base. As for the WDs own included software, I dont use it, so have nothing to say. Like the other reviewers noted, it comes with an ADVERTISEMENT for Dropbox, not actual cloud storage. (Did you know, you have 5GB of free cloud storage right here in Amazon, anyway.) Id rather use SD chips, pen drives or external drives, than the cloud. So cant comment on the Dropbox deal.

Let me start off by saying the drive itself is great. Backups up quickly and efficiently and there is a wide range of options...BUT there are some lacking features. Many other reviews tell you what it can do, I feel you need to know where its lacking. Lets begin with and issue that will affect novice computer users. This drive comes with a tiny one page pamphlet. The graphic shows you to connect the drive to your computer, then theres a little graphic of a book and a web address. You need to go to the document section of their website. From there, you locate the manual for your drive. Going by their pamphlet, you need to be connected to the internet at the time of your initial install. This is not always an option for everyone. But heres the thing, if youre a Windows user, click on MY COMPUTER, then click on the MY PASSPORT drive, you will find a directory of User Manuals. The instructions should state this. Once youre in the user manual, you discover that you only needed to run the WD APPS SETUP file, which you access in the same way as the manuals. Already youre doing more work than necessary. A simple sentence of connect drive to computer, open drive folder, double click WD APP SETUP file would have saved some aggravation. Once the software is installed on your system, you can access the help menu within the program, which is very user friendly. There are a few software items I dont like. You have many choices on when to schedule your backup, (daily, weekly, monthly, immediately) except on a certain DATE of the month. Say, I want to back one of my systems on the 1st of the month. Not an option. You can choose the first Monday (Tuesday, Wednesday, etc) of the month, but not a specific day. I also would have appreciated a confirmation screen or at the very least, a status bar notification that told me my drive actually performed the backup. Even a little notification that the drive is currently backing up would be nice. And as I discovered, a blinking light on the drive does not necessarily mean its backing up your computer. To ensure the drive is actually backing up or to confirm a backup has completed, you have to open the WB SmartWare software and click on the Backup Tab. If its currently backing up files, you will seeing a copying files message on the top of the screen. To confirm a backup, you need to click on the clock icon located near the bottom of the screen. This will tell you your Next Backup, Missed Backup and Last Backup. BUT, I had a daily backup set for 5PM and the drive wasnt connected at the time...the missed backup never appeared on the list. One might argue that it didnt log the missed backup because the drive wasnt connected. My argument is you should NEVER keep your backup drive continuously connected. If a virus hits your computer, it hits your Passport Ultra too. Ive already been there, done that with another external drive, hence the reason why I always disconnect. The hardware is great and I love the drive, BUT I have had to help a few older, less tech savvy people set this up and explain how to double check their backups. Theyve all asked the same thing...why doesnt it tell you when its done? Bottom line, it an awesome little drive, but the software leaves a bit to be desired. Would I recommend it? Only to people who have a modest amount of tech knowledge and who dont mind extra clicks to double check their backup.

I ordered this because of recommendations from several friends. Their comments were supported by Amazon reviews. However, it took me three units before getting one that worked. The first unit was not consistently recognized by my computer. At first I thought this was caused by incompatibility between my USB 2.0 and the units USB 3.0 but there were no similar problems with the replacement unit. More problematic was the fact that during backup, not all the files requested were copied. Soon the unit stopped working altogether. I called Western Digital several times while trying to work through these issues and their service folks were very responsive and helpful. Wait times were short. When they were convinced the unit was bad, they did not hesitate to tell me to return it for a replacement. Unfortunately, the 30 day period for return to Amazon had expired so I had to return it directly to Western Digital. I was a bit suspicious as the replacement from WD did not have retail packaging and was shipped with little cushioning. The replacement failed to work right out of the box. In talking with WD I got different stories. One rep said their replacement units were new, just without normal retail packaging, Another rep implied that the replacement units were reconditioned. So far, the third unit is working fine. The unit is compact and quite. The utility software is easy to use. The WD service people deserve five stars. Because of initial problems and unproven reliability, the hardware gets one star. I recommend that you proof the product within 30 days so that you can return in through Amazon. This appears to be the only way of getting a new device as a replacement. Also, return it at the first sign of trouble. It will not get any better and you risk loosing the Amazon return option.

Well, I was really excited to have all my file & system image backups on a single drive, without a wall wart and in a portable small form factor (I never move it as it is connected to a desktop system). Unfortunately, after 3 months, it started whining, then grinding and clicking and now it comes on only 5% of the time, regardless of the computer it is hooked up to - I thought it was the antique of a PATA drive I had connected to the motherboard making the noise but it wasnt. WD Drive Utilities says the SMART status passed, CrystalDisk Info says it failed and the Quick Drive test in the WD Utility says it failed. This just reinforces the need for a complementary Cloud backup solution or a second backup drive. This drive was Made in Thailand so who knows if it was made with the equipment that got affected by the flooding in the past. Usually, I only go with WD Black hard disk drives due to their well known, industry reliability and warranty coverage. I would just buy that with an external hd case but Im already invested in this drive now. Hopefully the replacement is new and works like expected. UPDATE: Since I had files on there that I wanted but wasnt willing to pay $500-$1000+ for data recovery services, I tried doing a PCB swap with a donor board and firmware transfer since that seemed like an inexpensive possible fix (pros did the firmware transfer). When that didnt resolve the situation, I had another 2TB WD My Passport Ultra around and I opened up that case to see what is involved with a potential platter swap (that didnt go well either). While doing so, when I opened up the new Passport Ultra, I noticed it specifically said on the drive Recertified!!!! I cant believe it. Seeing this only reaffirms my thoughts on just buying an external hard drive case and OEM HDD together and using that instead because otherwise, you dont know what you are getting. I still will use the WD Blacks as they have never failed me and I am very impressed with their performance and warranty. Also, for backup, I will stick with the 3.5 size as now I know, with everything so miniaturized on the the 2.5, recovery seems a little more challenging (which I will do what I can to even prevent that from being needed again).

I did a careful product analysis before I purchased this product. Looking for additional highly portable storage I had originally looked at installing a hard drive in my laptop optical bay using a spare 500GB 5400RPM HDD I had laying around. Unfortunately another laptop had a hard drive failure and it became necessary to use that spare drive as a replacement for the failed drive. At that point I was no longer sure how to proceed. The last time I shopped for external storage was 5 years ago. I bought a WD My Book at the time. 2 years later the enclosure took a nosedive but the drive was still good, needless to say that drive got transplanted into a new enclosure and is still running fine today, problem being it is pretty large (3.5 form factor), has its own power supply, and not very portable. So going into this process I was looking for something powered only by a USB connection, and preferably smaller than a thick trade paperback. Well, I was in for a bit of a surprise. The new portable drives were about as big as my iphone and all were powered by USB connection. Big plus for me. At that point it became a maximum dollar to storage to quality equation, with a optical bay HDD still being an option. Since I could do that for $65 or so and use an older 250GB HDD I had laying around that became a base line for my budget, however I wanted at least 500GB since I am busy backing up my media library, and wanted it handy for travel. Essentially the more storage the better. Speed was not so much of a factor, raw storage was, and since I run a machine with Ubuntu 12.04 the various manufacturer provided apps and encryption software for Windows or Mac were a complete non factor. So basically the biggest bang for my dollar is what I was looking at. Upon further research I discovered the best storage range was definitely items in the 1TB range. Not only were they the same size as 500GB solutions, they only cost roughly $10 more. 2TB solutions were thicker, and the price jump was much larger. 1TB it was. I narrowed it down to three choices. The Seagate Backup Plus, the HGST Touro Mobile, and the WD My Passport Ultra all priced at roughly $70. So why the Ultra? It fit all my requirements, had a smaller form factor, lighter weight, equal storage, similar price, best benchmarks, and I have had great luck with WD HDDs in the past. It arrived yesterday, took one minute to set up and less than half an hour to get all my data transferred. It is very quiet, and gives off very little heat. Pretty sturdy construction. I will definitely update this if any problems occur, but for now I got exactly what I was looking for, quickly, and at a great price.

I ordered 2 WD Passport Ultra 1TB Portable external USB 3.0 Hard Drives with Auto Backup. The first drive worked properly on a new Dell 15-3521 Laptop running Windows 7 Professional, but when I tried to use the second WD Passport external drive on another Dell-3521 Laptop running Windows 7 Professional it would not install if the USB 3.0 cable was plugged into any USB 3.0 port on the Dell Laptop. After swapping drives and computers and cables around, it became apparent that the USB 3.0 cable that came with the second WD Passport Ultra HD is defective. The drive will install and be recognized on either computer only if it is plugged into a USB 2.0 port which defeats the purpose of having a high speed USB drive if it cant work at USB 3.0 speeds. Either drive will work with either laptop at USB 3.0 speeds on USB 3.0 ports if the non-defective USB 3.0 cable is used! All I really need is a replacement cable that works, but since Amazon.com LLC filled the order, I have not figured out how to request a simple replacement for the defective cable without having to return the entire order. I could use some assistant! Or, I can order another USB 3.0 cable which should solve the problem! I hope I hear from someone at Amazon about this!

My Passport Ultra arrived yesterday on time as promised by Amazon. The moment I opened the packaging, I was surprised to know that the photos dont do justice at all to how small and how really portable this drive actually is. For most of my life in the past 5-6 years, I have only used External Hard Drive which are 3.5” (these are not portable at all) and the reason was back then, they didnt have External Hard Drives for 1-1.5 TB, so I had to suffice with the bulky and Not So Portable Hard Drive to compensate for the additional space. But now that Western Digital and Seagate have started making Portable Drives with 2TB space as well, I couldnt be happier. It will easily fit in the palm of your hand and you can actually put it in your Jeans pocket as well. It’s very sleek, the exterior feels like really good quality (not flimsy or made of plastic) but it feels like heavy metal, which makes me really glad to know that the actual hard drive is safe inside the case. Now coming to the performance of this drive, I had never used USB 3.0 in the past. The External Drives I used were 2.0 and so was my laptop. But now since I have a new laptop which has 3 3.0 USB ports, I can really appreciate the speed of USB 3.0. I am aware that even USB 2.0 promises of speeds up to 450 MB/s. However because of System Hard Disk restrictions, it hardly crossed 30MB/s on my old system. After I used it with my new system, the performance was still as pathetic as with the old laptop (between 25-30 MB/s). But when I started transferring the data from my laptop to this Drive, whoaaa…. I got a speed of 123MB/s and I transferred almost 700GB worth of data within 100 minutes from my laptop to the My Passport, whereas with USB2.0, it would have taken me 10 hours or so. However, the only thing I found as a small con is the length of the USB cable that comes with it is really small (somewhere around 1.5 feet) but that’s easily solvable. Amazon has a really good quality Amazon Basics USB Cable - 3.0 A Male to Micro B with length of up to 3 meters (that’s actually perfect for me since it won’t clutter my desk). Apart from this, I cannot find a single flaw in the amazingly small, handy and awesome Portable Hard Drive. If you want something less expensive and abundant storage, definitely go for it!!!

I bought this for my desktop PC and it works great so far and thats an important point. The real value of this product is whether it keeps my backups safe and I really wont know the answer to that for a few years. Setup was easy; its default setting is to copy everything under the USERS folder on your C drive thereby copying documents, music, video, downloads, favorites, etc. You can manually adjust the settings if you have some custom folders you want to include. I didnt bother upgrading to the Smartware Pro, the one that comes with the unit works fine. UPDATE 6/25/2015: Works fine, but something I didnt realize originally is that it backs up the data but it is not a mirror image. What I mean is that the Backup Drive does not delete anything it has previously backed up whether youve removed from your C drive or not. For some, that might be a feature you want if youre looking for something you deleted 6 months ago and want to recover it. On the other hand, this backup drive will continue to grow keeping copies of every obsolete document you create. If you ever use it for recovery, youll restore all that junk also. Ive been occasionally scanning my backup drive and manually deleting stuff I know I dont want anymore.

Works as advertised, easy to set up. My only concern was that it initially took over an hour to do the original backup, and the software doesnt have a progress indicator to show how its progressing. I was VERY tempted to call customer support, but I left it running for over an hour and when I came back to the computer it was done. Of course, subsequent backups only use recently modified files, so they are almost instantaneous. I have the software set to automatically back up my files daily, which is more than enough for what I am working on. The only other comment Ill make is that the software could be more user-friendly. Most buttons have self-explanatory words on them, but the most useful button has only a clockface icon on it, again making it confusing to use and leading a novice (like me) to be a bit frustrated. Once I understood how it worked I was quite happy with it. Noiseless, never fails and plugs into a USB port in the back of your computer. Also, files may be OPTIONALLY encrypted. Lastly, the software allows you to restore files to your existing computer OR to another one if your original one is down (this is important).

I recently started going through all old home videos and pictures, and aggregating them onto my home (RAID mirrored) server. I bought this little (physical size) hard drive for one reason: to backup that data on the server. While the data is mirrored on the servers hard drives, those two hard drives are in close proximity and are susceptible to failure from external sources (electrical/thunder, water, fire, etc). The reason why I paid more and went with a small hard drive (2.5) as opposed to a full-sized hard drive (3.5) was for the ability to store the hard drive into a safety deposit box. Now if you do some research, hard drives arent great for long term storage that is disconnected. If you attempt this method I add the caveat that you should connect the hard drive to a machine once in a while. I personally plan on updating the files every 4-6 months. But C.Rogers, why would you do this when there is cloud storage!?. Simple, privacy and speed. Cloud storage is over the internet and subsequently is limited by the fastest upload speed your internet provider gives you. It is further limited by any bottle-necks the data hits along the way to its destination. When youre talking about backing up terabytes of data, this is already a turn off as it would take a huge amount of time (a week or more?) to upload initially. Granted after that it can do incremental back ups that wont take nearly as long, that leads me to my next problem, privacy. There are two aspects I worry about, non-encrypted transmission and legality/security of the service (who really owns the data on their servers, and how secure is it really?). Does the service provide the ability to encrypt the uploads and downloads so no one in between can look at my data? Does the data stay encrypted on their servers? When push comes to shove, who owns the data once its on their servers? Finally how secure is the service from being hacked? While all these questions have answers that would probably sway me toward cloud storage, the fact that they exist at all means there are far more variables than Im comfortable with. More variables mean higher percentage of problems arising from unforeseen scenarios. You know whose going to hack this hard drive when its not in my possession? A bank robber. Done. You said its fast? How fast?. To that I cant comment fully as I dont have a machine with USB 3.0. Best I can offer is USB 2.0. To that end I can mention that Im getting an average of 20 megabytes (not megabits*) per second writing and about 27 megabytes per second reading. Compatibility: Confirmed working on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2007 without issue. Construction: Feels solid, nice little rubber pads on the bottom. Still a hard drive though, I wouldnt go dropping it. Noise: Church Mouse status Bloatware: Minimal. It comes with Western Digitals management and back up software installed (totaling 254 MB on the hard drive). I imagine I could delete it, but I see no need. In fact I might need some of it in the future. Additionally, its not in your face as soon as you plug it in. There if you want it, but silent if you dont. Other notes: The wire it comes with is about 12 inches long. If this is your first USB 3.0 device, be aware that it is a different wire than USB 2.0 1.1 and 1.0. While I believe USB 2.0 and previous micro wires will work, you will not get USB 3.0 speeds. Thus if you need a longer cable and want USB 3.0 speeds, you will need to order one separately. tl;dr: +Great hard drive for a reasonable price. +Small enough to store in a safety deposit box. +Speeds of 27 MB/s read and 20 MB/s write on USB 2.0. +No real bloatware, just additional utilities included on the hard drive totaling 254 MBs.* +Pretty quiet. -USB 3.0 cable provided is only 12 long. *did not use the auto or cloud backup options, can not comment.