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

When I worked for a former employer in Austin TX in the 1990s we had an expression - Backing up a computer is NOT an option! That axiom is as true today as it was in 1991. Additionally, a technical support representative from Buffalo Technologies made the recommendation to me five years ago that the more valuable or important that the data is, the more back ups that you should have. This relates to data redundancy. I am a tax preparer and have about eight separate back up devices in my office. WD continues to produce reliable storage devices. I purchased the 1 TB version of this product which coincides with the HDD capacity of my desktop computer. The WD software that comes with this product is very user-friendly and intuitive. Initial configuration is relatively simple. It connects to an available USB port on your PC and virtually no intervention is required by you after the initial set up. My configuration includes regular queries for software updates and when available, they have all been seamlessly installed. In a nutshell, this is an excellent and very wise investment for anyone.

As a disclaimer, I am only reviewing this hard drive after having it and using it for less than a week. This is more of a first impressions/ease of use review right now. I will make sure to update in the future with its long term reliability. This unit comes with a USB cord, instructions, and a small black pouch to keep the drive in for storage. The pouch is really thin and cheap feeling and wont protect against anything other than dust. So I basically ignored that and havent used it as all. To backup your files could not be any easier. You just plug in a USB port (it works in either 3.0 or 2.0 ports), a little blue light starts flashing indicating the drive is powered on. The faintest spinning noise is present in the drive, but it is so low you have to put your right next to it to hear it. Then you just begin the normal backup operation for your computer and everything is done automatically. It was literally one of the easiest things Ive done on a computer. After completion, just unplug and store in a safe place. The unit seems to be well built, with an all metal construction and seemingly quality construction, so my hopes for reliability are high. It comes with a 3 year warranty, so if something does go wrong, at least you can get your money back. I will provide an update at the 6 month and 1 year marks and let you how the unit is doing. But until then, there is nothing to lead me to believe that this isnt a great external drive.

- R/W @ 100 MB/s [if @ USB 2 port, its port-limited to 35 MB/s] - WD reliability - Silent - This works: repartition/format as two volumes; 1 small boot-able system recovery/utilities; 1 big encrypted storage. Now for the complaints: - Unlike their legacy WD Elements SE 1T USB 2 drive, this one REQUIRES their WD SES driver install, lest you get an annoying driver-install-fail message from Windows each time you connect the drive. The drive will function [R/W] regardless, but their SCSI Enclosure Services [SES] driver is needed by their WD Disk Utilities app, which also requires installation, to set the drives sleep timer and run diagnostics. So much for portable. - Good luck their proprietary software requiring install/setup per machine, but the first thing I do w/ portable drives is clean and repartition disk into 2 volumes; boot-able system recovery and backup. Do people really put up w/ all these different backup/encryption methods for each drive/manufacturer? W[hy]TF does no disk maker go open source w/ their backup/encryption software? It may be counter intuitive, but this would instantly vault make them to industry leadership role AND bring an explosion of goodness from the OS community, at no cost to the manufacturer. Theyd steer the development and be the most compatible, so all other manufacturers would be forced by the market to yield. And current market leaders shouldnt rest on their laurels. As things are, none have yet to even match the ease and PORTABILITY of, say, that crappy little native windows app, ROBOCOPY, for backup, or open source for disk encryption; learn it once; use it for ANY and ALL storage; THAT is portability. [hint: we want to protect/backup/clone/port our DATA, not the physical disk].

I really like this. I was expecting it to be a little larger, but the small size makes it very easy to carry around. Its about the size of a smart phone. I had a question about the software and emailed customer service, who responded within a few hours, so that was a good experience. I do need to buy some sort of a carrying case for it though, as the little fabric bag they give you with the device wont protect it at all other than from getting dust on it. The speed of the drive is adequate. I schedule mine to backup my files every other day. I make sure the drive is plugged into my laptop during the scheduled time and it takes care of itself. The only problem I have with the software, is that when you allow it to choose which files its going to back up automatically, it doesnt tell you WHICH files they are, it just gives you a general description. I chose this first, since it backed up some system files and then I had to search for them on the new drive to find out what they were. After that, I scheduled a manually selected backup from then on, as I keep all of my photos, music, documents, etc. on a separate partition of my laptop hard drive and thats what I want to make sure I back up. I can back up the system once a week manually. So far, no problems. UPDATE: I had decided to use discs to back up my PC, as I wanted to be able to specifically choose which files on my hard drive to back up (such as photos and important documents) and formatted this external drive to use with my Xbox One. I backed up games from my Xbox One and put the drive inside of the cabinet that my tv sits on and its been sitting there since 2015. I got it out today and tried to access it 3 different Xboxs, but none will see it. I checked it in the Disk Management program of Windows and it says the disk is DEAD. It clicks over and over (the click of death) when I connect it to my Xbox. WHY cant we buy reliable products from large, multi-million dollar corporations any longer?? Its been sitting in one place for the past 3 years, nothing should be wrong with it. What really ticks me off is that I just purchased another WD external hard drive. Thankfully, it has a 3 year warranty and I purchased an additional 2 year data recovery plan with it before I knew this drive was dead as a door nail. Ill never buy another one.

Im a big digital media junkie. I damn near have every show, movie, music, or piece of data on an extra hard drive. For the longest, I relied on 2 AC powered hard drives that I had gotten from NewEgg about 3 years ago. One was a 1TB the other a 500GB. These are nice options if you dont need to carry them around, which I did some times. It was a pain in the butt. Not to mention the added weight from a desktop sized hard drive, the case, cables, and the need to have a power outlet nearby. I began looking into USB 3.0 powered drives a few months back. I wanted it to be atleast 1TB, slim form, and of course, powered over USB. By chance, I found this hard drive while randomly searching around on Amazon. I purchased it instantly. Once it arrived, I hooked it up, wiped it clean and began transferring everything over to this bad boy. The transfer speeds were slow, I think that is my fault due to my USB 2.0 ports, but I didnt mind and I did this while I was asleep. This thing is awesome. I rarely remember that Im even carrying it, its really that light. The indicator light on this is located on the back(where you plug the cable in it) and isnt bothersome or insanely bright. During idle, it does a slow pulsating with more off then on. During load it blinks and flashes quickly. I havent heard any random clicks or sounds from the drive, which is really nice. The rubberized feet serve their purpose, but I can see them not having a sturdy grip. But, as long as youre stationary, I dont see that being a problem. The case itself has a nice texture that has some grip to it, feels sturdy and well put together. I got the black color, it matches my setups more than the other colors would have. The texturing gives it some depth and makes it pop, but not to much. All-in-all, Im very happy with this drive and will definitely look into another one in the future or a much larger one.

i bought this around the end of 2014 and ive used it all these years to store photos, videos, and all kinds of files. it was a great investment.

I purchased the 2TB version of this External Drive to use as part of backup regiment for my android devices, laptops, desktops, and a small NAS. It is a nice sleek device with great read/write speeds of up to 50-54 MB/s read and 32.4 MB/s write (assumption being that you as well have the infrastructure required to produce said speeds.) What caught my attention and was ultimately most important decisional factor was the 3 year limited warranty. As great of product as it may be I did find two cons that could potentially have negative overview of the product. 1. You need to install WDs quickview and subsequently WD smartware as theyre tied together in the installation to safely eject the portable drive. 2. If a password is set on the drive you need administrative credentials on the local PC to unlock the drive when plugging it back in. These two issues can be a big issue when traveling as you might not necessarily have access to computer where youre the administrator thus not having the ability to install their software or as I would say bloatware. For my intents and purposes it works out great but if you plan on using it for travel I would read into these issues first.

Loaded mine up with a bunch of movies and use it to tote around and plug in to watch on the go.

I received my WD portable hard drive about two months ago now and up to now I can say, So far, so good. I would certainly recommend this to anyone asking around for portable hard drives as there isnt a reason not to. I havent had any issues with the product that inhibit use, other than when occasionally windows falsely gathers the idea that the drive volume contains errors. Transfer speeds are up to par with what I would expect from my system, although its bound to vary on a hardware to hardware basis. It was worth it to me to pay the extra $20 or so (at the time of my purchase) for the auto-backup and 256-bit encryption features that work surprisingly well. I would still take reasonable precautions to handle the product carefully, so dont expect the device to take abuse even thought the build quality is reasonable, not premium. No portable hard drive is going to take damage well due to the delicate fast moving parts inside. TAKE NOTE, that if you intend to use this on networked school campus or workstation computers that block users from running applications from removable media, you will not be able to run WD decryption software. This means your hard drive may be locked until you can run the decryption software on a less restricted or personal computer or decrypt the drive beforehand.

All I wanted was a rugged, high-capacity outboard hard drive to store certain files on--and I wanted one that was powered from the USB cable. This little Passport Ultra 2TB drive does the job perfectly, in a snappy, rugged, businesslike package that seems to be of very high-quality construction. You get 2TB of storage in a drive that is about the size of a deck of cards. Cant beat that. The drive was ridiculously easy to install; I just plugged mine in and my HP EliteBook notebook computer recognized it within about 20 seconds. A very minor but nice point--this drive has little rubber footpads so it does not just lie flat on ones desk. A nice little touch; some drives in this class do not have the pads. The drive comes with a short but adequate USB 3.0 cable and is all ready to go out of the box. Being USB 3.0, this drive appears to be VERY fast. It is certainly noticeably faster than my older USB 2.0 drive, but I have not run any rigorous benchmark tests. Overall I am very pleased with this purchase. The price/Terabyte was pretty good for what I paid on Amazon -- the prices fluctuate all the time on these drives, but I got a good deal. I got the Titanium colored version and I really like it. RJB.