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

I own a few external hard drives that require electrical outlets for power. Cuts down on the mobility. My biggest concern in purchasing this particular drive was that there seemed to be a lot of ambiguity regarding whether or not it would work with Macs. In fact, I even asked the question...Will this work with my Macbook? and someone posted a simple No. That was helpful. Didnt give any personal anecdotes to back up that answer...just simply, no. After reading many more reviews and doing more research of my own, I decided that customer may have accidentally answered my question when they were actually thinking they were answering another customers question regarding whether or not Matrix Revolutions was a good movie. So I took a risk and purchased this little gem and strangely enough...it worked on my Macbook Pro right out of the box. I did format the drive so that I can export large files and use with Macs and PCs (if anyone would want to do that sort of thing.) And if you want to learn more about that, you can check this out:[...] But besides that...it was ready to use right away without any issues at all. I love it. Simple, easy to take anywhere...lightning fast...able to export ginormous files at once. The price is great. Oh...and did I mention that it WORKS GREAT with Macs?

I own a WD Passport SE 1TB and found myself after a few years needing and wanting a drive with more storage and I have never had a problem with WD drives be they for internal or external use so I bought this one. Set up is fast and though I do not use the drive password software I am sure it sets up easily as was my experience on a past WD drive. I highly recommend the AmazonBasics Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Essential for this drive. This is the case I was using for my Passport SE and it fits perfectly with plenty of room for cable and a few small items like a flash drive. I have found on USB 3 transfer speeds vary greatly depending how many, how big, or a combo of both the files are. Slowest I have seen is 45Mb and fastest (sustained) around 75Mb. These were write speeds. Average from drive to computer for me has been around 45 to 50Mb sustained. A great drive for archiving as well as always connected use. The drive will power into a standby mode after a time of not being accessed. The light will flash slowly when idled. The drive itself stops spinning until accessed then powers up automatically. Never having had any problem with any WD I ever bought I only by WD drives since the prices are usually the same or better than others but much fewer complaints with WD.

Well Ive had this external drive for about six months and so far I love it! Ive backed up all of our music, pictures and documents from our computer and my cell phone & mp3 player, as well as my husbands music & videos from his iPod. Together we probably have over 10K songs. Having added all of that, we have only used about 8 GB of the 1 TB available! Lol Ive not had any issues with losing information. It was easy to set up. There were no issues with it being compatible with my computer, which is an older Dell Dimension 2300 running Windows XP. I like that you can set it to constantly back up your documents so that I dont have to remember to do it! Have not use any of the software that came on the passport. The only qualms I have with it is with the program, which is a bit sluggish when you try to open it and also the GUI of the program is not easy to understand. Also the USB cord is extremely short. Otherwise Im pleased with this device.

Great little drive. Outer construction is small and sleek. While the stylish top covering has a solid material feel to it, the base of the unit feels noticeably cheaper and more plastic-like. I would definitely not be comfortable with slipping this drive in my pocket. I decided on this unit just for the peace of mind of being able to password protect the drive. The utility is hassle free, allows you to set the drive to unlock automatically for trusted computers, and although there are ways to bypass this security feature, you can rest assured that it will keep your data safe from the average lookie-loo. Transferring assorted media files transfer rates are around 1GB/min on USB 3.0, roughly 2.5x faster than similar file transfers using USB 2.0. Drive stays cool during long read/write sessions and is fairly silent while it goes along doing its thing. I especially like the minimalistic lone LED that flashes rapidly while the drive is active and is solid when idle. Mine came with a nice soft pouch to protect the drive when not in use, but dont kid yourself, its not for transport. I cant speak to the cloud/back-up utilities that this drive is capable of because these are not features I ever planned on using. Overall I am very satisfied with my purchase. This little drive opened up some much needed elbow room on both my desktop and laptop, and I still have over a TB of data to spare. My only complaint is that the included USB cord so short it verges on useless.

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!

I bought four of these for my kids and I so that I could save all their pictures in their respective hard drives. I use different venues for saving my photos from our family trips and I try to save it in two or more locations so that I won’t lose any of it. When I received the package, I was excited to use it because I’ll have a peace of mind that I may be able to save our family excursion pictures in a much safer place (unlike saving it in the desktop which might get deleted overtime). The product worked out fine at first but then it stopped working all throughout. I was using our Windows computer but the hard drive won’t open. I was so scared that I might lose the files inside! Good thing my husband tried something which let me back up the pictures. I thought it’s our Windows desktop to blame for that but when my Mac came, I tried using the hard drive to retrieve my files but to my surprise it still didn’t work. I called their customer service for help and they told me that I have to reformat the hard drive so that it will be compatible. I felt horrible because it took me a long time to organize all the pictures and the folders inside that hard drive and knowing that all my hard work will be put to waste. I paid not just for one device but for four devices made of crap. This hard drive doesn’t come cheap and it makes me angry that I can’t use it properly. There are malfunctions in the hard drive that I find annoying, when I plug it in, my files don’t open, both for our Mac and for our Windows. I have to repeat it several times up to the extent that I’ll just give up. It gave me more problems than good. I tried calling their hotline several times reporting the difficulty that it’s causing me but all they can say is to offer me for an exchange of product. I tried asking them if they could just refund my money but they told me that it can’t be done because it’s already past the warranty. The only thing that I can do is to warn the future customers that this product is no good and that you should just buy something else. The four devices that I bought are useless and are now just collecting dust in our home. If you want to throw your $56.99 away, be my guess, buy this product.

A lot has already been said about this drive (over 4000 reviews) so I dont want to repeat everything from the beginning. This is a drive that performs well and is good for backing up your hard drive. I use it with a combination of a long USB 3.0 transfer cable and therefore I can keep the drive in a constant place (hard drives dont like to be moved around much.) and just connect the cable whenever I want it to backup. It is $10 more expensive than the comparable size Toshiba hard drive (I have that one too) and I think in terms of speed or other performance parameters there is not a significant difference. The reason why I paid that extra $10 to buy this one is the automatic backup software that is built in. If you have a windows operated computer and you want to use the drive for the purpose of backing up your actual computer, then go for it and pay the premium. That does the job and saves your valuable data and memories decently. It backs up as frequently as you wish and does not compromise the computer performance. (On a desktop computer I would leave it connected all the time, on a laptop I would connect from time to time because it is not easy to move around with a hard drive sleeking from one side.) Mac users do not need to buy this for the purpose of backing up. Time machine does a fantastic job and you dont need WD smart. Any hard drive would work for the purpose. Besides that, if your main goal is not having it as a backup drive then again I would for sure go for the cheaper toshiba drive and save $10. One criticism about the drive is that it gives a misleading information about the cloud backup service and the capabilities of WD smart (not very pro) software. To be able to use the software with full performance which allows you to backup to non WD drives etc, you need to buy another license. The so called pro software included is only good for this drive, which is okay but still needs to be mentioned at least as a fine print somewhere in the product description. Yet again for the dropbox stuff, you both need a high capacity paid dropbox subscription but also a paid version of the software. So the cool stuff they advertise in the product description is not actually that cool. In conclusion, if you like me only use it for physical backup and do not ask for fancy stuff, you dont miss much and I can recommend this device for that purpose.

I,m a semi elderly computer user of average tech savvy, so if I can setup and use an external hard drive anybody should be able to. The WD Passport ultra with one TB memory is probably much more memory than Ill ever need, but for the difference in price I went with the 1TB. Setup instructions I found by Goggling variations of “ installing passport external hard drive” was much more useful to me than the included user guide. I studied both before starting. Once I started I had it ready to go in just a few minutes. When I first got this new Windows 8 computer a few months ago, during setup and initialization it guided me thru creating an “operating system recovery partition” and copying it to a USB drive. With a little exploring I found I could also copy a O.S. Backup to the passport. I think I read in the user guide where passport would not do that but by all indications it did. Guess Ill know if I”m ever unfortunate enough to try and use it. Cant ever have too many backup plans. I got all my documents and photos copied to the pass port, then to verify success I took it to a friends computer and viewed what was on it. Every thing was there. I didnt set up the automatic back up software because my plan is to keep the passport disconnected and stored in a safe place and bring it out and update whenever I feel the need. My reasoning for this is if I ever get a virus or malware and the backup hard drive is connected it will be compromised also. I had been watching several venders for a device like this for a of couple months and was about ready to use USB drives for data backup which for no more data than I have would have been sufficient, but when I found this passport at Amazon for around $70 with free shipping I went this route. I also needed an Ethernet cable hub to hook up a VOIP phone but Amazon had a wireless router with four LAN connections on sale so I went with it. Now if I ever need a wireless connection Ill be ready. If you are reading this then you must be thinking about data backup. So remember, when dealing with technology sooner or later Murphy s law is going to bite you. So however you decide to do it – BACKUP-BACKUP-BACKUP.

Ive written many reviews for Amazon, and count myself a B or B+ when it comes to matters technical. Ive never had any problem with Western Digital external hard drives--I own five--or with the SmartWare backup system. However, I plugged this item in yesterday. As has always been my experience, auto-backup went smoothly and was complete. Just now however, for the first time in--what? eight years?--I had a blue-screen event. I didnt even know these were possible in the modern age of PCs. It took one anxious forever for Windows 7 Enterprise to recognize the issue, and when it did, I got the message to remove any external devices and start your computer again or words to that close effect. I removed this WD drive and restarted. Restart happened without issue, and Im using that computer right now. Im very disappointed here, because Ill need to wipe this WD drive (hoping no blue-screen happens while Im doing so) and return it, and now Ill have to think seriously about ever buying another WD product. Ill probably contact WD customer support to see if they have a resolution to this problem, and if they do Ill change this rating and update this review. For now though, I think its appropriate to post a warning about this product. And if you do have that blue-screen moment, do not panic. Just remove the drive and start over. Your computer is not dead! Update July 16 2014: WD support was excellent and detailed. I received a prompt reply. Tech support proposed that I had a faulty cable and sent me a new one free of charge. I did as directed and reinstalled SmartWare. As before, backup was fast and complete. Everything now seems to be going smoothly, after a week of use. In brief, THIS EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE SEEMS OK. I wish I could write more convincingly, but only time will tell. As noted above, Ive never had issues with my other five WD drives, and in fact use them with my PCs and on the MacBook Air my university provided me. This is the only one that seemed to create issues. WD tech support told me it was highly unlikely an external hard drive could create blue screen issues, but in the bad old days that was not my experience. For example, it use to take Vista 25 minutes to boot, until I realized it was searching my 1TB WD external hard drive for the OS before it searched the internal hard drive. Bad things do happen with good external hard drives. And really, can it be coincidence that my first blue screen in half a decade happened upon restart after installing this drive? Of course the answer is yes, and though we see other complaints here in the one-star department, they all revolve not around blue screen, but around drive failure. Hey, there is a spinny disk in these things still, and spinny disks are prone to failure. Ill update again if I have further issues with this hard drive. But contrary to some reports here, WESTERN DIGITAL TECH SUPPORT IS EXCELLENT. I have always found it to be so.

First things first... I had a 2 TB WD external hard drive like 5 years ago. A bulky hard ware that sometimes hard to fit in bag because of its size and had to plug the AC adapter just to make it run. At first, I thought that this is normal because it is, after all, a 2 TB hard drive so it was a common sense to me. Although it did its job done as expected from the WD, I still wished for smaller compact but has the drive space comparable to a bulky one. Then 5 years later, this product came to Amazon. I was surprised because not only it had the same drive space as my old one, but it was small, compact, and the price was 3 times cheaper than my old one. My old one was $400 plus tax whereas this one is more or less $120. Damn it, I should have waited later, but I guess I was in need of one at that time... I bought two of this and I would say that this product is the best. As technology progresses so as the file size and this product is a great breakthrough to all who needed a big hard drive space and can be carried anywhere wherever you go. Furthermore, this product doesnt need an AC adapter. Just connect the USB drive and you will be ready. Plus, it comes with a handy pocket bag which you can use to carry it along with you. Finally, the WD brand which I assure you that will not disappoint you whenever you needed space to store your important files. To everyone who is reading this review, I strongly recommend this product.