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

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 loaded about 1TB of family pictures and church services, as well as a backup for my desktop computer. Two days later the product would not let me have access to any of the files. An email to the company gave me instructions to unlock the drive which did not work. Another email told me I could return it for another and they would send me an RMA. I said I had to retrieve the files first and they suggested I contact a 3rd party to retrieve as they could not help. After 12 days of trying, I was able to see the files, but retrieval was happening at only 2 to 4.7kb per minute when I could get anything. After a month, I figured it would take over 300 years to extract all the files. At this point I realized my files were gone and I decided to try to reformat the drive and wipe it clean, and send it back for a replacement. I was able to wipe it but Windows could not format it. The company emailed an RMA with a mailing address and said further instructions could be found online. I was not able to open these, but I had saved the packing material from their shipment to me and I sent it back packaged as they had sent this unit (and a second which works but is excedingly slow). Two weeks later it was returned, untouched with a note saying the warranty was being voided as It was not packaged according to the instructions (that I never got) ie; it wasnt in a static bag and in a box. Both units were shipped to me bubble-pack envelopes with no static bags. I feel the company has a lousy product and a warranty that is fraudulent.

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.

Good product and it’s worth the price!!!!!

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 purchased this hard drive for myself for back up and file storage. The setup is very simple. You plug it in and start using it. It includes the software you need for a Windows machine to encrypt the data. This is an important feature for a portable drive. You can lock down the files if you need to. I am currently using the drive to run Virtual Machines via USB 2.0 and there is no noticeable latency. There is not too much more you can ask of a USB drive. If it will transfer information for a Virtual machine, it should transfer any file you need in a timely manner. I really like the looks of the drive. It is small enough to fit into my back pocket or into any pocket in my backpack. The red will stand out and is shiny crimson color. If you are a computer novice or an expert this drive you can not go wrong with this one. Western Digital has almost made the best hard drives on the market and come with the best support in the industry.

My recently purchased Western Digital Passport Ultra 1 TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Automatic Back Up is really very amazing. You know how products that are advertised will say theyre this or that, then when you get them home, turns out the product is not only not living up to its advertised standards, but the company doesnt support you when the product does not perform. And the product will put you threw so many configuration changes youll wish you could throw that product as far from you as you can. Well this Western Digital Passport Ultra 1TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Automatic Backup is really the Mercedes Benz of USB Back- Ups for my Lap-Top (and I love Mercedez Benz cars). The minute I plugged this product into my Lap-Top, it instantly backed my files up, no question, no configuration laborious instructions. It did it so fast, till I had to make sure that what was going on by simply checking just went on and configured on my digital USB backup. As some of you know, Ubuntu (Ubuntu problem child) will be making changes to their OS service on July 31, 2014, I was concerned about backing my files in preparation for Ubuntus changes (talk about Ubuntu changes- a real headache) – well! I can forget worrying now in my file back ups on my Lap-Top. I highly recommend Western Digital Passport Ultra 1 TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Automatic Back Up – no fuss, no muss, no hassles, just plug it in, and it does the configurations file backups spontaneously. Really great product by Western Digital.

The first one that Amazon sent me was black, not titanium as I had ordered. I wanted a slightly different color than the black one I already have so I could differentiate the two. The box it came in said it was a WD My Passport Ultra but printed on the drive was only WD My Passport and it was also printed in the other direction, readable from portrait (or vertical) orientation rather than landscape (or horizontal) orientation. I thought that was little odd, but decided that it would help me to differentiate the two after all. So, I hooked it up to my windows 7 install and windows attmpted to load drivers for it but after a minute or so it failed. No problem, I thought, Ill just plug it in to my Mac and format/partitition it there as I had done with my other My Passport Ultra drive. Nope. That didnt work either. Mac OS X Yosemite couldnt do it either and I couldnt even erase it to start fresh. It simply didnt work. I googled the error, thinking I could fix it with some command line process and found instructions on running FSCK to resolve it. I decided not to bother with that additional pain, because what if it still didnt work? Having ordered it from Amazon, I figured the best thing to do was to return it and ask for a new one. So I returned the first one, explained that it was dead out of the box. And Amazon promptly sent me a replacement. (Another reason I LOVE shopping from Amazon - aside from Prime - is that it is always fairly painless to return things). The replacement arrived 2 days after I submitted my return claim and one day after I actually put the dead drive in the mail to send it back. The replacement was exactly what I had ordered - it came in the correct color - Titanium - and it has the printing on the drive just as shown in the picture (horizontal orientation). I plugged it in to my Mac and had absolutely no problem partitioning and formatting the drive to my specifications. it works perfectly so far and will be used as the backup for my other My Passport Ultra. I am only taking off one star because of the first dead drive that I got, but really if the rating is for the drive that I have now, its definitely a 5star.

This is a nicely built and well designed external hard drive. However, the users manual is too complex and the software WD Software is difficult to follow - so be careful to review it carefully. It keeps track of your initial backup and updated file if you use the WD Smartware software in the correct way. I found that I was not scrolling down far enough on the WD Smartware Software screen and so I wasnt using the Backup options correctly. I found that my best bet was to backup only daily at a specific time and to then click on the clock icon at the bottom of the backup tab and choose backup now. You dont have to do this, but I found it best for me to avoid confusion and also because I do casual backups from time-to-time and dont need continuous backups. It can be used on more that one PC/Laptop and keeps the files separately identified - thats another reason for me not doing a continuous backup option. It also only backups files that have been changed after your initial backup. Also to avoid confusion and problems - when plugged into a PC, it will often popup a message asking if you want to backup using MS Windows backup - DONT DO THIS or it will just give you a fragmented backup that is hard to track. Use the WD Smartware only to do your backups and it will track your files and revision just fine.

**Please format this drive prior to use. Otherwise, it will store all your files as read only** This makes a good backup drive especially if you know how to dabble in Windows DOS (xcopy) or Linux/Unix xterm (cp) commands. The backup software that comes with this device is, quite frankly, unamazing. I certainly wouldnt trust it with my precious data either for a proper backup or restore. I personally use this device to backup all my documents, photos, and music. I wrote a specialized xcopy script which I run in my Windows 8.1 task manager. Most people wouldnt know how to do this (especially because not everyone knows how to dabble in DOS). You can still backup your files manually using Windows Explorer to MacLinuxUnix File Manager. The read/write performance on this drive using my MacBook Pros 3.0 outlet was uninspiring. Copying a 50mb music WAV file took around 2 seconds each. So that makes it around 25mb/s in write performance. The read performance, in my opinion, was even slower. I am hesitant to make that a firm conclusion since reads are usually faster than writes for hard disks. My guess is that the disk is probably running at 5400rpm. Overall, the overall disk performance was satisfactory but certainly not excellent. Since USB 2.0 can still transfer far faster than 25 megabyte/s, I would think this disk would have been just as fast if it was using USB 2.0. So for those with only USB 2.0 connections, I would say this disk would work just as well as those using USB 3.0 ports. Another quirk of this drive is that every file I store using Windows shows as read only on my Mac. I tried to override this using NTFS privileges (give everyone full control) but something overrides it. So I couldnt use this as a shared disk between my Windows and Mac since my Mac can only read the files and not make changes to them. Pros: 1)Compact and can store lot of data (mine is 1TB version). 2)Reasonably good backup device with sufficient performance for almost every consumer. 3)Works well with DOS, Windows Explorer, MacLinux Xterm. 4)Having only USB 2.0 connectors will not hinder the performance of this disk since its read/write speed is way below the maximum USB 2.0 threshold. Cons: 1)Backup software is unremarkable and I am not sure if I can depend on it for reliable backup and recovery. 2)Performance is merely satisfactory. I get only about 25megabyte/s for writes and even less for reads (I am not sure why). Still, this is more than enough for most consumers. Just dont expect cutting edge hard disk performance. 2)Mac OS reads everything copied from Windows as read only. I cant override this with NTFS permissions. So OS interoperability is quite poor.