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

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 recently purchased a new Dell laptop with the plan to add an internal hard disk for data and backup for the SSD disk that came in it. To my dismay, the battery in the laptop was the larger 91 Wh version instead of the 61 Wh version, and it took up all of the internal laptop space. I had no choice bu to use and external disk. I had an older model of the WD My Passport that was 1 TB and had a USB 2.0 port. I tried it on my new laptop and quickly remembered why I quit using it soon after I bought it. It was slow and the little USB 2.0 port on the disk end would just fall out of the port. When I received this new Ultra 2TB, I really put it through the ringer. Not only is the USB 3.0 connection solid (you have to pull on the cable to get it to come out), this disk is really fast. It only runs at about 35 MB/s when connected to a USB 2.0 port, but it runs at 110 MB/s when connected to a USB 3.0 port. I would not have gotten much more speed than that with a 5400 RPM internal disk, and I would have been limited to 1 TB because pf the laptop space and heat removal requirements. Another good feature is the small size. This new Ultra 2 TB is only slightly larger than my older 1 TB unit. I also like the red color that I selected. I will never lose this one among my laptop gear. It really stands out.

There is a lot of memory in this small, little device. And, there is no need to plug it into an external power adapter source, since it runs on bus power from the USB cable, with power being supplied from the device that it is plugged into. I mostly use this hard drive to plug into my Roku (my model has a USB port on it) and I have stored many of my favorite MP4 format movies on it, which I watch on the Roku. If I fall asleep during one of my favorite movies and then sleep through the night, this drive (and the Roku) uses so little power that it doesnt matter (I think it goes to sleep after a certain period of inactivity.) I have also used this drive on a PC with similar, excellent results. (I load movies on it from a PC.) I have had no problems with this drive or with any of the other (many) Western Digital USB hard drives that I own, so I would highly recommend them for their durability and dependability as well. VERY USEFUL TIP: If you use a drive like this on a Roku (or other streaming device that has a USB port on it), and your streamer only has one port on it, but you want to connect it to or more hard drives, thumb drives, USB keyboards, etc., then just plug a USB hub into the USB port of your Roku (or other streamer), and then you can plug more devices into it. This trick also works with Smart TVs that only have one USB port.

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.

Though slightly thicker in physical size than the Seagate competitor, this hard drive has nearly the same width & length & does fit nicely in a hardshell case. It also features a light that blinks when data is being transferred to or from the drive: the Seagate competitor model is thinner & the light on that model remains lit when the drive is powered. I was able to hook up the drive to Windows 7 right out of the box. The hard drive arrived exactly as described & worked perfectly right out of the box. There is some security software that Ill probably never use which comes preloaded, but not activated, with the hard drive, for which a warning in the user manual stipulates that a lost passwords cannot be recovered with the security software and renders the data on the drive unaccessible. So, I don t think the security software will get used & to me it presents a little overhead thats noisome. But the hard drive includes less noisy preloaded software than drives of yesteryear and performs beautifully, being backward compatible with USB 2.0 & Windows 7. Great product if you want or need extra disk space.

What a great value for $70..wow. You cant beat that price. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside knowing that my Macbooks time machine will auto backup to this. I am a tech guy and Ive always told everyone to backup, backup, backup, but I never did myself. Does that make me a hypocrite? Lol. At any rate, for people that are less-tech savvy using a mac, when you first plug it in, just tell your Mac to use it as a time machine disk, then go to system preferences , and look for time machine and make sure its turned to the on position on the left and theres a little checkbox at the bottom of the screen that says show time machine icon in menu bar. I compel you to do that so you can simply click on it and press backup now, when you want, but keep in mind, Mac does it for you once you set it up. If you have anymore questions about time machine, just go to Google and type in time machine Mac with no quotes or just go to Apple.com and type HT201250 into the search area on the top right of the site, you can also type that into Google and it will also pull it up. *I was no compelled by any entity to write a review on this hard drive, the information provided was strictly my own, unless otherwise stated.*

Ive had this for a few weeks now. I have to admit, I turned on the backup functions, etc., but havnt been monitoring how/when it does everything, or even gone to look at what is backed up since I set it up. With that out of the way: its been great. USB 3.0 connection is a very worthwhile upgrade. When you want to move files of the size that may be on a 2TB hard drive, the time difference really adds up. Many times faster. Ive had mine connected and lit up since I got it. No overheating or performance issues. So, as far as I can say at this date, there will be no issue plugging it in and using it for your daily activities. I keep movies, music, etc on the drive. I play them from there with no issue. Etc. Which, while that should be expected, there are enough bad products that you cant be sure until someone says so. Beyond that, I cant tell you if its a good purchase. Depends on the price and whats on th market. A year from now maybe a a 2 TB SSD drive costs the same as this does today.

Well, Why 5 Stars: USB 3.0. Im just starting to use my USB 3.0 port... And I copy all my stuff almost 400gb incluided music, videos, movies, documents, etc... in about just minutes! not hours like old times just minutes. Not even half and hour.. more about a 15min I think was it. Blue: I really like the blue color. So when I looked this color Design I knew that I would really like it. What else? 1Tb of a Top High Brand Manufacturer like it is Western Digital. They are PRO in what they do. Many years in the business aprove it or I think so haha. Security. Even when it have a software of keeping a track on backups, I just have the option that when you plug it to your pc is prompt an Autorun and no Disk appear: You most Autorun the security Software and insert the password otherwise you CANT, read well Can Not access the Disk information. I like this option. So if i lose my backup No one can access my data. And if you forget the key... damm. Better have a good memory, all for security reasons. Insert the password (with remember option for the current pc) and the drive will just appear. Like that. I really Recommend This product and no.. no one is paying me to say this. Is that I think that is a great product of a great company for a essential need: Save all important stuff that u dont wanna erase Ever. And the 1 Tb because I think is the average for most people and great capacity. I recommend that if you buy a Portable External Hard Drive, buy that one at least 60% more than you are gonna backup. For various purpuses: 1. You are not going to spend money in another one in near-medium time. 2. You have enought space to keeping downloading stuff, creating data , music , videos, documents, and stealing music or games from your friend..and 3. We always want More. Haha. I also recommend two of these. Yeah. 2 !. well. that for even more security porpuses. One that your gonna save alll your stuff that never will erase... you keep this in a safe place, where is the important documents of family etc, and the other is where you are gonna work with and travel around, backup here backup there.. You are going to work.. take the bus.. go to work... work indeed.. backup your stuff like always and returning home...someone steal your bag... you lose all the data? no. You just lose the Recent one that maybe it still is in the actual hard drive pc. but the important ones like family pictures.. music collected from year to year, Family videos.. software that u dont know where to download it again... or heavy ones that you will take years to download again.. are Safe.. at your home. Nothing no worried about. That steal the bag oh damm.. yeah but Who return all your working in collecting that data.. over the years.. and that time spent? No one does. or maybe yes... Time Machine! Last recommendation: When you guys are going to backup some data, take the time to stay secure that there is no viruses o malware or strange virus that may compromise the entire drive. See u around. I expect that this review help you in a way or another. =D

**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.

NEWEST UPDATE (11/15/14): Started experiencing the SAME issue! Sent back the HDD; replaced with the WD Elements version. Was going to RMA with Western Digital until I discovered the culprit. One of my front panel ports on my Corsair Carbide 500R case was defective- a common issue it seems (http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107328). The faulty port was able to register the HDD as connected, USB 2.0 drives worked without issue, but its like the port wasnt delivering the necessary power for the USB 3.0 transfer. Got a free front I/O panel replacement from Corsair; all seems well! UPDATE: When I received my replacement, I did a quick format to get rid of the factory software that I had no need for. Then I began the transfer process between my current 1 TB external to the new one. The same issue occurred. On my current drive, there is a folder labeled AUTORUN with an icon file (that displays the Western Digital logo). As it turns out, this seems to be the cause of the issue. Once I deleted that, everything copied over fine and works great as far. Original Review: Unfortunately, this product arrived DOA. My computer recognized the drive but would just stop copying files over once a certain sector of the drive was reached. I used Western Digitals diagnostic utility and it said it passed, but when I tried to write zeros to the drive (full format), the drive froze up at around 509,000 sectors. I have been using Western Digital drives for a long time and this is the first of which I have had a bad experience. Hopefully my replacement, which is coming rather quickly, will be functional.