WD 1TB Black My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBGPU0010BBK-NESN

Im updating the rating on this from one to three stars after some kind members offered me help on getting it to work with my Mac Still not an easy task but it is possible and even easy if you havent yet stored a lot on the drive. However if you have a lot of data from a Windows pic on the drive its still quite a process to get that to you Mac not simply a plug and use. Ok heres is the problem with this admitted stellar value USB drive NOWHERE DOES IT TELL YOU IT WILL NOT WORK WITH A MAC. Shame on you Western Digital. Shame Shame Shame. I understand there was a time in history that it was considered acceptable for a company to ignore Apple products and pretend they no longer existed and that is (NO) was accepted because for a while they didnt really exist. However that was what ten years ago at least! I bought this drive to back up some very valuable files of my deceased partner, memories, photos, documents that I cherished and wanted to preserve, which i could as long as i didnt buy a new Mac computer. After I bought a Mac i discovered that yes I could use this drive after I reformatted the drive,erasing all my beloved memories and starting from scratch. Tech support was atrocious and the only positive info they gave me was that i couldnt use the drive without erasing everything on it. So bottom line....If your sticking to Windows for life and want to save your lifes work then buy this drive. If you decide to migrate to a Mac, throw your life on this drive away and start from day one in your new Mac world. When will companies learn that we just all want to get along?

WD is the go to external backup for my work laptop. I had issues with the SmartWare software - I contacted WD via the support number and the guy talked me through getting it set up. Super easy after I was able to get it loaded. He did tell me that the basic Windows backup works just as well, but I am using the Smartware for now. This model was faster then my previous version - backup didnt take long at all. The cable is a little on the shorter side - but it works for me since I dont like all the extra length lying around my desk. The drive is small, which is great as I occasionally need to bring it with me when I travel. I put it in this case

Identical in size to other My Passport drives, but exactly reversed. The connector is on the opposite side of the drive from all my other Passports. I got this one to replace one that just stopped working after 3 years. The only negative is that if you are buying this drive for color (red for secured, black for unsecured, etc.) you will be disappointed. Only the top cover of the drive has color. The rest of the drive is black. Kinds looks stupid and doesnt in any way let you set it on a shelf with other drives and immediately differentiate them by color. You barely see the color from the side of the drive and not at all from the back.

Let me first say that I have no problem with the reliability or performance of this product. My issue is a software one that Western Digital has enacted to try to steer customers to their more expensive products. I bought this drive for a small business, with the intention of attaching it to the USB port of our Linksys Smartrouter to use as a file server and backup for several computers in our local network. When I did so, I found that the WD Backup app could not detect the drive, even after I mapped it in Windows10. Upon searching the internet to try and solve the problem, I found that there was a program called WD Anywhere and the screen shots of it appeared to be exactly what I needed. However, it was nowhere to be found on the WD support website, even after I went through their registration process to gain full access to the site. My next step was to email their support, expecting that theyd have a solution. Below is the reply I received. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience you are experiencing. I am happy to assist you with your inquiry. Western Digital doesnt support using our USB external drives as network drives connected through a router, so for best use of this function you might want to consult with the router manufacturer. WD Smartware, or WD Backup will not detect a USB drive mapped as a network drive, the drive needs to be connected directly to a computer or use one of our WD NAS drives such as the WD My Cloud which do work with WD Smartware for backups. And here is my response to that email. Thank you for your polite and informative reply. I have to say that I am not pleased at all by it. Your Smartware is not very smart if it cannot detect your drive on a local network. I can only conclude that your company has chosen to exploit customers into purchasing your other product line when it is really not necessary. You used to offer WD Anywhere backup software which does exactly what I need and Windows backup works fine on your drive when it is connected to my router. I guess Ill use that, and Ill also be sure to post my opinions on Amazon. Consider my case closed. In closing, the WD Passport Ultra 1 TB drive is a solid product at a good price. The My Cloud product that WD recommended to me is significantly more expensive for no gain, under my intended use of the product. It is not impossible for WD to make their less expensive drives work over a local network, but they choose not to. UPDATE: Soon after this review posted, I received another email from WD. Here is what they said. I apologize for the disappointment experienced due to the performance of our software. WD Anywhere Backup is still available in our website but it is not compatible with Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 so it might not work as you need. Still let me provide for you the software installer. WD Anywhere Backup Software (Windows) [...] I appreciate their honest communication but I have no desire to try this on Win10 if they say it isnt compatible.

Pro: cheap, usb powered Con: ENCRYPTS EVERYTHING, NOT VIABLE FOR PORTABLE STORAGE. First, understand that an automatic backup function is critical to any backup storage device. It means that as you make changes to your computer, the program monitors them, and makes the appropriate updates to the backup hard drive. So if you have a folder of thousands of images, and you add 10 photos, the device will then backup those additional 10 photos. Not having auto backup means you would have to remember every change you made to your computer, and manually go to the hard drive and copy the files there as well. Auto backup is absolutely standard and expected on any device. Obviously with 1TB of data, you cant be expected to keep up with all the files and changes. The MAJOR problem is this.... If you are doing automatic back up on this device, it encrypts everything. That means the files are 100% useless on the harddrive unless you plug back in to your computer and go through a very very lengthy decryption process. You cannot just plug this drive in somewhere and view the files like you would on the computer. The files are broken down, split up, and are no longer usable files. The only way to make this a portable storage device, is by manually placing files on the drive. With 1TB of data, that is unreasonable. Hard to explain, but just know that this is NOT a good option for having a large portable storage device. You need an external drive that has an option to NOT encrypt everything.

This is my 5th WD Passport drive and my second WD USB 3.0 drive. There is hardly any difference between the 2015 version and the 2014 version drive - except for a few mm shaved off the external dimensions and a little faster read/write speed (updated firmware). I use my Passport drives to backup my data/documents. I backed up my 1 TB video archive at transfer speeds as high as 120 mb/s. Read speeds were also in the same range - 125-130 mb/s. This was extremely easy to use. I just plugged it in and followed the instructions in the User Manuals folder (ENG for English). After a quick download, I was able to set my back-up preferences (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) and then click and drag my files into the Passport. Although my iTunes are saved in the Cloud, I was even able to fit my extensive music collection on the Passport too. Excelente!

As a giant nerd, hard drives of all shapes and sizes and capacities are very important to me. Ive used many drives in the past and all of my Western Digitals seem to last longer than competitors and outperform all expectations. More specifically to this drive. Going on the road for three months I needed a drive that I could trust for all of my sensitive data, as well as various movies and entertainment. The Western Digital Passport was perfect for this. Not only did it have the capacity to store my >TB movie/TV Collection, It also had the resilience to survive a literal cross country trip. This drive bounced around in my bag on buses, airplanes, cars and sometimes just in my back pocket for a solid three months and is still alive and perfectly functional to tell the tale today. The USB 3.0 speeds are pretty awesome as well! The size is perfect. Capacity is great. As always, another great product from WD!

I had gotten this hard drive for my Xbox One and was concerned that the setup would be difficult, but it was INSANELY easy. For 2 TB, I am able to have all my games on my hard drive and easy to access using the Kinect. Additionally, the moment I plugged it in the Xbox gave me a prompt to set up the Hard drive which was simply giving it a name, naturally I went with Watson, due to my XBones increased capacity to remember and feel emotion. After that it asks if you want to use it as a default hard drive, and since mine was pretty full I said yes, so now all my games and everything downloads there. No need for additional outlets, takes only a minute to set up. Very satisfied with this purchase. (I would not go higher than 2 TB, because this will slow down the xbox, supposedly)

Pros: Works with USB 2.0 and 3.0, which is what you would expect. But its hard to find that info here. So there you have it. Come pre-partitioned for NTFS, with loads of government spyware for windows. I wiped it out and partitioned for Ext4 to use it for Linux. Works when directly connected to my Raspberry Pi 2 Model B without a hub (once I modified /boot/config.txt and added max_usb_current=1). Cons: The only thing I can think of to complain about is the activity LED seems like it should be on the opposite end of the drive as the cable, but it isnt. Its also illuminated when there is no activity, but blinks off and on when there is activity. Its also quite bright when you look right at it, though it doesnt seem to illuminate a dark room in an annoying way. The LED is white. WD My Passport 1 TB vs WD Elements 1TB I had a hard time choosing between this WD My Passport and the

This drive is exactly what we needed. My son has a MacBook that he wanted to configure TimeMachine to backup and he needed a target drive. We plugged this one in, reformatted it (it came formatted NTFS), and told TimeMachine to use it. Done. Power is supplied via the USB connection, so there is just one cable to connect to the MacBook. As long as he connects it to his laptop every few days, it stays up to date and were all good. We didnt install any of the WD tools or anything. Were just using it as a simple backup target, so I am not sure about any of the other features. Time Machine will encrypt the drive on its own.