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

I am a big fan of WD portable drives ever since they started to come out and they have never failed on me. Im done using those powered, bulky external hard drives. These are very portable and reliable in my opinion. Choice of colors is also great if you like to separate your media into different drives. I have purchased all 3 colors and all 3 look great! I use the black drive for my movie collection hooked-up to an apple tv in the living room, the red drive for all my sensitive and personal media like family photos and video, and the blue one for my music collection which I actually take on the road (as a backup) with me and for when I have dj gigs. I sync this drive with my laptops music collection. All 3 drives get constant usage on an almost daily basis. Very recommended!

When I work on someones computer and see they have a lot of family photos, I MAKE them get on of these. People who dont back up are insane. Ive had people come to me with nearly dead hard drives, telling me they have the only pictures of loved ones whove passed away stored on those drives. Ive been lucky to recover some, but when I cant get their photos back its depressing. I try to warn people, but..... These WD Passports are great. I size them at about 4x the space people are using in their system. I use Windows Back-up and also manually copy over the Users Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music and Desktop folders before I do any work on the systems. Just in case. People usually dont worry until its too late, but me knowing I got the important stuff backed up lets me breathe again.

For full disclosure, I was a fan of Western Digitals drives before I bought the unit... Ive lost several drives to malfunction and not one of them was a Western Digital (maybe one seagate which isnt a bad brand and several others). I had expectations of the device some were on spot, others were different. I ordered the black 1 TB unit and by the pictures I saw, I was expecting the unit to be made of a high gloss plastic... it wasnt, its actually a low sheen matte finish that I quite like and seems fairly scratch resistant (so thats a plus) needless to say fingerprints arent an issue. The unit is thinner than I thought it would be, its less than a centimeter thick, otherwise its a little wider and somewhat taller than a deck of playing cards. Mine has a white LED light on the front that lets you know when its in operation and this was something I hadnt noticed while browsing and its useful for me as there is no sound whatsoever (you will feel a little vibration if its beside you on the couch youre laying on of course. The drive copies pretty quick for my liking but I wont be making any appraisal of that feature since my laptop doesnt have USB 3.0 which the unit supports, so technically Im getting slower speeds than I should and its fine for me. The software bundled with the unit (which is actually saved on the drive itself ready for install is a pretty standard backup utility which gives you the option to back up whichever files you choose automatically, whether every day, every week, or every month, you will be asked when in the month (eg. first Monday) you want this backup to occur. For some reason this backup was alot slower for me than it would have been for me to copy a file of similar size and paste it directly, perhaps its archiving it in a way that allows future backups to just be of any added or modified files... I cant say as Ive yet to have my second backup. Bundled is also a drive status utility (?) That sits in your system tray beside the backup utility which displays how much of the drive is filled, lock status (mine is still unlocked, so I cant speak of encryption observations) and temperature status... mine says ok all the time and it feels as such. I havent noticed these running programs affecting my old laptops performance at all. I expected the unit to be made of a cheaper, thinner plastic with noticeable flex... I was pleasantly surprised. Theres no flex to it, it feels well built, Ive even walked around with the unit dangling by its USB cord (which I dont advise) it stays, it gives you confidence like that. Id buy another in a minute... for the price Id have been happy with alot less... for what I got, I might have paid more.

This model is the 2015 generation of the many My Passport drives Ive owned or purchased for clients. They have proven reliable and good performers. They have incrementally improved with each new generation. BOTTOM LINE (for the impatient): The new model is a little bit faster than last years and adds a 3TB and 4TB model. This My Passport Ultra has a more attractive satiny finish and there is now a white model to fit in better for Mac users. Otherwise its almost identical to the older model. If these differences are not important for you, you may want to get this or

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?

This is by far the smallest external drive Ive ever owned. Its roughly 4 x 5 x 0.5 inches and easily slips into a carry on bag or laptop bag. The USB 3.0 cable looks very different from the USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 cables Ive used on other drives and needs to be stored with the drive -- which means it wont fit some of the cases advertised for it like the Lacdo case I bought for it. If you are going to get a special case, get one that is a full 6 inches long by 5 inches wide and 2 deep so you have space for the cable too. I love the magenta colour; definitely catches your eye so you are less likely to lose it or forget it when packing. I bought this for overseas travel and I expect great things from it. Do be aware that file transfer speed depends on the source you are downloading this to/from. Overall I am very happy and would consider getting more if the price and colours are right.

Fairly pleasant with this external hard drive! I brought the 1TB Black version. I was in need of more space and this makes my life much easier. A very huge plus for this drive was that it was super easy to set up. In 5 minutes of connecting, I could already load up storage into the drive and put it in use! Also, the WD software that comes with this drive instillation is also very useful. Scanning for my drive for errors is very helpful so kudos to WD for making a software like this! The one thing that I didnt like was that sometimes when I want to safely remove the hard drive, it would say it would be in use and cannot be removed. Everything would be closed yet this error would still pop up. Because of this reason, I had to give this drive 4 stars instead of 5. I actually dont mind this error because I can simply just shut off my laptop and remove it, but it can sometimes be annoying. TLDR; PROS: Easy to set up, great WD software to protect and backup your drive. Highly recommended. CONS: Sometimes cannot safely remove hard drive, have to shut down laptop in order to.

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

I use this drive to backup my laptop computer. I like the fact that it doesnt require a separate power cord, like some other external hard drives. I like the small form factor of this drive too. It is a similar size as a laptop computer hard drive. Also it supports USB 3.0 data transfer speeds, which is also nice, as USB 3.0 is more than ten times faster than USB 2.0. Of course USB 3.0 is backwards compatible, so it will work with any computers USB port, although its performance will be limited to the speed of the USB port that it is plugged into. Although it comes with software to encrypt the drive, I havent used it, so I cant vouch for the quality of that software. I encrypt my own files anyway, using other software. Some people use utilities like truecrypt, some people use password protected RAR files. Do whatever works best for you, if you want to encrypt something. As for the cloud storage software it comes with, that basically requires you to set up a drop box account, because that is what it really uses to store your date in the cloud. Thats kind of useless, you could just use drop box anyway, without needing to use this Western Digital software as a front end for it. Maybe it is useful for some people, but I dont find any use in doing things that way. So aside from my neutral comments about the software that this drive comes with, which I find to completely be unnecessary, I am just rating the hardware its self as 5 stars.

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.