WD 2TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBS4B0020BBK-WESN

It has recently come to my attention that Ive been lazy with my backups. Enter the WD My Passport external hard drive. The difference between this and the slightly cheaper WD Elements portable HD seems to be that the former is better suited for backups. At least thats what Western Digitals marketing claims. ***The good*** As an external hard drive it works just fine. Ive posted screenshots of some DiskMark benchmarks I ran and read/write speeds are largely in-line with what I see from my SATA internal HDD. All good there. ***The Neutral*** Build-quality is just so-so. It feels extremely plasticy and doesnt seem like it would take much abuse. That said, it doesnt necessarily feel fragile either. If I were regularly tossing it in a bag or traveling with it I might be concerned. But for in-house backups its fine. ***The Bad*** I appreciate simple, reliable software. Unfortunately WD Backup is a little too simple. Ita about as barebones as one can get. Its only two options are backup frequency and source. The biggest problem being that it doesnt include any option to sync instead of backup. For example, say I create a backup on Monday that includes files 1, 2 and 3. Then on Tuesday, on my PC, I delete file 2. When using sync software, file 2 would be deleted on the drive mirror. Using backup software, file 2 would remain. Neither method is better than the other, just different. However, I would prefer to sync, and not backup. In order to accomplish this one will need to acquire additional software. I find this very annoying considering a) its marketed as a backup-centric product and b) the competing product from Seagate includes software which allows for both. Finally, it didnt even work right out of the box. The backup process kept hanging up. I had to format the drive and download the latest software from WDs website. No big deal but a little annoying. ***Conclusions*** I would not buy again. Most likely, I would purchase the Seagate Backup Plus instead. Alternatively, I might purchase the cheaper WD Elements external HD and also a 3rd party all-in-one backup/sync software solution. ***My Rating Criteria*** Build Quality(47.5%) - 3.5 Stars Efficacy(47.5%) - 3.0 Stars Post-Sale Support(0.0%) - n/a Packaging/Presentation(5.0%) - 5.0 Stars WEIGHTED AVERAGE(100.0%) - 3.3 STARS

Bought this in Sept 2018, it now will no longer do a back up. WD tech support is horrible! Would I buy again, well NO! Take your chances!

I wanted a storage unit. No where in instructions in box or online could I find any. (just plug it into a computer). If I want to use it for backup, there were instructions. still not sure if I can use it for both. Nor is it clear if used as a backup it only backups changes since the last backup.

I presently own and use 7 of these without a single glitch or problem to date. Theyve made me a loyal WD user. Whenever I shop online for an external storage drive, I always just click the refine search to WD branded items. I used to be a loyal iomega user and all of my legacy iomega drives still work perfectly. These are a super replacement with equal quality.

I purchased a MintBox Mini 2 Pro Linux computer, and the new Mint Linux likes to use the Timeshift app to make snapshots of the main disk for backup purposes. I bought this USB disk to keep snapshots on as well as to store other files. This disk worked great with Linux right out of the box, but Timeshift requires an ext4 disk. So, I used good ol’ gparted to re-format this disk to ext4, and in just a few minutes I had a very very fast USB disk. Works great; recommended.

Buen producto , aunque recomiendo comprar un disco sólido es mejor opción este un día me Pego un auto y pensé que había perdidos todo

I needed a small lightweight backup drive for my laptop. I also wanted pre-installed backup software too. The WD drive is small like a mens wallet. It comes with a SATA cable on the drive connection and USB3 to the laptop. The drive is fast transferring. Even though backup software is included, its not the best backup software around as the layout of the backed-up data is not very intuitive as the old Seagate drive software. The WD software will only recognize compatible WD drives and backup only WD drives, but not other brand drives. Good hardware/just ok software.

Bought this for my Xbox One X. Having an extra 2TB makes a massive difference if youre like me and want to have a bunch of games (more than 4) downloaded at one time. Simple to format. Just plug into your xbox and it will prompt you to format it. Super easy.

Dont buy this if you are a Mac user and not super tech-savvy. I bought this thinking that it would be compatible with my Mac (since it came up on a search for external hard drives for Macs...), but I guess I should have read the fine print better. When I plugged it into my computer Timeline said that it wasnt compatible. I tried to reformat the hard drive for my Mac using Disk Utility and directions that I found online but I wasnt able to because I kept getting an error message saying that the external hard drive was in use, even though ALL other programs were closed and I couldnt find anything that could be using it (even after disabling spotlight)... I gave up and figured Id just return it, but then I couldnt eject it from my computer either because it said that it was still in use. After consulting online for a long time, I saw that a lot of other people have this same problem. I had to turn off my computer to take out the hard drive. No way do I want to keep a hard drive that I have turn off my computer every time to eject.

This little pocket style drive is about as good as these get. It is simple to use. Plug and Play. Any method for copying or loading files to a hard drive works well. I do have one little thing that bothers me but it may be software/system related. If I am copying a lot of folders that contain many files, the data transfer rate slows down. I have found tat the drive is fastest when transferring large files and very few folders.70 MB/sec avg. transfer speed. I play large 1080P video files straight from this drive without a single issue. For 2 TB of storage for such a low cost, I had to give this drive an overall 5 stars. I have dealt with Western Digital one time on a broken drive under warranty. They treat customers very well and do whatever they can to keep you happy. I phoned them, reported the issue and had a new drive within a few days.