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

I wrote this glowing review below and only hours later I went to do an update of an existing backup and it is not working (or if it is, its going so slowly that it will take days to backup * FIVE GB * - which is ridiculous. It took less than 5 minutes to do the initial backup, and now that Ive connected the passport to my PC to update the files already backed up, its been going for over an hour. Same data (just a couple of edits on some excel files), same USB port, etc. For 5GB of data. You can copy / paste to the drive, but the whole reason I liked it is because I thought it would backup changes for me. Sigh. ******************************************************************** So easy to use! I was dreading picking out a new external hard because I was sure I would experience some awful technical issue and end up buying my brother a plane ticket to Atlanta just to help me backup some music and photos of my kids. But the WD Passort Ultra is really fast and easy to figure out. You plug it into the USB 3.0 port if you have one (it will say SS = Super Speed) or any other USB port if you dont. It does its installing new hardware thing and then the notification pops up that the device is ready to use (I use my Passport using Windows 7 and Windows 8). You go to My Computer, double click on WD Apps Setup, follow the prompts and after a minute the WD Smartware is installed on your PC. You then double click the WD Smartware icon and you can set your preferences. I chose continuous backup, but you can also set a certain day of the week and time to have your files backed up. I dont intend to keep the drive plugged into my PC while I work, this way it updates right away when I plug it in. For the backup scope, I chose the advanced setting. It says this is for experienced users, but all it asks you to do is select the folders you want to back up. I selected my Document, Pictures, Videos & Music folders. If you need your email backed up or anything that is not in a central location, you might want to use the default setting. You click enable backup and it begins backing up the folders youve specified onto the Passport. I use this drive to backup personal documents on my work PC and all doc/photos/videos/music from my personal PC. I can view them by viewing the folders on the drive and opening the WD SmartWare.swstor folder. There I see a folder for each of my PCs and if you drill through into those folders you will see your backed up data. You can do all kinds of other fancy things (versioning, etc.) but Im just trying to keep it simple. I bought the Amazon basics case for it, and its perfect, holds the device and the cords.

Hey Amazon community, I recently purchased this and as an avid lover of WD, this does not disappoint. The transfer speed is great when at 3.0 - I get about 96-100mb/s or if youre on 2.0 I get about 20-26mb/s. Now mind you, thats using a software called Teracopy so your mileage may vary. I like this drive because you dont need an external power source for it, so to me its just a huge flashdrive. Now before I get called out on that, I know, I know.. its like one, not that it is one. I bring this up because I pondered how I seem to like 3.0 flash drives yet.. This seems to do the job so very well and its got a lot of storage. I formatted mine to NTFS because I can transfer single files that are over 4gigs without the restriction of FAT32 telling me that it cant transfer the file so thats something to keep in mind for when you have a hard drive. I take this everywhere with me and overall its an awesome product. Im just a PC user as my current macbook is in the shop so I never got to test this on a mac yet but its not a problem to get this going. Extremely easy set up right out the box, no hassles, no complaints.

I,m a semi elderly computer user of average tech savvy, so if I can setup and use an external hard drive anybody should be able to. The WD Passport ultra with one TB memory is probably much more memory than Ill ever need, but for the difference in price I went with the 1TB. Setup instructions I found by Goggling variations of “ installing passport external hard drive” was much more useful to me than the included user guide. I studied both before starting. Once I started I had it ready to go in just a few minutes. When I first got this new Windows 8 computer a few months ago, during setup and initialization it guided me thru creating an “operating system recovery partition” and copying it to a USB drive. With a little exploring I found I could also copy a O.S. Backup to the passport. I think I read in the user guide where passport would not do that but by all indications it did. Guess Ill know if I”m ever unfortunate enough to try and use it. Cant ever have too many backup plans. I got all my documents and photos copied to the pass port, then to verify success I took it to a friends computer and viewed what was on it. Every thing was there. I didnt set up the automatic back up software because my plan is to keep the passport disconnected and stored in a safe place and bring it out and update whenever I feel the need. My reasoning for this is if I ever get a virus or malware and the backup hard drive is connected it will be compromised also. I had been watching several venders for a device like this for a of couple months and was about ready to use USB drives for data backup which for no more data than I have would have been sufficient, but when I found this passport at Amazon for around $70 with free shipping I went this route. I also needed an Ethernet cable hub to hook up a VOIP phone but Amazon had a wireless router with four LAN connections on sale so I went with it. Now if I ever need a wireless connection Ill be ready. If you are reading this then you must be thinking about data backup. So remember, when dealing with technology sooner or later Murphy s law is going to bite you. So however you decide to do it – BACKUP-BACKUP-BACKUP.

Bought two of these in Nov. 2013 (a black one for my laptop, a red one for my wife), both seemed to work fine since - until today. Still well within the 3 year limited warranty, mine died today. WDs own Utility software couldnt read the drive to give a diagnosis, but Crystal Disk Info showed 767 Reallocated Sectors (100 is very high), the drive began to randomly click today, and Windows 10 file manager recognized it only as Local Drive but couldnt access it at all. Thankfully it was used for backups only and I didnt have anything one of a kind on it. The irreplaceable stuff is on my wifes WD Passport - so now to get that off in case it fails too. In my book, a product review also includes service (including warranty) after the sale. In order to get an RMA, I had to call their customer service operators last night as the WD website got stuck and repeatedly asked for my address - although I had entered it several times previously. When i called I ended up w/Jose who, though efficient, was a bit terse and bordered on curt w/me a couple of times. Dont know where WDs CSRs are located, but heard a young woman laughing and talking loudly quite a bit in the background. Im sure that she was probably just in the cubicle next door and laughing with a customer but, when youve just had a catastrophic hard drive failure, you want calm and compassionate reassurance - not laughter. While waiting for Jose to do his thing and listening to the laughter, it conjured up the image of the old Discover Card This is Peggy commercial with the man in a little hut inside the Arctic Circle taking calls for USA Credit. So a little unnerved I was as I gave them my address and credit card info for what WD calls an Advanced RMA - wherein they ship a new HD immediately, put a hold on my credit card for $127 (a new model on Amazon is $89), and give me 30 days to ship the dead HD back, or have my credit card docked for the overpriced, new (supposedly) HD. Ill update the review when we see if I get a new model or the older (possibly refurbished?) model from 3 years ago... I was nice to Peggy, so hopefully the rest of the story will turn out well. In the meantime, the WD SmartWare isnt very smart. It doesnt automatically update (though the box is checked to allow updates...), and never were really sure if it was backing up. Turns out that the software hadnt updated on my pc since July 2015 (two versions ago), and my wifes situation was even worse... the WD software on her pc wasnt backing up at all, and hadnt updated since November 2014. So we ran several manual backups just to be on the safe side. Strangely, we discovered these software issues over last weekend and, concerned that we may have more WD software problems, had begun backups with Windows 10 Backup utility, which is much less intrusive and draining on the computer than the SmartWare Continuous backups. Then today my HD failed. Coincidence? Bottom line... not sure if Im too enthused about getting another Western Digital 2TB Passport Ultra for free or not... UPDATE March 2, 2016. Received a replacement hard drive for the one that died within 3 days. WD did a good job responding and shipping quickly. I would have been surprised to see a new HD to replace my dead one, and sure enough, the HD that they sent was EXACTLY like the one that I bought more than two years ago, and is clearly refurbished (says Recertified in Vietnam on the bottom). While the recertified part isnt a big deal to me as Ive bought numerous refurbed products over the years with excellent results (typing this review on a wonderful little refurbed Lenovo T430s ThinkPad...), the part that has irked me since getting the HD is that when I registered the new/recertified HD with Western Digital on their online portal and checked the warranty, I see that it expires at the end of May 2016 - whopping four months after it was sent to me - and six months short of the November 2016 warranty expiration of my old dead one! The least that WD could have done was to extend the warranty of the recertified HD until then...or I could extend it myself until 2018 for an additional $25. Bad business practices, WD. To their credit however, my fears of Peggy in the Arctic Circle stealing my credit card info or at least not crediting the $127 for a new HD were, so far, unfounded. The hold that they had placed on my card for the full, inflated price of the replacement HD has since been removed (because I sent the dead one back to them post-haste, and at my expense!). Overall, the first HD lasted only two out of the three years of the warranty. But WD did replace it with a recertified model. However, I had to pay to ship the dead one back to them, then got shorted six months on the warranty as compared to the original. Im not impressed with WD and wont be buying anything else from them. Hopefully I wont also be updating this review later this year because the recertified HD dies out of warranty. The barely three stars that Ive generously given will then fall like rocks.

This hard drive is a hardy little workhorse! Bought it almost a year ago, and hasnt failed me yet. I formatted it in Ex-FAT, allowing cross-compatibility reading and writing across Mac and Windows, without the restriction of the 4GB maximum file size. This conveniently allowed me to store my legally obtained HD and Blu-Ray copies of my favorite movies on the hard drive! Many people dont know about thiThis hard drive is a hardy little workhorse! Bought it almost a year ago, and hasnt failed me yet. I formatted it in Ex-FAT, allowing cross-compatibility reading and writing across Mac and Windows, without the restriction of the 4GB maximum file size. This conveniently allowed me to store my legally obtained HD and Blu-Ray copies of my favorite movies on the hard drive! Many people dont know about this new file formatting option. I went home for the week and somehow both the Weimaraner and the Golden Retriever, both puppies one year old (so old enough to do some damage) tore through the entire case, and chewed up the corner where the USB 3.0 plugs into the hard drive. After thinking that the entire endeavor would be hopeless, I still decided to give salvaging a try. The part where the USB 3.0 plugs into the hard drive was dented and squished, and there were random white parts of what looks like paper stuck inside hole. I poked around a bit with a pen and cleared out the hole, and plugged in the cable. To my complete surprise, the little blue light came on and started blinking, and the hard drive started spinning. The thing works. I mean what the hell? Fantastic, I just ordered a replacement.

Ive written many reviews for Amazon, and count myself a B or B+ when it comes to matters technical. Ive never had any problem with Western Digital external hard drives--I own five--or with the SmartWare backup system. However, I plugged this item in yesterday. As has always been my experience, auto-backup went smoothly and was complete. Just now however, for the first time in--what? eight years?--I had a blue-screen event. I didnt even know these were possible in the modern age of PCs. It took one anxious forever for Windows 7 Enterprise to recognize the issue, and when it did, I got the message to remove any external devices and start your computer again or words to that close effect. I removed this WD drive and restarted. Restart happened without issue, and Im using that computer right now. Im very disappointed here, because Ill need to wipe this WD drive (hoping no blue-screen happens while Im doing so) and return it, and now Ill have to think seriously about ever buying another WD product. Ill probably contact WD customer support to see if they have a resolution to this problem, and if they do Ill change this rating and update this review. For now though, I think its appropriate to post a warning about this product. And if you do have that blue-screen moment, do not panic. Just remove the drive and start over. Your computer is not dead! Update July 16 2014: WD support was excellent and detailed. I received a prompt reply. Tech support proposed that I had a faulty cable and sent me a new one free of charge. I did as directed and reinstalled SmartWare. As before, backup was fast and complete. Everything now seems to be going smoothly, after a week of use. In brief, THIS EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE SEEMS OK. I wish I could write more convincingly, but only time will tell. As noted above, Ive never had issues with my other five WD drives, and in fact use them with my PCs and on the MacBook Air my university provided me. This is the only one that seemed to create issues. WD tech support told me it was highly unlikely an external hard drive could create blue screen issues, but in the bad old days that was not my experience. For example, it use to take Vista 25 minutes to boot, until I realized it was searching my 1TB WD external hard drive for the OS before it searched the internal hard drive. Bad things do happen with good external hard drives. And really, can it be coincidence that my first blue screen in half a decade happened upon restart after installing this drive? Of course the answer is yes, and though we see other complaints here in the one-star department, they all revolve not around blue screen, but around drive failure. Hey, there is a spinny disk in these things still, and spinny disks are prone to failure. Ill update again if I have further issues with this hard drive. But contrary to some reports here, WESTERN DIGITAL TECH SUPPORT IS EXCELLENT. I have always found it to be so.

This is my 3rd WD Passport style external drive over the years and all still perform great. This one is the 2TB unit BTW. As many have indicated the software continues to suck but I never use it anyway except for the security utility. I prefer to drag and drop to create my own back ups as that is much easier to move to another PC anyway. I am running Windows 7 and all appeared to transfer at what I consider to be acceptable transfer speeds (measured in hours not days). I set up about 500GB to transfer overnight and it was done before I got up in the AM. This unit is actually more compact than my older 500GB unit but does not come with a case. If I need a case I will use one from my older 500GB drive. Having the 2TB gives me way more flexibility as my Laptop is only 600GB and about 5 years old but still performing well (HP Pavilion). I take tons of HD Video which is a major space hog as many of you know. Hope this helps give you the basics that I am always looking for in these reviews.

Im used to external HDDs that are about the size of spiral notebook, and about an inch thick. Or the size of two bricks placed side by side. Thats what I was expecting when I ordered this. I didnt mind because I wanted a drive that had a good capacity and that was USB 3.0 so I could try out the new 3.0 jack on my new laptop. Ive never owned a USB 3.0 device before this one. Needless to say I was blown away. I was expecting it to be delivered in a box the size of a small microwave oven (Amazon tends to pack things that way). I was actually a bit pissed off when I saw that the package was a MANILA ENVELOPE! However, when I opened it and saw how frickin tiny the drive is, I changed my mind. This thing is small enough to fit into my back jeans pocket. Heck, this thing is SMALLER THAN MY CELL PHONE!! Of course, I own a Galaxy Note II, but hey, its still a sight to behold. Ive done only a little bit of performance testing so far, but its about twice as fast in the USB 3.0 port as it was in the USB 2.0 port (40 MB/sec vs 22 MB/sec). I used CDM 3 to benchmark it; and below are the results: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s] Sequential Read : 112.099 MB/s Sequential Write : 110.528 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 41.950 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 57.537 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.535 MB/s [ 130.5 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.453 MB/s [ 354.7 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.598 MB/s [ 146.0 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.486 MB/s [ 362.8 IOPS] Test : 1000 MB [G: 0.0% (0.4/931.5 GB)] (x5) Date : 2014/02/28 21:18:42 OS : Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64) Greater than 110 MB/second sequential data transfer. WOW! Im quite pleased with this...I even splurged and got the blue version. Quite happy with this thing.

I ordered 2 WD Passport Ultra 1TB Portable external USB 3.0 Hard Drives with Auto Backup. The first drive worked properly on a new Dell 15-3521 Laptop running Windows 7 Professional, but when I tried to use the second WD Passport external drive on another Dell-3521 Laptop running Windows 7 Professional it would not install if the USB 3.0 cable was plugged into any USB 3.0 port on the Dell Laptop. After swapping drives and computers and cables around, it became apparent that the USB 3.0 cable that came with the second WD Passport Ultra HD is defective. The drive will install and be recognized on either computer only if it is plugged into a USB 2.0 port which defeats the purpose of having a high speed USB drive if it cant work at USB 3.0 speeds. Either drive will work with either laptop at USB 3.0 speeds on USB 3.0 ports if the non-defective USB 3.0 cable is used! All I really need is a replacement cable that works, but since Amazon.com LLC filled the order, I have not figured out how to request a simple replacement for the defective cable without having to return the entire order. I could use some assistant! Or, I can order another USB 3.0 cable which should solve the problem! I hope I hear from someone at Amazon about this!

Update 5-2016: Updated my computer to Win10 and have had no problems with this device. Also managed to buy a longer USB3 Y cable for this at a going-out-of-business Radio Shack for several dollars. ----------------------------------------- Works as advertised. Bought this to backup files and photos from a Dell computer running Win7. This external drive requires no plug-in power supply; it runs off USB power. A nice feature lacking from many external drives. My computer recognized the new drive immediately. Basic setup took less than five minutes. This drive can be encrypted, which I did. This took an addition several minutes. I did not set up multiple partitions, sticking with just one. With multiple, you can encrypt one partition without having to do them all. So far a good performer (3 months so far) and a good price. Only complaints: (a) the USB cord is only 17 inches long, limiting placement in and around the computer, and (2) the USB cord that attaches to the drive is one of the new USB3 mini Y connectors (power and data are split out), so a little more costly to buy a replacement cord if you lose this one. I couldnt find a replacement cord listed on the WD site, but theyre starting to show up on Amazon and other sites.