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

I signed up for Carbonite backup and chose an option to mirror my hard drive so when it crashed again (I went through it once, it is a piece of hard ware and probably will fail again) I wanted to be able to reinstall the entire contents of my hard drive rather than TRY to remember what I had on it and not have to spend 3 weeks trying to rebuild it. One of the things I had to have to do the mirroring was a portable hard drive. I spent a lot of time trying to find something that I could use, a friend recommended this drive, I bought it and it works just fine. I does act a little weird though but I unplug it and it goes back to normal again.

Using this as a photo drive for my old MacBook Pro. The drive itself has worked reliably and it is exactly what I was looking for. I did have some issues using the WD software that came with the drive. When using the software the drive often wouldnt stay mounted. It would either disconnected after about a minute or refuse to be recognized. Removing the software seems to have solved the problem. I did not investigate further because I decided to just use the drive without the WD tools installed, which is what I normally do anyway.

First off, theres really nothing wrong with the drive and its worked great for 7 years. Now I am having issues with corrupted files and trying to recover / fix the drive now is near impossible as it may be completely failing on me now. This is a sad because its been solid for very long and if I have to, I will have to reformat almost 500gb of backup data, which will be completely lost. Thank god its nothing too important though!

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.

In August 2016 I replaced an older WD Passport that I had used for several years with this one. While my older Passport was still operating well, I was concerned about its age and decided a new one would provide more protection against possible storage failures. Unfortunately the new Passport began operating erratically one day in January 2017 and then failed completely - not allowing me access to my files. I have no idea why it failed. - and neither does the computer service specialist that I had look at it. I have enough faith in WD that I am purchasing a new Passport (my fourth) today. I just hope it lasts longer than my last one.

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.

Its been a few years since I purchase my last external hard drive. I was due for a new one, and this one looked like it was up my alley. Here are some of my thoughts on it: Pros: - I love the portability. My last external hard drive was about 2 or 3 times the size of this, it required 2 cords to be plugged in (one to an outlet and one to the computer), and it came with all these little pieces to help it stand up. This one is much smaller, and it only has one cord (connecting to the computer - which also powers the hard drive). - I love the speed on this! I had to backup a failing hard drive and this did the trick much quicker than I expected. - Its a lot more quite than other external hard drives that Ive used. While I was doing my backups, there were several occasions where I had to feel it to make sure it was still working. Its nice that it just blends into the background and doesnt become an annoyance. - Ive used this on several computers (Windows), and I love how quickly it connected and was ready to go. Cons: - There wasnt really anything that I dont like about this. I did try to connect this to a computer that was running Windows XP (which this hard drive is not supposed to be compatible with). It took a little while, but I was able to look online and find a fix for that, and I was soon able to get it work on my Windows XP machine. So... yeah, no complaints so far. Im really happy with this hard drive. Ive had it for about a month, and its been very reliable. Id definitely recommend to anyone whos looking into getting a nice, affordable external hard drive.

Very nice. I use it as an external backup for my small email server on a Windows 10 machine. I enabled BitLocker for full disk encryption on it and connected it via USB port and enabled Windows File History backup on it. So far works really well. CON: One downside is that if you have an older computer, Windows XP for instance, this drive will not work with it. I learned it the hard way. Luckily I had another (newer) computer to use it there instead. CON2: The drive does not have a power supply. Which is good if you want to save space and a wire clutter. But it is also bad if your USB port is underpowered.

Great backup drive and the small package makes for easy storage. I figure I can download new copies of our software, but not our document, photos and videos. I use two of these so I can always have one in a secure location (a safe deposit box at the bank.) I back up to the one on hand, then transfer it to the secure location. I then remove the one currently in storage and have it on hand for my next back up. I reformatted this drive on arrival because I didnt need the software that was pre-installed. To use to back up only our documents and photos, I simply create a new folder for each of us (labeled by date), then copy and send the files to that particular folder. I then am able to walk away while the transfer completes. Simple and it works! The USB 3.0 makes the entire process even faster. I dont know anyone who enjoys making back ups, but this helps it be finished quickly.