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

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.

Terrible product and terrible tech support from Western Digital. I continue to get an error message that all my files have failed to back up. I called Western Digital about this and she told me to close all programs. That did not solve the problem. I still get the error messages and I get very sarcastic help from Western Digital. When i try to remove the hard drive I get a message that the program is still running or an error message that I cant connect sometimes both. I would really like to return the product but it has files that have backed up and so I cant really return it unless I take it to my IT people at a cost to wipe it. I am very unhappy with this. I have used 2 other companies back up drives but told WD was the best, not for me. My other two hard drives were never a problem. Also I use a remote back up and that stopped backing up files when the WD is connected, I never had the problem before with other hard drive. I assume its the software not the actual drive.Yesterday I spoke with their tech dept yet again and they gave me directions for wiping the hard drive. It said it would take 139 hours which I think is a bit long to put 0s on a hard drive to wipe out data. During the night there was an error message that I discovered when I awoke this morning so I clicked on continue. It continues to run at a snails pace, I called again and was told the hard drive had many bad sectors. This is hardly Amazons fault. WD is supposed to have excellent external back ups so something needs to be fixed in their quality control dept. The Passport hard drive is on its way back to Amazon.

Im a faithful Western Digital consumer. I have purchased this brand to replace internal desktop HDs, the My Book line for archiving and game console storage, and now this handy little unit for my new laptop. It is extremely light and quick. Unfortunately Im not techie enough to give speed ratings and such... only that the unit is fast and quiet. I am happy that the weight is light as I tote this in my laptop bag or purse daily. It weighs less than my portable trackball mouse, so thats helpful. I did purchase the OEM bumper protection accessory too when does help to grip this unit. Its smooth plastic body can be a challenge to hold on to. I highly recommend getting this accessory. All in all this is a great unit for a reasonable price. Not much higher in price on Amazon compared to other sites. The purchase experience, tracking, and easy returns is why I prefer shopping on Amazon.

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.

Overall it is good product. Failed after over 2 yrs (almost 3 yrs). During these years, I have to let windows repair it and re-format 3 time to re-use it. At the end, I download hard drive tools form wd site to test. The tool said it good, passed but can not performed the extended test. Bad tools.

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.

Im using this drive as a offsite backup, and it works fine. I am also using it with a Mac, which requires a re-format. That is very easy to do using the Disk Utility built into OSX--but it takes a while. Im not willing to pay more for the same drive in a Mac version. I now have three WD backup drives, and they all look the same except that this one is blue. The colors are more than a fashion statement; they let you identify drives used for different purposes at a glance. I AM willing to pay a little more for Western Digital over drives from other brands. They have proven more reliable for me over the years. Its much too soon to comment on the reliability of this one.

When I first got this drive, it was an absolute lifesaver. I was able to save all my important documents, photos, videos, etc. from the last 10 years in one place and thought all my storage worries were over. At the time, I had very recently lost an extremely close person in my life and all the photos, videos, etc. that I and her family had of her were on this device, including all things pertaining to her funeral. All my financial and tax documents were on this device. There were an abundance of legal documents pertaining to a law suit I had filed saved on this device. And I was able to store other client information/documents so I could have their files easily accessible in case anything came up while I was not at the office, considering I am on call quite often. Before and after purchasing this particular device, I had done pretty extensive research to ensure I used it properly at all times and always followed all the recommendations and suggestions of Western Digital and others on WDs official forums. I even purchased a hard top, waterproof case to store the drive in, just for the added security because of the importance of the files on the drive. Literally not even an entire TWO MONTHS into owning this device, the problems began. One day I got to work and went to open an important financial document, but it said the file could not be found because it had either been moved or deleted. I knew for a fact that not one file had been moved or deleted, so I started trying to open files throughout different folders saved on the device. Everything but TWO files were unable to be accessed due to being moved or deleted. I was hopeful that maybe it was just a fluke, so I ejected the device and left it alone. Two days later, I tried using the device again, but this time my computer would not even recognize the device at all, no matter which way I tried to search for it. The light indicating it is on and plugged in was on and you could hear the device running, but the computer could not find it. I rapidly started searching through all of WDs official forums and at their suggestions, I tried using multiple different cables to connect the device and each time it was still unrecognizable. Ive also tried it on over 10 different computers and laptops and it is always unable to be found, yet the light still indicates it is on and you can hear it running each time. Im still within my warranty period, but I am absolutely livid that so many sentimental and highly important/confidential files have been lost. I purchased this drive to prevent losing these files because of their importance, and the EXACT thing I was looking to avoid, happened. When I purchased this drive, there were countless positive reviews and people raved about this drive. Now that some time has passed and Ive lost these files, Ive since gone through the reviews again to find there are now many people changing their reviews, claiming to have experienced the same thing. There are even threads on other websites saying theyve experienced the same issues and have expressed their disgust with the way Western Digital has handled the issues. I hope this review can save at least one person from having to deal with the same issues the majority of us buyers have experienced. I absolutely do not recommend this product and will probably never recommend another Western Digital product to anyone; not only because of the product failure, but mainly due to the way Western Digital handles their failures and and show that they simply do not care about their customers.

Being somewhat a luddite, I had to hack my way through this to include latest utilities and backup program from Western Digital and install them. Then I reformatted the drive to a simple volume to insure it would work on my Windows 7 machine. Maybe unnecessary but I wanted to play with it some having never used one before. I also added a fuschia grip and Lacdo Waterproof Hard EVA Shockproof case. I do hope not to test the waterproofness or the shock sensitivity. The manual does caution about moving it about while in use The utilities and backup program are without frills and pretty straightforward so its hard to screw it up. It even has blinky lights so you can tell when its doing something. Im using this as backup for two small 128 Gb solid state drives so there is plenty of room on it. I did manage to do a drive backup and system image for both computers so I am somewhat relieved at getting that done. I had lost everything when my old XP machine died a horrible thrashing death with no backup. Lesson learned and I invested in this thingy which Im well pleased with so far. Its added peace of mind. So if youre somewhat challenged computer wise yet feel confident enough to learn, I recommend this highly. Its easy to set up and use and something that everyone should do... backup your stuff and rest easier.