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

I found the product to deficient. It comes with very inflexible backup software. Worst of all, it does not properly recover the backed up files! After purchasing a new laptop, I shrank and partitioned my laptop’s hard drive partition. I moved all of my data files from my old laptop, from my Maxtor backup, and from other sources onto folders on my new drive partition. I installed the WD software. I attempted a backup. I was amazed at how inflexible the supplied backup software is! One can backup the entire system, or some system folders on a drive’s partition, or a drive’s entire partition. First of all, I do not want a complete backup. I just wanted to backup my data partition. Secondly, I have no idea on how to specify a “system folder”. Thus, not all of my root folders, on my secondary data partition, were selectable. Thirdly, I did not want to back up an entire partition. I settled for backing up the entire newly created laptop’s data partition. The backup went well. I performed several automated backups. These incremental backups went well. I wanted a smaller primary partition and a larger secondary partition on my laptop. Thus, I, again, shank and partitioned new laptop’s primary partition again. In order to get a single larger secondary partition, I had to delete my current secondary partition, which contains all of my laptop data. I then joined the two new partitions into a single (and larger) partition and formatted this new partition. I felt that I was safe. New laptop, new backup drive, and tested software, why not? I had about 139gb of data on my WD drive. Using the WD software, I attempted a recovery three times. All three failed with a message, which suggested that I check the cable or the USB port. I panicked! I decided to use the Windows 10 software for recovery. I really panicked. By mistake, I selected CUT instead of COPY! After the files were moved, I looked at the dates on my files. They were clobbered. Some dates were correct. Most dates were the date of my original backup. The WD backup was empty! I had no options except to back up my files with clobbered dates onto the WD backup! This backup worked just fine. It is too bad that the WD recovery software failed three times. Note that the same cable and same port, which was used for the three failed WD recoveries, was used for the Windows 10 recovery and the WP backup. Does this smell like rotten software? Or, does it smell like possibly bad hardware? All I know is it smells. Now, the vast majority of my files on my laptop and my WD backup drive have clobbered date information. I would suggest using this product only if you are not going to do a recovery!

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.

Ive had an old WD back-up drive (thankful I never had to use it) and while it lived a long life, it always seemed to be a little less than cooperative with Time Machine in backing up my Mac laptop, plus it was slow, painfully slow (I said it was old, right?). Add to that, it was just bulky enough to made toting it a bit of a pain. Anyway, it eventually failed, even with a total reformatting of the drive, so based on the other reviews, I opted for this newer version. This new drive is super sweet! Its just that much smaller so be more easily portable and its less weighty than my old drive. I had it running and backing up within minutes. For Mac users, you will need to reformat the disk to use Time Machine. You dont need to do any special, youll be prompted along the way. It took about 14 hours for the first back-up, but since it runs in the background I didnt notice one iota of lag. I also noticed this drive stays nice and cool. Thanks WD, great improvements on an already fine product!

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!

Great external hard drive. I bought it mostly to secure important documents in case anything ever happens to my laptop. So far it has done its job just fine. It is small and portable so it conveniently fits in any backpack, satchel, or travel bag. 1TB is more than enough space for basic documents, but Western Digital conveniently sells up to 4TB models for those who need the extra space. This is the older model, and Western Digital has just release the newer model for around the same price range. The newer model supposedly has faster reading/writing times, and it is more aesthetically pleasing with the new design having sharper corners. I would recommend Western Digital to anyone in the market for an External Hard Drive.

Works great! I backed up my laptop to it when I had to send it in for repair. Good thing too, because they put in a new motherboard so I would have lost everything. I found it competitively priced and easy to carry and store. Unfortunately I did not find the instructions very user friendly although I am fairly tech savvy. So, I googled for more information and found some helpful instructions that got my backup going in no time. I deducted one star for this problem. Overall I would recommend it for the tech enlightened or those with tech savvy friends or relatives.

UPDATE: I called WD and they walked me through to get it working on my PC and my MAC. So far I like the product, but was a bit annoying that they called at different times than we agreed upon. It did not work on my PC with windows 10, nor did it let me reformat it to work on my mac. I followed all of their instructions online, and did a lot of research but nothing got it to work on either of my computers. I opened a case with Western Digital and they said they needed to call me to go over it. I told them when to call, but they ended up calling the day before while I was at work. I emailed back asking them to call me again another time, then never called even though they said they would. I have spent way too much time trying to get this product to work and it simply isnt worth it.

I had gotten this hard drive for my Xbox One and was concerned that the setup would be difficult, but it was INSANELY easy. For 2 TB, I am able to have all my games on my hard drive and easy to access using the Kinect. Additionally, the moment I plugged it in the Xbox gave me a prompt to set up the Hard drive which was simply giving it a name, naturally I went with Watson, due to my XBones increased capacity to remember and feel emotion. After that it asks if you want to use it as a default hard drive, and since mine was pretty full I said yes, so now all my games and everything downloads there. No need for additional outlets, takes only a minute to set up. Very satisfied with this purchase. (I would not go higher than 2 TB, because this will slow down the xbox, supposedly)

So far so good! I got up to a max speed of 108mb/s transferring from a Seagate 6tb to this little drive. My other barracuda Sata 7200rpm drives gave me about 30mb/s, same for USB2.0 WD-MyBooks; while transferring large videos to this drive. Been hooking this device up to my mx2-gbox & using Kodi to view all the files, music & videos on the passport, Videos played in Kodi have been playing smoothly and seeking doesnt cause any hiccups; it gets power from the mx2 usb port, which is great, this way i dont need to leave my PC on all night to stream from. This has to be saving me tons of money in electric, with the PC off all night. Ive only had this little gem for about a week but, Im feeling good about it. I bought a nifty little case for it that protects it very well, Id recommend it.

Pros: Works with USB 2.0 and 3.0, which is what you would expect. But its hard to find that info here. So there you have it. Come pre-partitioned for NTFS, with loads of government spyware for windows. I wiped it out and partitioned for Ext4 to use it for Linux. Works when directly connected to my Raspberry Pi 2 Model B without a hub (once I modified /boot/config.txt and added max_usb_current=1). Cons: The only thing I can think of to complain about is the activity LED seems like it should be on the opposite end of the drive as the cable, but it isnt. Its also illuminated when there is no activity, but blinks off and on when there is activity. Its also quite bright when you look right at it, though it doesnt seem to illuminate a dark room in an annoying way. The LED is white. WD My Passport 1 TB vs WD Elements 1TB I had a hard time choosing between this WD My Passport and the