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

When I work on someones computer and see they have a lot of family photos, I MAKE them get on of these. People who dont back up are insane. Ive had people come to me with nearly dead hard drives, telling me they have the only pictures of loved ones whove passed away stored on those drives. Ive been lucky to recover some, but when I cant get their photos back its depressing. I try to warn people, but..... These WD Passports are great. I size them at about 4x the space people are using in their system. I use Windows Back-up and also manually copy over the Users Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music and Desktop folders before I do any work on the systems. Just in case. People usually dont worry until its too late, but me knowing I got the important stuff backed up lets me breathe again.

I bought this item for my sons xbox one. he was needing a hard drive to store all his games on. This hard drive comes with 2 Tg of memory which is way more than he will ever use. The price was really good on it and i love the size of it. it is small and stores well with his xbox one. here are the descriptions of the hard drive: Secure portable storage with up to 3TB capacity • Optional 256-bit AES hardware encryption • Automatic local and cloud backup • Stylish design with a range of exciting colors • USB 3.0 connectivity • Formatted for Windows, reformatting required for Mac • 3-year limited warranty I feel like this was a really great purchase for him and it does everything we expected!

This is my 5th WD Passport drive and my second WD USB 3.0 drive. There is hardly any difference between the 2015 version and the 2014 version drive - except for a few mm shaved off the external dimensions and a little faster read/write speed (updated firmware). I use my Passport drives to backup my data/documents. I backed up my 1 TB video archive at transfer speeds as high as 120 mb/s. Read speeds were also in the same range - 125-130 mb/s. This was extremely easy to use. I just plugged it in and followed the instructions in the User Manuals folder (ENG for English). After a quick download, I was able to set my back-up preferences (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) and then click and drag my files into the Passport. Although my iTunes are saved in the Cloud, I was even able to fit my extensive music collection on the Passport too. Excelente!

I wanted to replace my old external drive with this smaller one and to take advantage of 3.0 speed. Ive had good luck with WD drives in the past so the brand combined with the price and product reviews made this one my choice. Its a great deal for a lot of external storage. Its completely quiet, has a sleek modern look, and comes pre-formatted as NTFS. The only thing that may prove to be of concern is that there is no vents in the case to dissipate heat so I dont know is overheating may be an issue down the road. During my first full backup to the drive I did not detect that the plastic case was getting over-warm. I am optimistic that heat wont be an issue by reading the other reviews. I am very happy with my purchase so far.

I bought two of these drives to replace my current storage and backup drives for Adobe Lightroom (Im a photography student). One of those drives I was replacing was a 1TB My Passport Ultra that Ive been super happy with, so I decided my new drives would just be larger versions! These drives are super easy to use, they operate very quietly and, in my experience, are very reliable. They run cool, as well, and the USB 3.0 is lightning fast. The only reason I needed to replace my 1TB version was because I was filling it up too quickly - Im going to use that one now as a backup drive for another computer. Word of advice, though - make sure you attach these to a powered USB port on your computer. When I initially connected these, I wasnt able to format them (I use a Mac, so had to reformat and partition them before use) or anything because they werent getting enough power. But once I connected them to a USB hub with an external power source, everything was just fine. The drives has been humming along nicely since, and my files are all safely in place!

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.

I use this for docs, videos and pics backups from my laptop. Not sure if it has a program to assist, but I do it manually every so often. Still going strong after 6 years. Just found out I could use with my Samsung TV to view files/movies. Had to download WD Security application to remove password protection before it would be recognized by TV. Great product.

This backup drive does exactly what it says. No complaints, Perfectly satisfied, though it may not be as fast as advertised on some systems, including mine. On my computer, which is a 2014 era 1.86Ghz ASUS with 4Gb Ram, the process is a bit slow, even on a USB 3.0 slot. I used the included software to backup about 45 Gigs of documents, photos, and music for an initial trial. It took about 90 minutes for 45 Gigs. Thats about 1 Gig per two minutes, far from what some users report at 5 Gigs per second. This was on a USB 3.0 slot. So, just to warn you ahead of time, it may be pretty slow on low performance computers. Especially for large back ups. You can schedule backups hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly automatically, and the backup software that is included in this drive will update any information youve saved on your computers hard drive in that span of time. This is really convenient for me as a writer. I dont have to manually back up my files anymore. If Ive been working on a long file like a book for over a month, I can back up my whole document on the first backup, and then it will back up just the part Ive written since the last backup, in subsequent backups. For instance, I did my second backup today, and it was just 13 Megs of information that Ive added since my initial 45 Gig first backup. This second backup took about 40 minutes total. Backing up information can be done in the background if you want to work on other things while it is taking place, which makes the included software convenient. Just click one button for each subsequent backup, or if you have the Western Digital drive attached, it will backup at the specified hour, day, week, or month that you want to backup, automatically, with no click of a button.. You can initially choose which file paths and folders you want to backup. You dont have to back up your computers whole hard drive in automatic backups. In my case, I chose just Documents, Photos, and Music. As other users have hinted, the files are backed up on the Western Digital drive in a special file format with different file extensions than the source file on your hard drive. They appear in a bin folder on the Western Digital hard drive. Though not that obvious, they are still easy to find. Restoring backed up data is basically one click of a button as well, using the software included. I have not tried restoring data as yet. However, if you would rather back up your files manually and exactly as they are on your computers hard drive (same file names and extensions, etc.), you can do so just as easily as with any other USB drive. Simply copy the files directly to the Western Digital hard drive using your Windows File Explorer, like you would with any USB drive. Just out of curiosity, I copied my 45 Gigs of files manually a second time, not using the Western Digital backup software, but Windows file explorer instead. The process was painless and easy since Western Digital drive is formatted in NTFS, just like most computer hard drives. It only took 2 minutes for my computer to copy 45 Gigs of files directly to the Western Digital drive using Windows copy feature rather than Western Digitals software. This was on a USB 3.0 slot. So, it easy to use this drive with the included software, or just as a supplemental hard drive saving to it like you would any USB drive.

I own probably 20+ WD 2TB Passport USB 3.0 drives, of different models and colors, purchased over the past few years. I use these to store Disaster Recovery Image backups, both for myself and my clients. In general, I LOVE the drives and recommend them to every client that I work with. However, the two fuscia colored My Passport Ultra drives that I recently purchased, for one of my clients, are REAL DOGS! I often use Clonezilla to boot off a thumb drive and then use these USB Passports as the Image Repository, Ive been doing it for years without any problems. These two drives are such POWER HOGS that the LIVE Clonezilla OS cant even DETECT the drives when plugged into the desktops USB ports. Ive tested them on a number of different computers, using every available USB port (I understand that the rear USB ports often get more power, Ive tried them ALL!) Ive tried giving the drives longer for the OS to DETECT them, rebooting the OS repeatedly, everything that I can think of, and with the exception of only a couple of occasions, they have FAILED to be detected by the computer. (I then have plugged in an older version of the black WD 2TB Ultra drives and it works every time without the slightest delay.) Ive also noticed that the POWER LIGHT is very dim on these two FUSCIA drives, as comparred to my older black (blue, gray, silver, metal, and plastic) drives, of all sorts. After I boot into Windows, my computers can USUALLY detect these drives, but the power lights are still dimmer than others and dont appear to be nearly as quick and responsive. I dont know if I just got a couple of DUDS, or if the NEWER VERSION drives require MORE POWER than the older drives did. (I dont know if this has to do with the hardware encryption capabilities of these drives - which I never use, or really what is causing this problem.) I did notice on Amazon how some of the OLDER MODEL WD 2TB USB3 drives are actually selling for MORE MONEY (and are harder to find) than the newer VERSIONS of these drives, which I found ODD. I wonder if this is the reason WHY? Had I only purchased one of these drives, I would assume that it may be a fluke, but with TWO brand new identical drives performing poorly in exactly the same ways, Im less hopeful that I simply got a faulty product. Ill certainly call WD and see what they say. Either way, with over 1TB of data already on one of these drives (I had to use an OLD drive as an intermediary, but needed somewhere to transfer my clients images), it has been and will continue to be a PAIN to work with these drives, even if these drives are replaced and I need to migrate the data back off of them and verify the integrity of my images. Its all just a headache that I really dont need right now. For the foreseeable future, I believe that I will need to PAY MORE and wait longer to purchase the OLDER VERSIONS of this drive. This one just isnt cutting it! I know that these drives have historically been WONDERFUL, but buyers BEWARE, theres a NEW VERSION possibly looking to ruin your day! I hope that your experience is better than mine! (I would be interested in hearing from anyone with a SIMILAR experience with these drives, not promoting other products, but simply in regards to the VERSIONS of this particular product.) Thanks!

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.