WD 2TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBS4B0020BBK-WESN

Nothing special about this drive. It failed after 9 months, so I had to pay $11 for RMA shipping to California. Received a new drive 6 days later, no big deal. I use it for Time Machine, backing up my laptop and an external SSD for photos. I use 2 other old hard drives for backup, and Backblaze for cloud. Its 2019, so Id strongly recommend to: 1) encrypt this drive, and 2) use this in conjunction with SSD storage drives. Or just use it as a tertiary backup, eg. format for Time Machine and forget about it. Backup your backups!

Well, so far its working fine and Ive had it for over 6 months now, but going through the reviews has me in constant fear of when it decides to stop working. Hard Drives arent really made to be moved around so I try to keep it on a level surface and stationary when using it. My plan is to buy a SSD external drive when Ive got the money and opportunity and use it as a secondary backup. As for now, I say if youre willing to be careful, then its a worthwhile buy.

Just plugged it in, ran the backup utility, and set up my backup schedule. Came back later and tested single file and folder restores, and they worked easily just as you would hope. I like it, it just ticks along in the background, keeping my data safe from a disk failure. I may buy another and do an off-site rotation once a month just for safe keeping. No cloud needed, yay!

Dont buy this if you are a Mac user and not super tech-savvy. I bought this thinking that it would be compatible with my Mac (since it came up on a search for external hard drives for Macs...), but I guess I should have read the fine print better. When I plugged it into my computer Timeline said that it wasnt compatible. I tried to reformat the hard drive for my Mac using Disk Utility and directions that I found online but I wasnt able to because I kept getting an error message saying that the external hard drive was in use, even though ALL other programs were closed and I couldnt find anything that could be using it (even after disabling spotlight)... I gave up and figured Id just return it, but then I couldnt eject it from my computer either because it said that it was still in use. After consulting online for a long time, I saw that a lot of other people have this same problem. I had to turn off my computer to take out the hard drive. No way do I want to keep a hard drive that I have turn off my computer every time to eject.

This little pocket style drive is about as good as these get. It is simple to use. Plug and Play. Any method for copying or loading files to a hard drive works well. I do have one little thing that bothers me but it may be software/system related. If I am copying a lot of folders that contain many files, the data transfer rate slows down. I have found tat the drive is fastest when transferring large files and very few folders.70 MB/sec avg. transfer speed. I play large 1080P video files straight from this drive without a single issue. For 2 TB of storage for such a low cost, I had to give this drive an overall 5 stars. I have dealt with Western Digital one time on a broken drive under warranty. They treat customers very well and do whatever they can to keep you happy. I phoned them, reported the issue and had a new drive within a few days.

I cant tell you how much of a difference this fantastic product made for my PS4 I think I have a total of 19/500 GB on my PlayStation and 1.2 TB on the external hard drive that = gaming Shangri la and flexibility waiting on DL stinks and so does long loading screens. No better accessory, just buy it quit reading reviews!

Just wanted to point out that all of this took place about 2 years ago, but I never got around to writing the review until now. It stopped working after a few months of usage. One day the drive wouldnt let me put anything else on it and everything I had on it could no longer open. I even ended up buying some really expensive recovery software to try to get my data back, but no luck. I then ended up formatting the drive which made me lose everything I had, but it wasnt life or death type of data so I just lived with it hoping that the drive would finally start to work again, but nope. I later contacted the Western Digital support team through their website which was a long and tedious process and tried to get a replacement through warranty. I had to pay to send my drive back and the new drive that got sent to me after a few weeks didnt work either so I honestly just gave up. It was just a painstaking process to go through and I just didnt want to go through it again. I ended up buying an external SSD from PNY instead which was way more expensive, but also way more reliable and has been working great for me for the past 2 years. I heard good things about Western Digital from other people, but because of this experience I wont be buying from Western Digital ever again.

I tried other makes before being advised by a knowledgeable friend to forget about the others and just get a WD. Lo and behold. I plugged this beautiful baby into my phone which immediately recognized it (unlike the others) and asked if I wanted to configure it. I concurred and ... bingo. No instructions and computer connection needed. My only complaint is that it does not appear to have a safe means of ejecting it after use. I called WD about this and was informed that the discrepancy came about because the unit wasnt really designed for use on anything but a computer and that to safely eject I should shut off the phone before disconnecting. No biggie. Easy peasy. Its been a love affair from the time i plugged it into my SG S8 and saw that it was a match made in heaven. Its even more fun to plug them both into my laptop and start transferring and copying files from one to another. So cool.

2 TB is plenty for storing personal documents, media files, and etc. Its a hard drive, not an SSD, so handle it gently. If youre trying to add this as a network drive in Windows 10, you may have to enable SMB 1 in the Windows Features depending on the Windows update version youre on. Write speed was up to 110 MB/s for me over the network when copying large video files that are several gigs big. Note that the write speed does drop when youre copying over a lot of small files.

I am a professional photographer and I do use a lot of external hard drives for my image back up. These are new kind - they are thinner and lighter than a previous versions. Always reliable, if you treating them with care. Great value for your money. Little tip - always keep your all your important files on 2 externals simultaneously and keep those 2 external hard drives in a separate locations.