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

I am extremely happy with my first purchase of an external portable hard drive. I was up and running in no time. Ive been able to move my pictures and videos from my laptop to the My Passport external hard drive without any problems. Ive watched videos directly from My Passport without any issues. Some of the larger files take a few more seconds to load but nothing out of the ordinary. I will definitely purchase another.

Pros: - After falling from 2 meters it still works :) - Encryption Cons: - Its not SSD, so its slow and makes some noise - The built-in security software is not working properly and I needed to download the software from WD website, a non-technical person may not be able to deal with this situation.

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!

I used this drive for backup and extra storage capacity. It mostly lived on my desk with less than a dozen trips from home to the office. Until recently I worked fine, now it only works sometimes and needs to be replaced. Fortunately I have a cloud backup.

Bought this to use as long term storage for essential files including documents, photos and videos. Decision factors included cost/storage capacity, portability, USB 3.0 compliance, generally good user reviews and manufacturer reputation/track record. Have used an older 1TB My Passport external USB interface drive for about 7 or 8 years with no issues. Am expecting high-level of durability with appropriate handling and care. Of course time will tell. I never use bundled software on hard drives, and so cannot speak to this. On first plug-in this My Passport was immediately recognized on my Linux Mint 18.3 and 19.1 systems, which are primary production systems. It was not recognized immediately on Windows 10. It appeared in the connected hardware icon in the system tray, but not in File Explorer. Using Administrative Tools in Control Panel was able to assign a drive letter. That assignment now persists across reboots and the drive is recognized routinely in W10.

I bought two of these WD Passports. One was to replace my old WD 500 Gig external hard drive. The other I bought to attach to my Playstation 4 for external storage. No instructions were included in the box so had to go to website to download the software to install and configure. My only complaint. The second one for my Playstation 4 was even easier to connect and format. I can now not have to delete old games due to storage needs! Highly recommend!

Bought this in Sept 2018, it now will no longer do a back up. WD tech support is horrible! Would I buy again, well NO! Take your chances!

Working IT for decades, I always back up files to Flash/Thumb drives, but use this external drive as a clearing house... Especially while traveling. Laptops are something I go through like paper towels. Mainly, because I dont have the luxury of waiting for them to cool down before throwing them into its case. So, I Save As files onto the My Passport ONLY. Then transfer them (when I have time) onto a digital storage device. FYI, if the name wasnt already taken... they should have called it Timex (takes a licking and keeps on ticking)... Well, a hard drive ticking really isnt a good thing, but you get what I mean.

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.

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.