(Old Model) WD My Passport Ultra 1 TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Auto Backup, Black

All I wanted was a rugged, high-capacity outboard hard drive to store certain files on--and I wanted one that was powered from the USB cable. This little Passport Ultra 2TB drive does the job perfectly, in a snappy, rugged, businesslike package that seems to be of very high-quality construction. You get 2TB of storage in a drive that is about the size of a deck of cards. Cant beat that. The drive was ridiculously easy to install; I just plugged mine in and my HP EliteBook notebook computer recognized it within about 20 seconds. A very minor but nice point--this drive has little rubber footpads so it does not just lie flat on ones desk. A nice little touch; some drives in this class do not have the pads. The drive comes with a short but adequate USB 3.0 cable and is all ready to go out of the box. Being USB 3.0, this drive appears to be VERY fast. It is certainly noticeably faster than my older USB 2.0 drive, but I have not run any rigorous benchmark tests. Overall I am very pleased with this purchase. The price/Terabyte was pretty good for what I paid on Amazon -- the prices fluctuate all the time on these drives, but I got a good deal. I got the Titanium colored version and I really like it. RJB.

And it comes in four different colors! First, most people can use extra storage these days. Secondly, everyone should have a backup drive any way. My Passport Ultra by Western Digital does both very well. This drive works well on both PCs and Macs, and as a Mac user, I was concerned whether this product would be fully compatible with OSX 10.9.1. Yes, you can buy this in a Mac-only version (also made by WD), which costs about $5-$10 more; or you can save the money by getting this one. I got this one. It wont work on a Mac right out of the box, but following the simple reformatting instructions made this drive fully compatible with my operating system. Apples Time Machine backup program works well with this drive, I have it backing-up my data twice a day. It has worked flawlessly during the three months that Ive had it, and anyone who needs 1TB of storage in a small, portable package should give this product a serious look. It comes with the USB cable and is compatible with both USB 3.0 and 2.0. It works quietly, with little or no noticeable vibration. The finish is solid and attractive. Other 1TB portable drives I looked at were priced about $10-$20 more than this one, so the net savings after FREE SHIPPING from Amazon was at least $20. When my storage need increases (hopefully not, but most likely it will), I will be looking at WDs 2TB My Passport Ultra at $108 and free shipping on Amazon. Until then, this one will do the job!

Bought two of these in Nov. 2013 (a black one for my laptop, a red one for my wife), both seemed to work fine since - until today. Still well within the 3 year limited warranty, mine died today. WDs own Utility software couldnt read the drive to give a diagnosis, but Crystal Disk Info showed 767 Reallocated Sectors (100 is very high), the drive began to randomly click today, and Windows 10 file manager recognized it only as Local Drive but couldnt access it at all. Thankfully it was used for backups only and I didnt have anything one of a kind on it. The irreplaceable stuff is on my wifes WD Passport - so now to get that off in case it fails too. In my book, a product review also includes service (including warranty) after the sale. In order to get an RMA, I had to call their customer service operators last night as the WD website got stuck and repeatedly asked for my address - although I had entered it several times previously. When i called I ended up w/Jose who, though efficient, was a bit terse and bordered on curt w/me a couple of times. Dont know where WDs CSRs are located, but heard a young woman laughing and talking loudly quite a bit in the background. Im sure that she was probably just in the cubicle next door and laughing with a customer but, when youve just had a catastrophic hard drive failure, you want calm and compassionate reassurance - not laughter. While waiting for Jose to do his thing and listening to the laughter, it conjured up the image of the old Discover Card This is Peggy commercial with the man in a little hut inside the Arctic Circle taking calls for USA Credit. So a little unnerved I was as I gave them my address and credit card info for what WD calls an Advanced RMA - wherein they ship a new HD immediately, put a hold on my credit card for $127 (a new model on Amazon is $89), and give me 30 days to ship the dead HD back, or have my credit card docked for the overpriced, new (supposedly) HD. Ill update the review when we see if I get a new model or the older (possibly refurbished?) model from 3 years ago... I was nice to Peggy, so hopefully the rest of the story will turn out well. In the meantime, the WD SmartWare isnt very smart. It doesnt automatically update (though the box is checked to allow updates...), and never were really sure if it was backing up. Turns out that the software hadnt updated on my pc since July 2015 (two versions ago), and my wifes situation was even worse... the WD software on her pc wasnt backing up at all, and hadnt updated since November 2014. So we ran several manual backups just to be on the safe side. Strangely, we discovered these software issues over last weekend and, concerned that we may have more WD software problems, had begun backups with Windows 10 Backup utility, which is much less intrusive and draining on the computer than the SmartWare Continuous backups. Then today my HD failed. Coincidence? Bottom line... not sure if Im too enthused about getting another Western Digital 2TB Passport Ultra for free or not... UPDATE March 2, 2016. Received a replacement hard drive for the one that died within 3 days. WD did a good job responding and shipping quickly. I would have been surprised to see a new HD to replace my dead one, and sure enough, the HD that they sent was EXACTLY like the one that I bought more than two years ago, and is clearly refurbished (says Recertified in Vietnam on the bottom). While the recertified part isnt a big deal to me as Ive bought numerous refurbed products over the years with excellent results (typing this review on a wonderful little refurbed Lenovo T430s ThinkPad...), the part that has irked me since getting the HD is that when I registered the new/recertified HD with Western Digital on their online portal and checked the warranty, I see that it expires at the end of May 2016 - whopping four months after it was sent to me - and six months short of the November 2016 warranty expiration of my old dead one! The least that WD could have done was to extend the warranty of the recertified HD until then...or I could extend it myself until 2018 for an additional $25. Bad business practices, WD. To their credit however, my fears of Peggy in the Arctic Circle stealing my credit card info or at least not crediting the $127 for a new HD were, so far, unfounded. The hold that they had placed on my card for the full, inflated price of the replacement HD has since been removed (because I sent the dead one back to them post-haste, and at my expense!). Overall, the first HD lasted only two out of the three years of the warranty. But WD did replace it with a recertified model. However, I had to pay to ship the dead one back to them, then got shorted six months on the warranty as compared to the original. Im not impressed with WD and wont be buying anything else from them. Hopefully I wont also be updating this review later this year because the recertified HD dies out of warranty. The barely three stars that Ive generously given will then fall like rocks.

I did a careful product analysis before I purchased this product. Looking for additional highly portable storage I had originally looked at installing a hard drive in my laptop optical bay using a spare 500GB 5400RPM HDD I had laying around. Unfortunately another laptop had a hard drive failure and it became necessary to use that spare drive as a replacement for the failed drive. At that point I was no longer sure how to proceed. The last time I shopped for external storage was 5 years ago. I bought a WD My Book at the time. 2 years later the enclosure took a nosedive but the drive was still good, needless to say that drive got transplanted into a new enclosure and is still running fine today, problem being it is pretty large (3.5 form factor), has its own power supply, and not very portable. So going into this process I was looking for something powered only by a USB connection, and preferably smaller than a thick trade paperback. Well, I was in for a bit of a surprise. The new portable drives were about as big as my iphone and all were powered by USB connection. Big plus for me. At that point it became a maximum dollar to storage to quality equation, with a optical bay HDD still being an option. Since I could do that for $65 or so and use an older 250GB HDD I had laying around that became a base line for my budget, however I wanted at least 500GB since I am busy backing up my media library, and wanted it handy for travel. Essentially the more storage the better. Speed was not so much of a factor, raw storage was, and since I run a machine with Ubuntu 12.04 the various manufacturer provided apps and encryption software for Windows or Mac were a complete non factor. So basically the biggest bang for my dollar is what I was looking at. Upon further research I discovered the best storage range was definitely items in the 1TB range. Not only were they the same size as 500GB solutions, they only cost roughly $10 more. 2TB solutions were thicker, and the price jump was much larger. 1TB it was. I narrowed it down to three choices. The Seagate Backup Plus, the HGST Touro Mobile, and the WD My Passport Ultra all priced at roughly $70. So why the Ultra? It fit all my requirements, had a smaller form factor, lighter weight, equal storage, similar price, best benchmarks, and I have had great luck with WD HDDs in the past. It arrived yesterday, took one minute to set up and less than half an hour to get all my data transferred. It is very quiet, and gives off very little heat. Pretty sturdy construction. I will definitely update this if any problems occur, but for now I got exactly what I was looking for, quickly, and at a great price.

First of all, I had wanted to purchase the non-ultra version of the WD hdd, but it seems they have phased out that version and consumers are now left with no other alternatives.. Prior to this, I had 2 other 1TB non-ultra WD hdd and Im no computer geek, so Im not going to go into the extent of comparing the speeds of transfer between this new ultra hdd and other hdds. I bought this hdd cos i ran out of space in other hdds, and as a storage device, this 2TB ultra hdd works as it should. In fact, WD is the only brand of hdd that I have trusted thus far and I had bought 4 other external hdd from wd, starting from way back in 2008 and Ive never had any problem with their hdd. In terms of build and appearance though, while the non-ultra version I purchased previously had their silver and blue color coming directly from the material used to make the hdd, the red color from this ultra version looked to be just a sticker that could be defaced in the future. Im someone who takes physical appearance of my purchased products rather seriously and this new design feature will take some points off my review score. Another reason why this ultra hdd only receives 4 stars, is that based on previous reviews of this product, I was expecting my purchase to come with a free soft pouch. But that is no longer true for my case and now Ive had to go through the trouble of purchasing another pouch...

I replaced my ailing computer with a cybertronics computer purchased through Amazon, it came with four 3.0 usb ports, and several other 2.0 usb ports. The purchase was to replace a motherboard that crashed. New peripherals were bought including 2 western digital Passport ultra 1 TB (both from Amazon), to back up the windows 8.1 machine. One was used by the Norton 360 program and the other using windows 8 back up (File History). I also purchased an external usb 3 dock (from Amazon), to house an internal hard drive that makes a continuous duplicate of my computers hard drive in real time. In addition, i had previously purchased an LG Super Multi Blue (from Amazon), that connects through a eSATA to 3.0 USB adapter (from Amazon). After adding an Epson 3640 printer (from Amazon), the keyboard, mouse, I had no remaining USB ports. I was tempted to purchase a Western Digital I cloud but worried about security in the cloud format. At this point, i wanted to be able to charge and connect with my smartphone and needed more ports. The Anker PCI-E box and instructions said it will instal to window 7, however i had a windows 8.1. the package was simple and the instructions was similarly so. Very to instal in less then a minute, after which i said that was it? when i turned on the computer, plugged in a peripheral, it worked even without installing the driver. Since the purchase, i moved my peripherals that where 3.0 usb to the Anker card, and it works perfectly without problems. Now all the peripherals, the multiple hard drives, printer, blu ray burner, cellphone, connects easily without plugging and unplugging. Transferring of data is dramatically faster then 2.0 usb. the pros regarding the ultra 1 tb external 3.0 is the small form factor, 3.0 usb fast connection, and the the warranty! This is important given that my previous drives failed within a year. I used the security software that came with the drive, works well enough on my computer, similar to other security software out there that require a passcode. It does what a drive is supposed to do. The color options are a plus too, since i have two of them, one for secure data other for media.

I recently purchased a new Dell laptop with the plan to add an internal hard disk for data and backup for the SSD disk that came in it. To my dismay, the battery in the laptop was the larger 91 Wh version instead of the 61 Wh version, and it took up all of the internal laptop space. I had no choice bu to use and external disk. I had an older model of the WD My Passport that was 1 TB and had a USB 2.0 port. I tried it on my new laptop and quickly remembered why I quit using it soon after I bought it. It was slow and the little USB 2.0 port on the disk end would just fall out of the port. When I received this new Ultra 2TB, I really put it through the ringer. Not only is the USB 3.0 connection solid (you have to pull on the cable to get it to come out), this disk is really fast. It only runs at about 35 MB/s when connected to a USB 2.0 port, but it runs at 110 MB/s when connected to a USB 3.0 port. I would not have gotten much more speed than that with a 5400 RPM internal disk, and I would have been limited to 1 TB because pf the laptop space and heat removal requirements. Another good feature is the small size. This new Ultra 2 TB is only slightly larger than my older 1 TB unit. I also like the red color that I selected. I will never lose this one among my laptop gear. It really stands out.

I received my WD portable hard drive about two months ago now and up to now I can say, So far, so good. I would certainly recommend this to anyone asking around for portable hard drives as there isnt a reason not to. I havent had any issues with the product that inhibit use, other than when occasionally windows falsely gathers the idea that the drive volume contains errors. Transfer speeds are up to par with what I would expect from my system, although its bound to vary on a hardware to hardware basis. It was worth it to me to pay the extra $20 or so (at the time of my purchase) for the auto-backup and 256-bit encryption features that work surprisingly well. I would still take reasonable precautions to handle the product carefully, so dont expect the device to take abuse even thought the build quality is reasonable, not premium. No portable hard drive is going to take damage well due to the delicate fast moving parts inside. TAKE NOTE, that if you intend to use this on networked school campus or workstation computers that block users from running applications from removable media, you will not be able to run WD decryption software. This means your hard drive may be locked until you can run the decryption software on a less restricted or personal computer or decrypt the drive beforehand.

Bought it back in May 2015 and its great. Works as expected on my Windows pc. I use it to keep my files on in case something happens to my computer. Still works fine. I think it was kind of hard to figure out how to manage on my computer at first and during installation but its actually very easy, on my computer I just plug it in drag and drop files like I would with a regular USB flash drive. I bought it for around 60 dollars so there are cheaper ones out there though. But not bad. One complaint I have is that Im not sure where to store it but I just keep it in a little cardboard box I have in my closet. Im forgetful though so I also have a tendency to just leave it out where ever haha, but it still is in good condition so its fine. Also I feel like it looks slightly different than in the picture but that may just be the lighting but to me the little circles on the front arent that bright or noticeable. Also in the pictures they have it might look a little bigger or smaller than it is, but its about 21 cm vertically, 9 1/2 cm horizontally, and 2 cm thick, and it comes with a USB cable thats around 48 cm long. So its kind of too big to put into a regular pocket but you could probably put it in a medium sized bag pocket. Though I do worry about the USB cable because theres not comfortable way to pack it with you without bending it all up unfortunately. That might end up being a problem in the future if the USB cable breaks but so far it is fine.