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

Update 5-2016: Updated my computer to Win10 and have had no problems with this device. Also managed to buy a longer USB3 Y cable for this at a going-out-of-business Radio Shack for several dollars. ----------------------------------------- Works as advertised. Bought this to backup files and photos from a Dell computer running Win7. This external drive requires no plug-in power supply; it runs off USB power. A nice feature lacking from many external drives. My computer recognized the new drive immediately. Basic setup took less than five minutes. This drive can be encrypted, which I did. This took an addition several minutes. I did not set up multiple partitions, sticking with just one. With multiple, you can encrypt one partition without having to do them all. So far a good performer (3 months so far) and a good price. Only complaints: (a) the USB cord is only 17 inches long, limiting placement in and around the computer, and (2) the USB cord that attaches to the drive is one of the new USB3 mini Y connectors (power and data are split out), so a little more costly to buy a replacement cord if you lose this one. I couldnt find a replacement cord listed on the WD site, but theyre starting to show up on Amazon and other sites.

My 5 star rating is for the Western Digital hardware. It seems that previous reviewers had problems with USB 3.0 and with the WD Smartware Pro software. But there is no good reason to use either of these. I have my drive plugged into a USB 2.0 port and I dont have a performance problem. There are many free backup software applications. I am using Microsofts Sync Toy. Works great. Right now I am doing backups when I feel they are needed. But the Sync Toy directions tell you how to automate this using Windows timers. My OS is Windows 7. I just plugged the WD hard drive into an unused USB 2.0 port and it was recognized right away with no messing around. Then I started up Sync Toy and set it up to backup the contents of My Documents to the WD and then kicked off the first backup. (I have 45 GB worth of pictures in My Documents so this took about half an hour). I find it amazing that you can purchase 1 TB of storage for $65. My association with the computer industry goes back to the early 1960s when 25 MB cost my company several hundred thousand dollars. Hats off to all those smart American engineers who made this happen over the last 50 years!

What a great value for $70..wow. You cant beat that price. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside knowing that my Macbooks time machine will auto backup to this. I am a tech guy and Ive always told everyone to backup, backup, backup, but I never did myself. Does that make me a hypocrite? Lol. At any rate, for people that are less-tech savvy using a mac, when you first plug it in, just tell your Mac to use it as a time machine disk, then go to system preferences , and look for time machine and make sure its turned to the on position on the left and theres a little checkbox at the bottom of the screen that says show time machine icon in menu bar. I compel you to do that so you can simply click on it and press backup now, when you want, but keep in mind, Mac does it for you once you set it up. If you have anymore questions about time machine, just go to Google and type in time machine Mac with no quotes or just go to Apple.com and type HT201250 into the search area on the top right of the site, you can also type that into Google and it will also pull it up. *I was no compelled by any entity to write a review on this hard drive, the information provided was strictly my own, unless otherwise stated.*

I received the WD My Passport Ultra 2TB external HD this evening. I connected it to my 3-month old Dell XPS 850 / Windows 8.1 computer, which immediately recognized the device and displayed a directory for all the files on the HD. Unfortunately, the directory began to flash on and off at random intervals. Undeterred, I installed the WD software provided on the drive, and I waited patiently after being told that more up-to-date software was available on line, and waited longer as replacement software was installed. It was only with great difficulty that I managed to register the new product with WD, because the constant disconnecting and connecting of the drive made it difficult for the registration program to accept my typed name, address, email, etc. I then followed the instructions provided after the installation and product registration was complete and re-booted my PC. Alas, installation of the newest WD software and rebooting made no absolutely no difference. The WD HD continued to connect and disconnect rapidly but randomly, preventing me from backing up any data onto my new WD external HD. I searched WD support pages to find a diagnosis for this problem (which has been reported by at least 7 other WD My Passport Ultra 2TB external HD users. I implemented a couple of the proposed fixes, but none worked. After 45 minutes of experimentation, I gave up, physically disconnected the failing WD external HD and replaced it with my older (but full) WD external HD, which worked flawlessly. I removed the newly installed software, re-installed and then updated the software provided with my older WD external HD, and requested that Amazon accept my return of a defective HD, a request that was promptly granted by Amazon. It is conceivable that the apparently defective device works, but is somehow incompatible with my new Dell PC or the Windows 8.1 OS or some obscure default setting in my PC or Windows 8.1 OS. But I am not an engineer; WD does not provide anywhere on its website a straightforward explanation or fix for the problem, and I do not feel it is the responsibility of the user community to engineer a fix for this or any other problem in connecting an external HD to a standard, plain vanilla PC. I hope I can find another 2TB external HD that will serve as effectively as my older 1TB WD external HD as my main backup device. (By the way, the WD-supplied backup software, even on the older, perfectly functioning WD HD was crap. I used the Windows Vista OS backup software for backup on my old PC, and it was much more intuitive, straightforward, and dependable.) UPDATE: 12-23-2013 - After returning this item, I went to a specialized store and obtained recommendations for an external HD. After discussing the alternatives with a knowledgeable expert, I purchased (at his recommendation) the very same WD My Passport HD model that earlier failed. His comment was: All hard drives will fail someday, and a small percentage will fail immediately. Yours happened to fail immediately. He thought the WD Ultra HD offered the best combination of speed and simplicity; he uses it for his own personal laptop PC. I brought the new HD home, hooked it up speedily and without incident, and it has worked fine for a week. In fact, I restored a defective file onto my home PC with very little effort. Well see how long it lasts. So far so good. UPDATE: 04-03-2015 - The replacement WD external HD still functions well and without serious errors. One small problem is that my PC occasionally loses the external HD. That is, even though the HD remains connected to the PC, the PC no longer recognizes that it is connected. The problem is easily dealt with, however. I physically unplug the connection and then plug the external HD in again, and the device functions without incident.

Ive written many reviews for Amazon, and count myself a B or B+ when it comes to matters technical. Ive never had any problem with Western Digital external hard drives--I own five--or with the SmartWare backup system. However, I plugged this item in yesterday. As has always been my experience, auto-backup went smoothly and was complete. Just now however, for the first time in--what? eight years?--I had a blue-screen event. I didnt even know these were possible in the modern age of PCs. It took one anxious forever for Windows 7 Enterprise to recognize the issue, and when it did, I got the message to remove any external devices and start your computer again or words to that close effect. I removed this WD drive and restarted. Restart happened without issue, and Im using that computer right now. Im very disappointed here, because Ill need to wipe this WD drive (hoping no blue-screen happens while Im doing so) and return it, and now Ill have to think seriously about ever buying another WD product. Ill probably contact WD customer support to see if they have a resolution to this problem, and if they do Ill change this rating and update this review. For now though, I think its appropriate to post a warning about this product. And if you do have that blue-screen moment, do not panic. Just remove the drive and start over. Your computer is not dead! Update July 16 2014: WD support was excellent and detailed. I received a prompt reply. Tech support proposed that I had a faulty cable and sent me a new one free of charge. I did as directed and reinstalled SmartWare. As before, backup was fast and complete. Everything now seems to be going smoothly, after a week of use. In brief, THIS EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE SEEMS OK. I wish I could write more convincingly, but only time will tell. As noted above, Ive never had issues with my other five WD drives, and in fact use them with my PCs and on the MacBook Air my university provided me. This is the only one that seemed to create issues. WD tech support told me it was highly unlikely an external hard drive could create blue screen issues, but in the bad old days that was not my experience. For example, it use to take Vista 25 minutes to boot, until I realized it was searching my 1TB WD external hard drive for the OS before it searched the internal hard drive. Bad things do happen with good external hard drives. And really, can it be coincidence that my first blue screen in half a decade happened upon restart after installing this drive? Of course the answer is yes, and though we see other complaints here in the one-star department, they all revolve not around blue screen, but around drive failure. Hey, there is a spinny disk in these things still, and spinny disks are prone to failure. Ill update again if I have further issues with this hard drive. But contrary to some reports here, WESTERN DIGITAL TECH SUPPORT IS EXCELLENT. I have always found it to be so.

Flawless. Just load this up with all your photos and documents. (Highlight folders, right click, hit send to WD Passport or highlight and drag.) It can take whatever you give it pretty much unless you are decades behind this holds a ton of data. No clumsy CDs or DVDs to store! Delete, add upload download, it works perfect and as easy as working from a folder, file or destination on your pc. Just plug in the USB cord to your pc and get going. I own two of these and a great feeling all my photos/documents are safe and secure as with two I can store them in separate locations in case of fire or disaster. Burning CDs suck, this is the way to go. Oh and just take this palm size device to any WalMart or any photo processor, plug it in and select and print from all your folders. Such a great feeling to have everything stored and not afraid of a glitchy pc dropping everything.

I,m a semi elderly computer user of average tech savvy, so if I can setup and use an external hard drive anybody should be able to. The WD Passport ultra with one TB memory is probably much more memory than Ill ever need, but for the difference in price I went with the 1TB. Setup instructions I found by Goggling variations of “ installing passport external hard drive” was much more useful to me than the included user guide. I studied both before starting. Once I started I had it ready to go in just a few minutes. When I first got this new Windows 8 computer a few months ago, during setup and initialization it guided me thru creating an “operating system recovery partition” and copying it to a USB drive. With a little exploring I found I could also copy a O.S. Backup to the passport. I think I read in the user guide where passport would not do that but by all indications it did. Guess Ill know if I”m ever unfortunate enough to try and use it. Cant ever have too many backup plans. I got all my documents and photos copied to the pass port, then to verify success I took it to a friends computer and viewed what was on it. Every thing was there. I didnt set up the automatic back up software because my plan is to keep the passport disconnected and stored in a safe place and bring it out and update whenever I feel the need. My reasoning for this is if I ever get a virus or malware and the backup hard drive is connected it will be compromised also. I had been watching several venders for a device like this for a of couple months and was about ready to use USB drives for data backup which for no more data than I have would have been sufficient, but when I found this passport at Amazon for around $70 with free shipping I went this route. I also needed an Ethernet cable hub to hook up a VOIP phone but Amazon had a wireless router with four LAN connections on sale so I went with it. Now if I ever need a wireless connection Ill be ready. If you are reading this then you must be thinking about data backup. So remember, when dealing with technology sooner or later Murphy s law is going to bite you. So however you decide to do it – BACKUP-BACKUP-BACKUP.

Good product and it’s worth the price!!!!!

Works as advertised, easy to set up. My only concern was that it initially took over an hour to do the original backup, and the software doesnt have a progress indicator to show how its progressing. I was VERY tempted to call customer support, but I left it running for over an hour and when I came back to the computer it was done. Of course, subsequent backups only use recently modified files, so they are almost instantaneous. I have the software set to automatically back up my files daily, which is more than enough for what I am working on. The only other comment Ill make is that the software could be more user-friendly. Most buttons have self-explanatory words on them, but the most useful button has only a clockface icon on it, again making it confusing to use and leading a novice (like me) to be a bit frustrated. Once I understood how it worked I was quite happy with it. Noiseless, never fails and plugs into a USB port in the back of your computer. Also, files may be OPTIONALLY encrypted. Lastly, the software allows you to restore files to your existing computer OR to another one if your original one is down (this is important).

I have four of these which I use for backups. They are very convenient since they are small and they run off of USB power. I do not use them as portable storage so I cannot speak to how they respond to rough handling. My oldest Passport, a 128 Gig FAT system, recently stopped working so I bought this one to replace it. The old drive is probably 10 years old, and disks wear out, so no fault to WD for the failed drive. That is why we keep backups of backups. The disk has a USB 3 interface and a standard USB 3 cable. My computer has only a USB 2 interface, and this drive works fine with it, albeit at the slower USB 2 data rate. The file system on the drive is NTFS. My computer is running Mageia 3 Linux, and the drive worked fine with it right out of the box. There was nothing extra to install (e.g. drivers). Since I run Linux, the auto-installs and auto-backup software and all that other software does not run. That is fine with me since I did not want to use it anyway. I wrote my own backup software, and I like it better than the commercial stuff. Since I do not use this drive on a Windows platform, I cannot speak to the quality of the software contained on the disk.