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

Update 2/23/14 - Okay fellow Amazon shoppers. Im caving in to some of the comments that have been posted on my review and upping my star rating to four stars. Reason being that the price of this storage drive keeps fluctuating so much that its often a better deal than other, lesser drives out there. Ive also edited my review a bit to accommodate that. The drive itself has been working like a champ for me so far and Ive got no complaints there. However, Im still holding off one star due to most of the reasons I stated in my original review. The WD Smartware included software is still garbage despite recent updates/patches, and I stick to my story that the packaging is misleading to the non-technical. I had been using a Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB portable drive for about three years now, and wanted something with some more space and higher transfer speeds. I purchased this drive for its beefy 2 TB of storage space and speedier USB 3.0 interface. Out of the box, you get the drive, a 15 USB 3.0 cable, soft pouch, quick install guide, and a 3-year limited warranty. The drive looks nice, and appears to be of good construction. Doesnt look or feel cheaply made. I like how compact it is. Its about an inch shorter in length than my FreeAgent Go, and maybe a millimeter or two thicker. The included soft pouch is a nice addition and helps keep dust and dirt off of it. Not an ideal case solution if youre prone to dropping things or somewhat rough with your belongings, so you might want to invest in a more rugged case. It works fine for me though as I keep mine in a messenger bag when on the go, and its a nice addition considering most other drives dont come with anything. The included USB cable is long enough to plug into the USB port on the front of my PC and reach my desks surface. So, thumbs up there. Functionally, the My Passport Ultra 2TB works as advertised. Transfer rates are roughly 3x faster than that of a USB 2.0 drive. I noticed the difference in speed right away when transferring large files (1-5GB+), taking only 2-3 minutes instead of 5-10 minutes or longer depending on file size. I work with large media files all day long, so the bump up in transfer speeds is really nice. The drive is very quiet while running. You wouldnt even know that its on except for a tiny little LED indicator light to the right of the USB connector port. So, why only four stars? Hardware-wise, The Passport Ultra is no different from WDs regular Passport series of portable drives. Theyre the same exact drives, only slightly different in appearance. What the regular Passports lack from the Ultra is the soft pouch, the Ultra label, and WDs misleading labeling on the box that touts, Auto & Cloud Backup Plus Security. The Auto backup is merely referring to WDs abysmal backup software included on the drive, WD SmartWare (more on that later). The Cloud backup is basically instructions on the box for setting up a DropBox account. No kidding! Theyre advertising cloud storage on the front of their packaging like its a feature theyre offering. Flip the box over and youll see that its nothing more than an advertising gimmick for DropBox with instructions on how to set up an account. As for the included backup software, WD Smartware, they should consider renaming this to Dumbware or Stupidware, because it simply doesnt work. The software is supposed to keep your designated files and folders on your PC synced to your Passport, meaning, when a file is updated or a new file is added, Smartware is supposed to see those changes and update the files on your Passport the next time you sync. Unfortunately, the current version of Smartware has a bug where it doesnt notice any updated or newly added files and doesnt copy them to your drive when you sync, rendering the whole thing useless. People have been complaining about this on WDs support forum for a while now, and WD has yet to acknowledge its customers about the issue on the forums or address the issue with an update or fix. This is highly unacceptable! EDIT 2/23/14: Despite a new update for WD Smartware (v2.2.1, updated 11/25/13) which was supposed to, fix an issue where files are not backing up properly in some instances, it still does not function properly. After running the update, the software often hangs for too long or freezes up altogether. So, Ive given up on WD Smartware. I wish I could use Seagates Manager software with this drive, as I never had a problem with that software. In summary, the WD My Passport Ultra 2TB Portable External Drive is a really great drive. Its small, fast, quiet, and works as advertised. However, the drive retails for $30 more than the regular Passport model of the same storage capacity. All youre really getting for that extra $30 is a silly, soft pouch, Ultra labeling on the drive, and the feeling that youve been made a sucker for believing this product was anything more than it appeared to be. So save yourself a few dollars and get the regular Passport 2TB and put that $30 towards a better protective case. EDIT 2/23/14: Depending on when you purchase the drive, the price may be cheaper than other, lesser drives. In this situation my comment about the more expensive price would be irrelevant. If you find this drive on the cheap, by all means make the purchase. It is a great drive, especially at a bargain price! Pros: - Lots of storage in small, compact form factor. - USB 3.0 transfer speeds. Great for large media files! - Included pouch keeps away dirt and dust. - Included USB cable is long enough for some play. Cons: - Misleading labeling. - Same drive as the regular Passport, except for pouch and Ultra markings. - WD Smartware automatic backup software is garbage. Doesnt work as advertised! Use an alternate 3rd-party backup solution.

I ordered 2 WD Passport Ultra 1TB Portable external USB 3.0 Hard Drives with Auto Backup. The first drive worked properly on a new Dell 15-3521 Laptop running Windows 7 Professional, but when I tried to use the second WD Passport external drive on another Dell-3521 Laptop running Windows 7 Professional it would not install if the USB 3.0 cable was plugged into any USB 3.0 port on the Dell Laptop. After swapping drives and computers and cables around, it became apparent that the USB 3.0 cable that came with the second WD Passport Ultra HD is defective. The drive will install and be recognized on either computer only if it is plugged into a USB 2.0 port which defeats the purpose of having a high speed USB drive if it cant work at USB 3.0 speeds. Either drive will work with either laptop at USB 3.0 speeds on USB 3.0 ports if the non-defective USB 3.0 cable is used! All I really need is a replacement cable that works, but since Amazon.com LLC filled the order, I have not figured out how to request a simple replacement for the defective cable without having to return the entire order. I could use some assistant! Or, I can order another USB 3.0 cable which should solve the problem! I hope I hear from someone at Amazon about this!

A lot has already been said about this drive (over 4000 reviews) so I dont want to repeat everything from the beginning. This is a drive that performs well and is good for backing up your hard drive. I use it with a combination of a long USB 3.0 transfer cable and therefore I can keep the drive in a constant place (hard drives dont like to be moved around much.) and just connect the cable whenever I want it to backup. It is $10 more expensive than the comparable size Toshiba hard drive (I have that one too) and I think in terms of speed or other performance parameters there is not a significant difference. The reason why I paid that extra $10 to buy this one is the automatic backup software that is built in. If you have a windows operated computer and you want to use the drive for the purpose of backing up your actual computer, then go for it and pay the premium. That does the job and saves your valuable data and memories decently. It backs up as frequently as you wish and does not compromise the computer performance. (On a desktop computer I would leave it connected all the time, on a laptop I would connect from time to time because it is not easy to move around with a hard drive sleeking from one side.) Mac users do not need to buy this for the purpose of backing up. Time machine does a fantastic job and you dont need WD smart. Any hard drive would work for the purpose. Besides that, if your main goal is not having it as a backup drive then again I would for sure go for the cheaper toshiba drive and save $10. One criticism about the drive is that it gives a misleading information about the cloud backup service and the capabilities of WD smart (not very pro) software. To be able to use the software with full performance which allows you to backup to non WD drives etc, you need to buy another license. The so called pro software included is only good for this drive, which is okay but still needs to be mentioned at least as a fine print somewhere in the product description. Yet again for the dropbox stuff, you both need a high capacity paid dropbox subscription but also a paid version of the software. So the cool stuff they advertise in the product description is not actually that cool. In conclusion, if you like me only use it for physical backup and do not ask for fancy stuff, you dont miss much and I can recommend this device for that purpose.

Im not going to rate the software that comes with this drive. Ive not used it. I use Acronis backup software for sending my hard drive images to this device. The device in my hand was strangely not nearly as heavy as I anticipated. It has a satin feel (I guess I was expecting a gloss finish) which was unexpected, but not bad at all. The cord is very short that comes with it, but I store it in a hard case, and when it is plugged in, it sits right next to the port, so that matters not. This drive is very fast and lives up the advertisement of Western Digital. I love their products and have used them (almost) exclusively over the years. The only exception is my OS drive which is a Samsung EVO Pro, which I also cannot say enough about. The drive is silent in operation (at least I cant hear it over my computer) and stays cool, even after transferring video back and forth between it and my pc. I expect quality from WD, and they did not fail to deliver here. Im not sure why they have poorly rated software, but as I mentioned, Ive not used it, so Im keeping the rating to the device itself. For my needs, this IS the best external drive on the market.

My Passport Ultra arrived yesterday on time as promised by Amazon. The moment I opened the packaging, I was surprised to know that the photos dont do justice at all to how small and how really portable this drive actually is. For most of my life in the past 5-6 years, I have only used External Hard Drive which are 3.5” (these are not portable at all) and the reason was back then, they didnt have External Hard Drives for 1-1.5 TB, so I had to suffice with the bulky and Not So Portable Hard Drive to compensate for the additional space. But now that Western Digital and Seagate have started making Portable Drives with 2TB space as well, I couldnt be happier. It will easily fit in the palm of your hand and you can actually put it in your Jeans pocket as well. It’s very sleek, the exterior feels like really good quality (not flimsy or made of plastic) but it feels like heavy metal, which makes me really glad to know that the actual hard drive is safe inside the case. Now coming to the performance of this drive, I had never used USB 3.0 in the past. The External Drives I used were 2.0 and so was my laptop. But now since I have a new laptop which has 3 3.0 USB ports, I can really appreciate the speed of USB 3.0. I am aware that even USB 2.0 promises of speeds up to 450 MB/s. However because of System Hard Disk restrictions, it hardly crossed 30MB/s on my old system. After I used it with my new system, the performance was still as pathetic as with the old laptop (between 25-30 MB/s). But when I started transferring the data from my laptop to this Drive, whoaaa…. I got a speed of 123MB/s and I transferred almost 700GB worth of data within 100 minutes from my laptop to the My Passport, whereas with USB2.0, it would have taken me 10 hours or so. However, the only thing I found as a small con is the length of the USB cable that comes with it is really small (somewhere around 1.5 feet) but that’s easily solvable. Amazon has a really good quality Amazon Basics USB Cable - 3.0 A Male to Micro B with length of up to 3 meters (that’s actually perfect for me since it won’t clutter my desk). Apart from this, I cannot find a single flaw in the amazingly small, handy and awesome Portable Hard Drive. If you want something less expensive and abundant storage, definitely go for it!!!

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.

I loaded about 1TB of family pictures and church services, as well as a backup for my desktop computer. Two days later the product would not let me have access to any of the files. An email to the company gave me instructions to unlock the drive which did not work. Another email told me I could return it for another and they would send me an RMA. I said I had to retrieve the files first and they suggested I contact a 3rd party to retrieve as they could not help. After 12 days of trying, I was able to see the files, but retrieval was happening at only 2 to 4.7kb per minute when I could get anything. After a month, I figured it would take over 300 years to extract all the files. At this point I realized my files were gone and I decided to try to reformat the drive and wipe it clean, and send it back for a replacement. I was able to wipe it but Windows could not format it. The company emailed an RMA with a mailing address and said further instructions could be found online. I was not able to open these, but I had saved the packing material from their shipment to me and I sent it back packaged as they had sent this unit (and a second which works but is excedingly slow). Two weeks later it was returned, untouched with a note saying the warranty was being voided as It was not packaged according to the instructions (that I never got) ie; it wasnt in a static bag and in a box. Both units were shipped to me bubble-pack envelopes with no static bags. I feel the company has a lousy product and a warranty that is fraudulent.

i bought this around the end of 2014 and ive used it all these years to store photos, videos, and all kinds of files. it was a great investment.

My recently purchased Western Digital Passport Ultra 1 TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Automatic Back Up is really very amazing. You know how products that are advertised will say theyre this or that, then when you get them home, turns out the product is not only not living up to its advertised standards, but the company doesnt support you when the product does not perform. And the product will put you threw so many configuration changes youll wish you could throw that product as far from you as you can. Well this Western Digital Passport Ultra 1TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Automatic Backup is really the Mercedes Benz of USB Back- Ups for my Lap-Top (and I love Mercedez Benz cars). The minute I plugged this product into my Lap-Top, it instantly backed my files up, no question, no configuration laborious instructions. It did it so fast, till I had to make sure that what was going on by simply checking just went on and configured on my digital USB backup. As some of you know, Ubuntu (Ubuntu problem child) will be making changes to their OS service on July 31, 2014, I was concerned about backing my files in preparation for Ubuntus changes (talk about Ubuntu changes- a real headache) – well! I can forget worrying now in my file back ups on my Lap-Top. I highly recommend Western Digital Passport Ultra 1 TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Automatic Back Up – no fuss, no muss, no hassles, just plug it in, and it does the configurations file backups spontaneously. Really great product by Western Digital.

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.