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

Let me start my review by saying that I am your average reviewer with a solid understanding of technology but I am by no means an expert. The best review of this product has already been written by gravemind At the time that I am typing this review, Graveminds review was second from the top when sorted by most helpful Read that review.... it will answer many questions that I didnt even think to ask when I bought this. Okay, that said, heres my review.... I am giving this 5 stars based SOLELY on the fact that these store my photo files and have done so without incident for a few years now. I am a photographer with an insane number for photo files. I own about ten of these drives in both 1tb and 1tb sizes. I also own drives from other companies. I import my photos using lightroom and have them go to two of these drives. If I was smart I would have a third drive hooked up just to be safe, but alas, the USB ports on my current computer died a couple of years ago so I am somewhat limited. I know, I know, I could plug in a 3.0 hub. I just havent done it yet. So these drives store my photo files and they read and write very fast. I am almost afraid to type that I havent so far gotten any read or write errors because now probably my whole system will go to hell. Still, for now, theyre great. I have never managed to get their backup system to work for me and I suppose I should deduct a star for that but frankly I never really planned on using their backup system. It would be nice, but I cant at all figure it out. BOTTOM LINE: if you need solid feeling and performing backup drives and you dont much care about the bundled software, these drives are a five star experience. If you are looking for the software as well, look elsewhere.

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.

Im a big digital media junkie. I damn near have every show, movie, music, or piece of data on an extra hard drive. For the longest, I relied on 2 AC powered hard drives that I had gotten from NewEgg about 3 years ago. One was a 1TB the other a 500GB. These are nice options if you dont need to carry them around, which I did some times. It was a pain in the butt. Not to mention the added weight from a desktop sized hard drive, the case, cables, and the need to have a power outlet nearby. I began looking into USB 3.0 powered drives a few months back. I wanted it to be atleast 1TB, slim form, and of course, powered over USB. By chance, I found this hard drive while randomly searching around on Amazon. I purchased it instantly. Once it arrived, I hooked it up, wiped it clean and began transferring everything over to this bad boy. The transfer speeds were slow, I think that is my fault due to my USB 2.0 ports, but I didnt mind and I did this while I was asleep. This thing is awesome. I rarely remember that Im even carrying it, its really that light. The indicator light on this is located on the back(where you plug the cable in it) and isnt bothersome or insanely bright. During idle, it does a slow pulsating with more off then on. During load it blinks and flashes quickly. I havent heard any random clicks or sounds from the drive, which is really nice. The rubberized feet serve their purpose, but I can see them not having a sturdy grip. But, as long as youre stationary, I dont see that being a problem. The case itself has a nice texture that has some grip to it, feels sturdy and well put together. I got the black color, it matches my setups more than the other colors would have. The texturing gives it some depth and makes it pop, but not to much. All-in-all, Im very happy with this drive and will definitely look into another one in the future or a much larger one.

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 was deciding on either a 2TB from WD or Toshiba. I read reviews from reputable websites for both externals, but the WD My Passport Ultra seems to be just a little bit faster and more recent. With this in mind, I went with the Ultra over the Toshiba over Black Friday even though it was about 15 bucks more expensive. I also considered the aesthetics, and I like the design of the top of the drive. Even through research before receiving the product in hand, you cannot predict some aspects. I am rating this product four stars instead of five for three reasons: It may be a bit faster in some instances, but I did not notice it compared to my old 1 TB My Passport from 2010 which also uses USB 3.0. Number two, the build quality could be a lot better. When assessing build quality now for electronics, I always run a finger along the edges of the product where one external shell casing meets the other to look for abrasive edge contact. In this case, the My Passport Ultra uses two plates, and the user can feel the abrasive edge contact when handling the drive. This is not exactly poor construction in that it will fall apart. In fact, it seems to be built quite solidly. I simply feel that it could have been made a lot better. For future drives now, I may look for one entire external shell. My final criticism concerns the thickness of the external drive. It is a lot thicker than my My Passport from 2010. I keep on perceiving this thing as a brick in external drive form. I dont know what went inside to make it more thick from my previous drive from Western Digital, but I hate how it is so much thicker. Perhaps this is a consideration by the manufacturer after consumers reported damage from their previous drives that were not built sturdily enough. In conclusion, this hard drive works like it should, and I bought it at a good value. My complaints may be minor to some, but I would reconsider my decision in retrospect.

I just received this drive on 2/14/14 and have had an opportunity to work with it a bit since then. I got the Ultra to replace a 2TB external portable e-Sata drive that had died. Fortunately I had another identical/redundant e-Sata drive that I used to copy all the data to this WD Ultra. All in all I copied around 400GB and what I found was very interesting indeed. I have a Lenovo W510 which has e-Sata, USB 2.0, and USB 3.0. That enabled me to compare apples and apples and oranges to oranges when it came to transfer/copying speed. Using the e-Sata drive and the WD Ultra hooked into the USB 2.0 port of the W510 I got copy/write speeds around what Id expected -- 14MB/sec, +/-. When I then switched to the USB 3.0 port the speeds doubled -- to an average of 28MB/sec, +/-. It varied slightly depending on the size of the files, but overall, I was able to confirm that the speeds definitely and consistently doubled using USB 3.0. I was very pleased. Some notes: 1. I was not interested in any of the software included with this drive. All I wanted was a hard drive that Windows would recognize and nothing more. So the first thing I did after plugging it in was copy all the included software to another partition (as a strictly precautionary measure in case I ended up needing any of it, which I did not, btw). I then reformatted the Ultra, effectively erasing all of the included software and/or programs. I double checked to see if there were any hidden drives, and I found none. (Its possible that if Id installed all of the accompanying software a virtual drive might have been created. But after reformatting the drive and not installing anything, all I got was a nice big storage drive, which is exactly what I wanted.) I then created two partitions to suit my needs -- a large one around 1.5GB, and a smaller one around 300GB. 2. I did not use the included USB 3.0 cable. Instead, I used THIS cable:

I was looking for a nice 1TB drive to use as a backup for pics, videos, files, etc. I had a 250GB that I never thought Id fill up. Right. The Good - this will work if thats what you need. It runs pretty fast, and so far, no problems. The Bad - if youre looking for a drive to back up files, do NOT run/load any of the programs. I fell for this, and it was hours that I cant get back. You dont need to do this unless you are using this drive as a auto-backup - in the sense of, if your computer crashes, you can plug into a new one and this will put everything back as you need. Since this isnt what I needed, it caused me some heartache (and a lot of time). The ugly - its cheaper to get elsewhere. I got it for $65 - still a good price, but its now up to $69, and Ive seen it elsewhere for $59 (pretty consistently). Still, 4 stars since it (now) is doing exactly what I needed it to do. -1 star for the hassle.

I have been a loyal Western Digital user for years. Every hard drive I have ever bought has been WD. This drive had many negative comments describing drive failure and poor customer service. I wrote it off as other people doing things wrong. After 6 weeks of use (only about 6-18 hours a day), the drive suddenly failed. One afternoon it began making the clicking noise hard drives make when they fail. I immediately disconnected it, and let it cool to room temperature, even though it was only around 100*F when it died. When I plugged it back in later, it started up and allowed the Unlock program (which is hosted on the drive itself) to run and accept my password. It will then display a newly attached drive connected to my computer, but no information will ever load about it (capacity, free space, etc.) even if I leave it for two hours to sort itself out. The WD drive utilities program only gives an unspecified drive failure error code. Put simply, my drive failed with no warning. Shortly after the drive failed, I contacted WD via their websites forms. The next day I received an email outlining my two options, both of which were for a same-item replacement. I had had a long, rough day at work and didnt feel like explaining why I didnt want a replacement, so I saved it for the next day. The next day (19 hours later), I received an email stating that since they were unable to contact me via email that I was going to receive a phone call from them. I replied and said I did not want a call, and that if I wanted to talk on the phone I wouldnt have used the website, and said I would contact him later. I quickly got another email telling me my case had been suspended until I was ready to deal with it. Highly irritating. When I emailed and explained why I didnt want to trust my data to a device that had already failed on me once and countless times to other users, I was told there was nothing else they could do for me. Do not buy this drive. The best portable drive according to several reputable consumer electronics reviewers is the Seagate Backup Plus, which is only $10 more than this one. I am ordering one on payday. I suggest you look at one of those instead. Do not buy Western Digital. I never will again.

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.

I bought this for my desktop PC and it works great so far and thats an important point. The real value of this product is whether it keeps my backups safe and I really wont know the answer to that for a few years. Setup was easy; its default setting is to copy everything under the USERS folder on your C drive thereby copying documents, music, video, downloads, favorites, etc. You can manually adjust the settings if you have some custom folders you want to include. I didnt bother upgrading to the Smartware Pro, the one that comes with the unit works fine. UPDATE 6/25/2015: Works fine, but something I didnt realize originally is that it backs up the data but it is not a mirror image. What I mean is that the Backup Drive does not delete anything it has previously backed up whether youve removed from your C drive or not. For some, that might be a feature you want if youre looking for something you deleted 6 months ago and want to recover it. On the other hand, this backup drive will continue to grow keeping copies of every obsolete document you create. If you ever use it for recovery, youll restore all that junk also. Ive been occasionally scanning my backup drive and manually deleting stuff I know I dont want anymore.