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

Thank God i picked up this little guy, my computer got messed up and i was able to get everythign back because i had backed up everything just a few days ago.. Anyways, on to the review: Ok so i did my research before buying and went with Western Digital since i had already owned a previous external hard drive from them and know of its reputation. The price was perfect and I got a good deal of Amazon. I personally did look around and I dont think you will be able to find a better deal than the one Amazon is curently providing.. This portable hard drive is so light , im amazed how far these things have come.. it feels like it weighs less than my smart phone! The drive is pretty fast and has plenty of storage with the 1 TB option.. I usually dont install the software that manufacturers send with their devices but i thought why not, I was so impressed that this drive actually backed up my whole PC, and that too just the way i wanted it to and im sure most people would want, all the pictures in a seperate folder, music in another documents in another , videos in another... I mean it blew my mind, i just watched it do everything on its own and it barely took any time.. I backed up my own laptop and my wifes laptop the same day and it did it quickly and everything is well organized.. I would also recommend you to look at the Amazon Basics Case for this drive, thats the one i got and its fits perfectly..Highly recommend this drive to anyone.. Extremely easy to use.

When I worked for a former employer in Austin TX in the 1990s we had an expression - Backing up a computer is NOT an option! That axiom is as true today as it was in 1991. Additionally, a technical support representative from Buffalo Technologies made the recommendation to me five years ago that the more valuable or important that the data is, the more back ups that you should have. This relates to data redundancy. I am a tax preparer and have about eight separate back up devices in my office. WD continues to produce reliable storage devices. I purchased the 1 TB version of this product which coincides with the HDD capacity of my desktop computer. The WD software that comes with this product is very user-friendly and intuitive. Initial configuration is relatively simple. It connects to an available USB port on your PC and virtually no intervention is required by you after the initial set up. My configuration includes regular queries for software updates and when available, they have all been seamlessly installed. In a nutshell, this is an excellent and very wise investment for anyone.

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.

Well, I was really excited to have all my file & system image backups on a single drive, without a wall wart and in a portable small form factor (I never move it as it is connected to a desktop system). Unfortunately, after 3 months, it started whining, then grinding and clicking and now it comes on only 5% of the time, regardless of the computer it is hooked up to - I thought it was the antique of a PATA drive I had connected to the motherboard making the noise but it wasnt. WD Drive Utilities says the SMART status passed, CrystalDisk Info says it failed and the Quick Drive test in the WD Utility says it failed. This just reinforces the need for a complementary Cloud backup solution or a second backup drive. This drive was Made in Thailand so who knows if it was made with the equipment that got affected by the flooding in the past. Usually, I only go with WD Black hard disk drives due to their well known, industry reliability and warranty coverage. I would just buy that with an external hd case but Im already invested in this drive now. Hopefully the replacement is new and works like expected. UPDATE: Since I had files on there that I wanted but wasnt willing to pay $500-$1000+ for data recovery services, I tried doing a PCB swap with a donor board and firmware transfer since that seemed like an inexpensive possible fix (pros did the firmware transfer). When that didnt resolve the situation, I had another 2TB WD My Passport Ultra around and I opened up that case to see what is involved with a potential platter swap (that didnt go well either). While doing so, when I opened up the new Passport Ultra, I noticed it specifically said on the drive Recertified!!!! I cant believe it. Seeing this only reaffirms my thoughts on just buying an external hard drive case and OEM HDD together and using that instead because otherwise, you dont know what you are getting. I still will use the WD Blacks as they have never failed me and I am very impressed with their performance and warranty. Also, for backup, I will stick with the 3.5 size as now I know, with everything so miniaturized on the the 2.5, recovery seems a little more challenging (which I will do what I can to even prevent that from being needed again).

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

The first one that Amazon sent me was black, not titanium as I had ordered. I wanted a slightly different color than the black one I already have so I could differentiate the two. The box it came in said it was a WD My Passport Ultra but printed on the drive was only WD My Passport and it was also printed in the other direction, readable from portrait (or vertical) orientation rather than landscape (or horizontal) orientation. I thought that was little odd, but decided that it would help me to differentiate the two after all. So, I hooked it up to my windows 7 install and windows attmpted to load drivers for it but after a minute or so it failed. No problem, I thought, Ill just plug it in to my Mac and format/partitition it there as I had done with my other My Passport Ultra drive. Nope. That didnt work either. Mac OS X Yosemite couldnt do it either and I couldnt even erase it to start fresh. It simply didnt work. I googled the error, thinking I could fix it with some command line process and found instructions on running FSCK to resolve it. I decided not to bother with that additional pain, because what if it still didnt work? Having ordered it from Amazon, I figured the best thing to do was to return it and ask for a new one. So I returned the first one, explained that it was dead out of the box. And Amazon promptly sent me a replacement. (Another reason I LOVE shopping from Amazon - aside from Prime - is that it is always fairly painless to return things). The replacement arrived 2 days after I submitted my return claim and one day after I actually put the dead drive in the mail to send it back. The replacement was exactly what I had ordered - it came in the correct color - Titanium - and it has the printing on the drive just as shown in the picture (horizontal orientation). I plugged it in to my Mac and had absolutely no problem partitioning and formatting the drive to my specifications. it works perfectly so far and will be used as the backup for my other My Passport Ultra. I am only taking off one star because of the first dead drive that I got, but really if the rating is for the drive that I have now, its definitely a 5star.

If you are looking for a menu-driven backup system for your computer files that will run automatically in accordance with your pre-determined schedule, then this is the product that you are looking for. It will back up your entire system including Windows and all associated files on a regular basis, running in the background and not interfering with your programs currently running in memory. Once it backs up your entire computer system (this may take several hours, but you can continue working until it does so), then it will update your files on a regular basis. I chose to update my entire system twice a week, removing the external hard drive from the computer and storing it in a cabinet; thus, I am assured that if my system is assaulted in any way, I have an unaffected backup that can completely restore all of my work done during the past week. Purchasing the Amazon Basics Hard Carrying Case offers additional protection while your hard drive is in storage or during transport if you use this product in that manner. Be certain, however, not to cheat yourself on memory. Computer programs are becoming larger and larger, requiring more memory and storage space than ever before. Look to the future, and give yourself some extra wiggle room when it comes to your file storage needs.

I told in another review, believe it was of the AmazonBasics USB hub, that I live in an area prone to power outages. This is especially true in spring/summer. We seem to have a daily thunderstorm that rolls through right around 5 PM. I primarily work as a construction engineer and keep all of my files, blueprints, receipts, appointments on an external hard drive. I spent most of March of this year, having clients calling me and asking, Could you give me the exact price you charged me? and What time are you supposed to be at my business tomorrow? Well, my external was a Western Digital Elements, it required AC power. So, when the power was out, I had to say either, Dont know, cant access my files or Im not home right now, but will check as soon as Im there. It was becoming very frustrating. Im also a neat freak and my work desk at home was getting cluttered. I had seen these Passports for years, but there were always a lot of reviews that talked about failures. The Elements version hadnt gave me a single problem, so I come from the if it aint broke dont fix it group. Then I saw these Passport Ultras and there were enough positive reviews to make me buy one. With this little hard drive, Ill be able to access anything I need for work as long as my laptop has a charge. Very nice, welcome me to the 21st century now. I will further this by saying I did go in the hard drives software and deselect the auto-backup and security functions. I dont like anything on my computer doing something without me telling it to. Seems those auto programs pick the worst times to start running. If you want to disable that part, its very easy and takes all of maybe 5 seconds. The nice thing is you still leave the software on the hardware. You just disable it from running, so theres no long removal process or startup errors when the drive decides to look for its software. I had that problem with an old HP External I had. I had to remove its (HP) auto backup software, then every time I booted the computer, I would get an error. I can tell you my experience with externals. Ive had over 10, I try to use one per year, then store it. I really dont know how much brand name matters. I had one HP external that worked flawlessly, then had the one that had an error on every boot. Ive had two WD MyBooks without problem. Three WD Elements without any problems, Two Seagate without problems. Two iOmega that died within the first 3 months of use, both of them died. And one Toshiba that worked well. This WD Passport is my first portable, USB powered external and so far it has worked perfectly. Ill try to review all the products Im using to convert my home office into a less cluttered, neat office space with at least, a little less reliance on power supply.

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.

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!!!