Customer Ratings & Reviews

Looking forward to using this. It was on sale for a good price.

Item stopped working the next day after I purchased it. It just stop reading on my laptop. This isn’t the first time it’s happened to me either

Didnt work upon opening i updated drivers. I tried everything

I currently have a desktop computer that serves as our primary computer for the family in the office. The WD 4TB Passport is great for backing up photos, documents, etc. I am currently using it to take weekly backups of my photos and home videos from an internal drive, and also backing up my SSD that is my primary drive. It gives me peace of mind to have this backed up regularly. This drive is portable in the sense that you can easily detach it and plug it into another laptop, desktop, etc. It's small enough to fit in a laptop bag or a pocket for that matter, and the fact that it does not require an external power source is great. That being said, I don't think I'd normally carry this thing around in a bag or put it in situations where it could be bumped, etc. It's a mechanical drive and these things can get damaged. It's also backed with a 3Yr warranty which is important and gives me the peace of mind that it should last.

The instructions on this was not very clear and if you’re not tech savvy, this thing will irritate your soul. I tried to get it to work and it didn’t find out how to use it. By the time I wanted to return it, it was too late. It was a disappointment to say the least.

I had this hard drive for 2 weeks minimum and it corrupted and files are not recoverable.

Garbage device. Doesn't back up in original format. Only backs up files in TIBX format so you have to use WD software to access your files.

Died last week. Just bought it on July 12. Lost everything. $950 to get information back (if even possible).

The WD My Passport external hard drive is compact and easy to use. I first connected it to my computer. It popped up a sidebar with different options. For security, you can set a password. One great option is that it can pull pictures from various places to store them. One of the options was Facebook. You just click the link, sign in with your Facebook credentials and it will automatically download all of your pictures and videos for safe keeping. I then backed up my pictures that were already on my computer. It was as simple as sliding the picture folders in to the My Passport drive. I have a lot of pictures and many of them were shot on a Canon at 16mp. At 4TB, the My Passport has plenty of room for all of your pictures. The transfer process was fast with the USB 3.0. For example, almost 900 hi-res pictures transferred in a little over three minutes. I then wanted to see how well it would work for my PS4. It was as simple as plugging it into the USB port and going to the device settings. You're then able to format the MY Passport as external storage. I moved all of my downloaded games to the My Passport. Transferring four large games took about half an hour. This freed up a lot of space on my PS4. Now that the games load from the My Passport, they load a little faster. Overall, with whatever you choose to use the My Passport for, it does it well. From storing and protecting memories with pictures and videos, or extending the storage on your PS4, you can't go wrong. It's small size and light weight make it great for traveling and being able to grab and go and it won't take up much desk space. I highly recommend the My Passport.

I could only put 80GB on this disk, not sure what was going on. returning this thing,

The WD My Passport 4TB comes with a portable hard drive and a high speed USB 3.0 connector. The portable storage comes with a 3 year warranty. The model number is WDBPKJ0040BBK-WESN. I connected it to my computer running Windows 10 and it was recognized right away. In file explorer you will see it as My Passport (H:). The H may be a different letter for you depending on how many drives you have. There are two files on the drive. Each provides the ability to install WD Discovery for Windows or Mac. I installed the Windows version. There is a Storage and Apps section. The storage section allows you to import files from your social media account(s) or cloud storage. It also shows the status of the drive and the settings. In the setting section you can define a password if desired. Lastly, there is an option to register your device. Registration was super simple. This drive also supports 256 bit AES encryption. The Apps section has Utilities, Security and Backup options to install. I did install the Security program and set a password for the drive. There is also the option to allow the drive to auto-unlock when connected to my computer. I like this feature! It has a small form factor measuring approximately 4” L x 3” W x 0.75” H. This will easily fit in a pocket. I tested the speed of writing files to the drive. The MP3’s are smaller files and have a folder structure of artist/album/song. Video files are much larger. Here are some results: - Music MP3 > 11.9 GB > min 12 MB/s, max 60 MB/s, avg 48MB/s - Video MKV > 20.6 GB > min 100 MB/s, max 120 MB/s, avg 114MB/s - Video TS > 18.6 GB > min 100 MB/s, max 120 MB/s, avg 116MB/s In summary, it has a 3 year warranty and has reasonable data transfer speeds. The purpose of this is to be a backup drive of your data. It is well designed for the purpose. I have had many WD products in the past and they have been very reliable. SanDisk now owns WD and SanDisk is also a well-respected name in the storage space. I cannot speak to how long this will last but I expect it to last a long time.

No access after 1 week. I had to reformat the drive. It worked for about a week after that and now windows cannot access it.

This is a terrible product. My hard drive got corrupted and all files are lost. Don't make the mistake that i did!

It did not work well with my Mini Mac desktop computer. I had to return it.

This product was working before but now not working no more can you please do me a favor to replace it

I have bad luck with external hard drives, but this thing broke down way too quick.

My external hard drive got messed up in less than a month. It was never dropped or anything.

Windows did not recognize the device and I couldn't return it to Best Buy

Joke!!!!!!! Kept saying it was shut off wrong when all i did was turn off PS4

Backing up your computer is a little like brushing your teeth after eating lunch. Everyone knows it’s a good idea. Just about everyone has the means of doing it. And yet it’s just enough of an inconvenience that virtually no one does. The WD Passport series seeks to use a combination of cost-effective hardware and user friendly software to reduce that inconvenience to one that most people will be willing to improve their bad habits, and this one is no exception. As far as the hardware goes, it’s solid but doesn’t do much to really stand out regarding what you get. Inside the fairly rugged (and heavy) case is a standard 2.5” drive of the same sort you’d find in a laptop plugged into a USB 3.0 interface. I can’t see any evidence of additional shock or vibration protection being used to help combat the problems mechanical drives usually experience when being taken on the go, so a padded carrying case may not be a bad idea if you plan to use it like that. While they get marks for not requiring an external power brick and using a replaceable, non-proprietary cable they lose some ground here for using the Micro B connector to connect the drive rather than the more durable (and ubiquitous) USB-C connection standard. This is particularly annoying for a portable device, as finding one of these cables out in the wild is borderline impossible in most places, so if you lose it your only option will be to substitute a much slower (and less robust) standard micro USB cable in its place. Also, as is typical in these devices, while the interface may be fast the drive it’s connected to is not. Don’t get me wrong, speeds can be pretty good under the right conditions where the drive’s expanded cache can come into play, but at the end of the day you’ve still got a mechanical laptop drive in there. As such it’s probably not a device I’d recommend for uses where a high transfer speed is essential, such as a portable media vault. Fortunately, the unit fares a LOT better when it comes to software. Preloaded on the drive is a pair of install wrappers for Western Digital’s Discovery dashboard – one for Windows and one for Mac. Running them should, ideally, download the latest version of the utility from the internet and install it on your machine (though in my case I found I needed to go to Western Digital’s support website and download it from there before it would actually work.) This then lets you install 3 basic apps: one for backups, another for security management, and one for maintenance and health monitoring of the drive. The utilities aren’t likely to blow anyone away with their feature set, but they’re very simple to use and offer more than the barebones functionality you’ll get with a lot of manufacturers. Once each of these optional programs have been installed you’ll be walked through setting up the most basic features of each such as establishing a backup schedule, setting a password for the drive’s encryption (which is hardware based so as to remove a potential bottleneck created by software encryption utilities), and renaming the primary volume. There’s also an option for turning off the status LED for the drive – something that more backup devices could stand to implement given that usually the best time to pull a backup is at night when the computer’s not in use. There’s also an option to save backups to a cloud service such a Dropbox so you don’t have to worry about bringing the drive with you everywhere. Ultimately, the word I keep coming back to in my head when trying to describe this drive is “effective.” It’s not as rugged or fast as an SSD. It’s not as feature rich or sophisticated as a desktop RAID array or small scale NAS appliance. And it’s not as automatic as a cloud backup service that’s constantly running in the background. But it is inexpensive, easy to use, and big enough to take just about anything you might throw at it. And for most people, that should be enough to meet their needs.