Customer Ratings & Reviews

I acquired the WD My Passport Ultra 4TB external hard drive simply to have another backup storage device. I already have a 2 TB WD Elements Desktop WDBAAU0020HBK Hard drive and a 1 TB My Passport portable drive. But I say it never hurts to have redundant backups. As a side note, the variety of names of WD's drives really slays me. The name on the box and drive itself, WD My Passport Ultra, does not tell the full story. When I used "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" feature of Windows 10 to disconnect the drive, this program gave me the option to eject the "My Passport 260D," So I looked that up on the WD website and found that there are four versions of the My Passport Ultra with USB C connections: the 260D, 260E, 2605, and 2606. Who knows what the differences are. The site did not explain. I was particularly interested in two features of the newer Passport Ultra (besides its huge capacity). One is that it uses a USB 3.1 Type C interface (although it comes with a Type A adapter) supporting transfer rates of up to 10 GB per second. I thought this would be a perfect match with my laptop, which has a Thunderbolt Type C port (rated up to 40 GB per second). Second, the accompanying software includes easy importing from online sources such as Facebook, OneDrive, DropBox, and Google Drive. Backing up Facebook with one click was a major draw for me. Now, I normally prefer to back up my files in a rather old-school fashion, using a script containing commands such as: xcopy C:\Download\*.* E:\Filesbak\Download\ /E/V/S/D/Y/Z This good old DOS-based xcopy command, if working correctly, should copy all of the files from my Download folder to the location I specify on the external drive that I labeled E:\. But only if a file with the same name as an existing file is a newer version. That's what I want. I don't like keeping tons of multiple versions of my files in storage. The trouble is, after working for years, for some reason the xcopy command no longer checked to see if files with the same name were different. It insisted on copying all the files in the specified folder, even those that were identical. What a waste of time. So I was interested in checking out the backup software that came with the WD Passport Ultra. The written instructions that came with the drive were typical. One tiny paragraph explaining where to find PDF versions of the manual and how to register online, followed by a huge section on "binding individual arbitration and class action waiver agreement," safety, and other legal matters. In 24 languages. Fortunately, the installer for the important software, WD Discovery, was already on the drive. The software was both easy to install and intuitive to use, although I did download the manual to check on a couple of issues. Then, I downloaded the WD Backup program from a link on WD Discover and set up my first backup, selecting 185 GB worth of files from my solid state hard drive. Obviously, with all the steps necessary in backing up files, a USB 3.1 theoretical transfer rate of 10 GB/sec does not mean that the files will be backed up in 20 seconds, or even 20 minutes. I was not prepared, however, for how long this initial backup would take: 1 hour and 28 minutes. Curious about the transfer rate, I downloaded and ran the ATTO Disk Benchmark program, testing transfer rates from files sized from 512 bytes to 64 MB. The results showed an increase in speed until the 32 KB size, at which the rate plateaued at about 109 MB/sec. So that is the realistic transfer rate. You can set the backing up frequency to just about anything you want, so I set mine for a weekly backup. Because the future backups will include only new and revised files, the process should not be lengthy like the initial backup. One thing I did not like was that the backed up files were in a format that was not directly readable. For example, there is no possibility of browsing to a backed up PDF file and opening it with Adobe Acrobat. To read any files, they must be restored first. Furthermore, one can not restore a single file, only a folder full of files. I tried the process, and it was not difficult. You can restore the files to their original location or any location of your choosing. I restored a couple of folders to my desktop, and all of the files in them were readable and fine. As for the importing of files from online sources, I immediately ran into a problem trying to back up Facebook. My attempt resulting in the following message: "Facebook has detected WD Discovery isn't using a secure connection to transfer information. Until WD Discovery updates its security settings, you won't be able to use Facebook to log into it." I then scoured the user's manual, the WD help pages, and the entire Internet for a solution to the problem. Nothing. I email Western Digital and am still waiting to hear back from them. On the positive side, imports from Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive ran almost flawlessly. I got "Import Complete" messages from Google Drive and Dropbox, and when I browsed to the folders where I asked for the import, all the files were there and readable. However, with OneDrive I got the following message: "Import failed. Files imported 130 of 131" and it gave me the name of the file that failed to import. It was just a short text file and I have no idea why it was not backed up. So, it looks like this hard drive and its associated backup software are not perfect. But is that ever the case? The disk and software worked well enough and look like they will serve me well.

This is a great little hard drive. I wiped it and reformatted using the Mac OS Extended format and it works perfectly. This one hard drive takes up less room and gives me more space than 4 of my other external drives. What a time/space saver!

This died on me after 6 months. I can’t recover anything unless I pay thousands of dollars.

The WD My Passport Ultra 4TB drive is an excellent piece of hardware for backup and archival storage. Unfortunately the provided software doesn't really measure up, which is a shame. This is a commodity priced drive in a small, solid-feeling enclosure about the size of a double high 2.5" drive. The enclosure is sealed and appears very rugged. WD doesn't publish any specs on the actual hard drive itself, but it is pretty fast. It's a good choice for backup and archival secondary storage. The single connector is a USB-C connector that also powers the drive; no separate power brick. The supplied cable is a USB-C to USB-C cable with a USB-C-USB-A plug adapter. I tested the drive with Atto and it quickly peaked out at about ~115MB/sec write and ~130MB/sec read, with encryption on. In comparison, the internal 7200rpm SATA drive peaked at ~150MB/sec write and ~165MB/sec read with no encryption. Using file explorer to copy directories of photos, videos, and music yielded similar results. So, all things considered, performance is quite good for an external drive. Encryption requires a utility be installed to input the password for the encryption key and is currently available on Windows and IOS; Linux and Chrome users are currently out of luck. One very nice feature, the drive appears to be very low power for a performance drive; running it on my laptop didn't significantly shorten the battery life of the laptop. Very impressive. The supplied software was a distinct disappointment (NOTE: This is a windows only review, for IOS your mileage may vary). The WD Discovery program ran extremely slowly on both the desktop and laptop on which I installed it. It's really a system tray app manager, allowing you to access the utility, security, and backup apps. It took a long time to launch, and once launched, started the other apps sluggishly. The utility and security apps let you see the drive status, put it to sleep, set the key password, etc. The Backup utility was atrocious. The initial backup took almost 2hrs to complete, for a drive containing about 400GB. By contrast, a full backup using Acronis (my backup manager of choice) took about 35min backing up the same drive to the Ultra 4TB. The WD Backup utility can then be run on a scheduled basis, copying any new or modified files to a separate archive on the drive. I'll stick with Acronis. WD makes a older version of Acronis available for download (for free) and I recommend this over the supplied backup utility; it's far faster and more versatile. BTW., the backup utility is supposed to be able to back up some cloud stores, but it seems to have problems with the Facebook authentication protocols and fails. Hopefully that will get fixed soon. All in all, the hardware is a very solid drive that provides excellent performance with or without encryption. The supplied software was disappointing, but there are so many alternatives it really didn't detract much from the purchase. What with upgrading hardware, malware attacks, and simple laptop theft, the investment in this quality backup unit is well worth it.

Love it, easy to install. For Mac is excelent. And cheap price.

I wish it could have been smaller so it will be more convenient to bring anywhere else. It is too pricey. still good.

Didn’t work, my PC would not recognize it when I plugged it in. Best Buy did refund my money though.

dropped it once...data is unretrievable...piece of garbage! want a refund!

I couldn't get mine to work with my apple laptop so it was a waste of money

Slow. Unreliable. Basically unusable in a professional atmosphere.

Lots of storage, nice to have it being portable and usable outside

I have used other WD external drives for backing up my computer. This small (in size) portable drive comes with much improved backup software. It even recognized my WD Book that was connected, so I can see the last backup and the capacity left on both drives with one click. I use the Passport Ultra for my pictures and the Book for all my other files. They are quiet and the backups seem intact when I check them.

Great product! Has a lot of storage your back up data!

ONLY 4 STARS instead of the 5 stars that it would have otherwise received (1) because of the following issues with the cord and (2) WD sending out marginal cords and connectors (I discovered others had same issues from reading other reviews about similar problems from other customers, after I suffered through mine.) Indeed, with a proper cord, I saw transfer speeds running 50 percent or so, to that of an older SSD, In other words, speeds that would be pretty close to an older SSD when the ssd is dealing with real world use and files, as they seem to write around 125 to 250 mbs on my M4800. Back to the story: Thought it was DOA. Could not make the drive turn on at all, then after it turned on, it would not show up on an older Dell window 7, M4800 computer, dated circa 2015. Must be DOA, time to go back to your maker, little baby.. Before I took it back, got to thinking that the problem might be a win 7 issue plus an older computer that did not have a type c port, just USB 3.0. So I started trying to investigate. Then I thought maybe a cheap flimsy C-type to a USB A bridge or connector or whatever you call it, that WD provided in the box. Okay, maybe the problem is my old computer with windows 7, old usb 3.0 port, and the cheap flimsy c-type to USB A bridge, so I tried it without the wd connector/bridge in my later model dell computer with Window 10 with c-type port, gen 2, et al. Still not working, I was packing it up to take in, when I thought, gee, change the cable to see if it is the source. I found an old cord that came with an old cell phone for charging the phone that the c-type connector seemed to be able to fit into the drive, but had an USB A connector at the end to plug in to the source. I was scared something with the cord would cause the drive to spark up, short out or blow up. BINGO!! Worked great. Speeds for transferring data ranged from only 7 mbs to a more than 100 mbs on the 2015 MB4800 . I know the window 7/10 pop up showing data speed while transferring has a reputation for not being accurate. However, I also put the clock on the wall (yep, I know you smart techies are laughing your heads off) to time it, based on measuring the how many gigabits transferred in a certain time period for various files. Crude, but it confirmed that the average speed for all types of files was running 25 to 65 mbs on the 2015 dell. Then tried it it with a brand new type c to type c cord into the type c computer port on the newer Dell. Results seemed to be an increase of about 15 to 20 percent higher speeds. One file that measured 1.2 gigabits, went through at roughly 120 mbs plus, Don't know why it varied like this on any of the computers. I also tried it on an old 2004 (?) HP that has not been run for years. It was so old that it originally had XP as the os, then updated it to vista (later changed to w 7). Took forever to get it charged up. I was surprised to find close to the same type of speeds with USB 2.0 that also showed up on the newer 2015 dell with 3.0 and windows 7.

Great harddrive for backup and transfers. Used it to store desktop image backups

This is my 3rd WD Passport because I have so much stuff to back up. They work so well. I have had 2 HD fail in the past from other makers but WD has yet to disappoint. This one has the USB-C port. And the file transfer is pretty fast.

This is a nice looking device. Simply plug it in and you can move files onto it. While it is labeled as 4TB, your usable space is about 3.65 TB. It does have some software on it so you can make a backup of files that you've uploaded to social media. I don't upload anything to social media, so I cannot comment on how the software works.

Great product. Hard to figure out how to format for use with Apple and Microsoft.

I was copying files from my External HDD to a different External HDD and the drive stopped being recognized in my computer. Checked another computer and did the same thing. 4 years isn't very long for a drive. Especially mainly just copying files to safe for backup purposes and not putting heavy usage on the drive.

Exelent price and easy travel, Great space of bak up