WD - My Passport 1TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black

When my old computer was dying it was recommended that I look into this "Passport" for large backup, rather than use multiple ("thumb") flash drives. So, when I was at the store to look at a new computer, I did purchase this. One of the selling points for me was that the storage is equal to that of the computer, so there would definitely be enough space to hold all necessary going forward. I'd never used one and found it far more confusing than a flash drive. It gave directions to register, download a program, and set up scheduled download times. This took quite some time. I then wasn't sure I was properly giving instructions to back up the folders I needed to hold for transfer to new computer. I had to leave it run for hours; and when I re-checked it seemed to be done. It cited the amount of space used, but no indication that all my transfers had been successful. I didn't like the "lack of communication." This is often the case today when someone does not have previous familiarity with task at hand. An online instruction guide was available, but having to go back and forth, scrolling to the correct page for instructions then returning to processing screen was very tiresome and confusing. Not feeling at all secure, I decided to do some transfers to my regular flash drives as well, but I ran out of time, as my installation was scheduled to begin. After I transferred everything from the Passport to the new computer, I found that some important folders had NOT transferred. I don't know why -- very possibly my own error, since I didn't understand what I was doing. Fortunately, I'd kept my not-quite-dead old computer handy, hooked that back up, and did another transfer to flash drives, and successfully downloaded the missing files....well, most of them: for some reason Dropbox would not transfer and I had to put it onto my desktop instead. With all the confusion, I probably wouldn't know how to succeed any better a second time. Good and bad at same time, I was later told that I hadn't needed to go through the registration and other steps I took, that they can just be done without all that. How can one know that without instructions to the effect? At present, after receiving help, it is continuously on and plugged in, and it is supposedly downloading info daily when computer is not in use. I hope this is true! Again, someone who already had familiarity with such a device might happily attach it and see successes. I'm not in that position. And I don't know how to test to see if the daily backup is taking place. So, for those in similar positions to me in terms of experience, I'd say this might be a good device, but get good instructions prior to purchasing and depending on it. For those more savvy, perhaps it is a good buy without caveats. Including my sharing of all concerns and the ensuing recommendations, I'll state that I'd recommend this in hopes someone else can feel better prepared for success. But for those in my position, I might not actually recommend it.

I have to state at the outset of this review that I was REAL HESITANT to choose this particular Western Digital - My Passport portable drive to serve as my "backup only" drive for my brand new Windows 10 laptop computer: my PRIMARY computer. ... At the time I purchased this drive, October 12, 2016, there were still NO reviews for these drives posted on Best Buy's site. These "new" style My Passport drives had only been available for a couple of (maybe 5 or 6) weeks. I was "buoyed" by the fact that the Western Digital My Passport series of portable drives have been around for MANY years now and have garnered a superior reputation for their overall reliability. I was also supported in my final purchase decision by the fact that ALL of my "desktop" hard drives are Western Digital My Book/My Book Essential hard drives (numbering six now, ages 1 to 10 years). I KNOW Western Digital IS committed to manufacturing really reliable hard disk drives, AND they support what they sell: I have personal experience that says so! In regard to this particular Western Digital - My Passport 1TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive, my current experience is limited to less than 8 hours (more or less) of actual use. ... I took this drive out its box and removed it from its "scratch guard" sticky wrapper just long enough to perform 2 backup tasks on my brand new (fully set-up and "loaded") Windows 10 laptop computer. NOTE: At the time I performed these backup tasks, my computer's internal hard drive was loaded with OVER 300 gigabytes of "stuff" so the backup tasks were both well over 2 hours. --> The drive worked just fine, NO glitches or hiccups whatsoever, and that's about all I can say, because as soon as I was "backed up" I re-wrapped my new drive and put it back in its box for long-term storage. I can say that I really appreciate that these drives are available in several different case colors so they can be separated/segregated for several different devices (users) and different storage purposes. I picked red on purpose so that I will always know that the red drive is the most critical drive I have (backup ONLY), because it is storing thousands and thousands of media and document files that I have been collecting/creating for more than 20 years now. The colored cases are just so much more distinctive than ALL the other portable drives I own that are only either, black or silver; it gets REALLY confusing after you have more than a half dozen of each attached to five different computers in your household. I can also say that I AM (now) a HUGE FAN of USB 3.0 data transfer speeds!!! My 300 plus gigabyte backups used to take 6 to 7 hours each with only USB 2.0 available. USB 3.0 is such a refreshing change of pace (literally) compared to the old USB 2.0 standard.

The WD My Passport is marketed as a plug and play product (no instructions provided and supposedly unnecessary) but it falls short in that regard. Anyone not computer savvy is likely to struggle with this product. The WD Discovery software did not recognize the My Passport drive. That resulted in time consuming phone calls to WD support (case 13086296) to learn (from someone that was extremely hard to understand with a foreign accent) that downloading multiple individual software programs directly from WD would be necessary. In addition the WD Discovery software will not eject the drive. I use Windows 7 Home Premium and Safely Remove Hardware also will not eject the drive. I have followed all potential solutions offered by WD's website and other potential solutions available on the internet and nothing works except for a hard shutdown of my computer. All my other drives eject properly from the same USB 3.0 port. This is a known problem with WD drives that has existed for many years with no remedy by WD. Finally, My Passport is very slow and took almost eight hours to upload 473 GB of data, which is slow for USB 3.0 standards. In summary, My Passport leaves a lot to be desired and I am trying to decide on whether or not to return for a refund. As a side observation, the number of high reviews on the Best Buy site is quite amazing to me and is quite different from the ones found on Amazon for this product.

I needed to make a system image of my Windows 10 operating system. I read different reviews of external hard drives and ended up purchasing this WD My Passport 1TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive in blue. I never made a system image before and there were no instructions with the hard drive in the box, although there was WD contact information on a sheet in the box if one needed to contact them for help. I went on line to "How To Revive Your Windows 10 Installation With System Image Recovery" by techrepublic and they had a detailed procedure with pictures explaining how to create a system image in Windows 10 to an external hard drive and then how to recover a system image from an external hard drive to an internal hard drive through the built in Windows 10 software. I used their information to create a system image and then transfer that system image to an internal hard drive. This WD 1TB external hard drive worked great. I had no issues at all with creating the system image and then taking the system image from the external hard drive and importing it to an internal hard drive. I am very happy with the performance of this WD 1TB external hard drive. I didn't know for sure if the system image would clone the hard drive exactly; that is bring over all my favorites, my programs, my E-mails, and data. I can now tell you that the system image is an exact copy of the hard drive. Nothing is left behind. This WD 1TB external hard drive and Windows 10 work great together.

This model is the latest generation of the many My Passport drives I've owned or purchased for clients. They have proven reliable and good performers. They have incrementally improved with each new generation. This model features a new case design which most notably replaced the rounded corners with sharp 90 degree ones. Otherwise it should have little effect on use. BOTTOM LINE (for the impatient): The new model is a little bit faster than last year's and includes the 4TB model added to the previous generation My Passport Ultra early in 2016. This model (I got the 4TB size) is just noticeably faster than the 2015 model on sequential reads and but especially writes using Crystal DiskMark. This My Passport has a new design that replaces rounded corners with pointy ones and adds some odd (to me) styling to the case. The new case shows fingerprints and scratches much more than the old. It's a purely aesthetic change. Other than outward appearance it's functionally almost identical to the 2016 My Passport Ultra model. If these differences are not important for you or you prefer the old model's aesthetics, you may want to get last year's My Passport Ultra or this depending on which is least expensive at the time. You'll have an excellent drive in either case.

The older version Passport used to show what documents it was currently backing up. Now I really don't know what it's doing, other than I have xteen thousand gigabytes to go in a tedious process, with no forecast for when it is going to be done. I have to memorize the shortcut computer file names of each of the three computers I am backing up. The backup process goes for several hours before it shows any real progress. No reminder to set the computer to not shut down in midstream. I am assuming the documents I wanted backed up were, in fact, backed up. I tried some of them, but I really can't tell if I am seeing the document currently ON MY COMPUTER, or the same one ON THE PASSPORT. All in all, a very confusing product with very little helpful information. The instruction manual is there, but it is really not clear what many of the references mean. I have an older WD passport that I do not feel is reliable anymore, that's why I got this one. But the old one did tell me what it was doing at any moment. The operating system has gone downhill. I think it's working, but I really won't know until I have a hard drive failure on one of my computers some day, and that's the reason for this machine.

My wife's PC started the ever more frequent "Blue Screen Of Death" so we decided the right thing to do would be to ignore it and then be super disappointed when she lost everything... No... Wait.. That's I WOULD HAVE done...Instead, she decided to get a portable drive to back her stuff up. We went to BB and looked at the decent selection and found this little guy. It had pretty good ratings and was (as is most stuff we buy) on sale so we went with it. We got it home and unpackaged it, plugged it in and after a handful of minutes formatting, it was ready to go. She was able to move all of her important stuff to the drive. Transfer speed was decent and no files were lost, so yeah, it did what we expected it to do. I gave it 4 stars due to the little longer than expected format time compared with other portable drives we've used. In all, I would recommend it and would buy again since the price was right and the performance was as expected.

I purchased this device when I had my computer in at Best Buy to remove a malware problem and it was backed up by the Geek Squad, all information appears to be on the device. Only problem I can't figure out how to work the device and do another back up of my computer since no instructions for using device was included in the package. Inside box was a site to go to for instructions, but that lead to a 2 page info. stating it was easy to use, but still no instructions on how to use ? So I chatted with the geek squad on line and was told it would be better to bring the computer and the My Passport back into Best Buy to learn how to use the device, I have not had a chance to do that yet so it's hard to give a complete review on this device at this time. Everything seems to cost more money nowadays, and less help is supplied in the contains and the sites your referred to are usually hard to understand and/or of no help at all even when it states "easy fast set up instructions included" where are they ?? I only recommend this product because of the memory it's able to hold.