WD - My Passport for Mac 2TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Blue

Needed an external hard drive for my new MacBook Pro. Using it for a Time Machine backup among other things. Plenty of room for anything else that I don’t necessarily need to keep on my MacBook.

I've owned countless Western Digital My Passport external hard drives over the years and they have all proven extremely fast and reliable. This latest iteration of the My Passport lineup looks to the the thinnest and most portable yet with a handful of other improvements. There are a couple of notable issues, though. PROS: - WD has finally brought USB-C to the My Passport lineup. Included in the box are two cables: a standard USB-A cable, and a new USB-C cable. The USB-C cable is a must-have for MacBook Pro users, since newer models lack traditional USB-A ports. - Speeds over both USB-A and USB-C are among the fastest I've observed on portable, mechanical hard drives. Copying files from my MacBook to the drive, I clocked speeds faster than 125 megabytes per second. - The drive itself is incredibly thin and light-weight. It's certainly the thinnest My Passport drive I've ever owned, but it's not quite as small as the more expensive portable SSDs. Still, this drive is small enough to fit in a pocket or throw in the small pouch of a backpack. - The included WD Discovery software allows you to change the drive's default sleep timer as well as turn off the activity light on the drive, which are both nice options to have. - Completely quiet -- I don't hear any noise from the drive as it's being written to. - The drive comes formatted as HFS+ and works seamlessly with Time Machine. If you're buying this as a Time Machine backup drive, then rest assured knowing that it will work without any additional configuration or reformatting required. CONS: - Unlike my older WD drives, there are no rubber feet on the bottom side of this drive. This means that the drive tends to slide across any surface that I set it on and has a hard time staying in one place on my desk, especially if the cord is touched. - WD has built in its own backup and encryption solution into this drive, which are managed via the WD Discovery software. However, WD's software is not as elegant as macOS's own encryption feature or Time Machine. To configure WD's encryption settings, you must install the WD Security utility on whatever computer you're using. WD has included some useful features to backup files from social media and cloud accounts, but there's no easy way to use WD's software to backup files from your actual computer. Just stick with the built-in macOS encryption utilty and Time Machine -- skip the WD utilities. OVERALL: As an external drive, it's nearly perfect. I just wish it had rubber feat to keep it in place. The encryption features that WD boasts likely work well enough, but there are drawbacks compared to other encryption solutions. Buy this for the drive itself -- not for the included software. It's amazingly thin, fast, and quiet, and the inclusion of USB-C means it will serve you well into the future.

An external hard drive that is definitely plug & play with my Mac. It comes with USB B and USB C cables so most anyone should be able to use it. Definitely heats up as time passes on which is typical for a mechanical drive, but it does not get excessively hot. Quiet overall and good transfer times. The included discovery utilities are easy to install. One thing of note to me is the feature that allows back up of files in cloud storage and social media sites. While this could be a great feature, it did not find any data in my facebook profile to back up and I definitely have photos there. Also the cloud storage options that it offered to import did not include iCloud. This could be a contractual limitation with Apple, but as a full-time Mac user this would have been a nice offering since I do not have any content on other cloud services. The integration with Time Machine is seamless and I was able to initiate a backup within seconds. I really like that I can back up both to my Time Capsule device and this portable drive simultaneously. One minor annoyance with this is the WD MyCloud account. This device is not capable of MyCloud and therefore the user should not be prompted to log in. It would be useful to those who may have other WD backup devices that are compatible, but this one isn't per WD website.

What first impressed me with this drive is it’s size and weight. It small enough to fit easily in the palm of your hand and negligible in weight. That is very handy because you have a great drive that is small and light enough to throw in your backpack or bag that you take your Mac in and you have a very easy to manage backup device. I used this to grab a backup of my daughters Macbook Air that she had never backed up. She had used few flash drives here and there to get groups of files, etc., but she had never used the Time Machine backup to do a full device backup. As soon as I plugged it in, Time Machine popped up and was prepared to backup. Before I did that, I did notice that the Drive did come with backup programs for both Mac and PC, even though it says for Mac. It also comes with regular USB and USB-C cables. I opted for the Time Machine backup as it worked seamlessly with the drive. I am very happy with the size, the speed and it didn’t even get warm after an hour or so backing up her entire Macbook Air. No issues at all with this drive, I would definitely recommend it.

It works fine, and was easy to set up. It’s just cheesy that the USB-C / Mac version comes with an adaptor rather than a properly wired USB-C plug to make it USB-C ready. That tells me how this company rolls. Whatever other corners they cut, I’ll never know, but that’s an obvious indicator they probably did. Profit margin vs. reputation is every business’s challenge, and this company isn’t even concerned with making it obvious. Would recommend to a friend only because it actually works, and it’s one of the few that is Mac ready.

This is a very thin HDD (Less than 1/2 in). It's a 3.5" HDD in a very thin and lightweight enclosure, with an USB 3.0 interface. The enclosure is dark blue, matte (Does not attract fingerprints). It comes with two cables: One with an USB-A 3.0 connector and the other is USB-C, so it can connected equally to either a new or older Mac or PC. Note that there is nothing specific to Macs on this drive, except that it comes pre-formatted for Macs (MacOS Extended, Journaled). Software: It comes with WD Discovery for Mac and for Windows. This utility is a front-end to the optional utilities and hardware encryption tools. It also has a tool to backup data from different consumer cloud services into the drive: Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon Drive, Facebook and Instagram pictures, and also for WD MyCloud. The utilities has diagnostics and firmware upgrade (for the drive), and settings for the default sleep timer on the disk and to enable or disable the activity LED on the disk. As for security, the drive provides native hardware-based encryption, or can use the standard encrypted drive format that's part of macOS. To use the drive's hardware encryption, it requires the optional WD Security tool, and that needs to be installed on each computer that's going to be connected to the drive. The drive supports Apple's Time Machine. In my case, I'm using this drive as a Time Machine backup destination, and reformatted it o MacOS Extended, journaled and encrypted. Not using the WD Security tool so the drive can be used to recover without having to install additional tools. Speed: AJA System Test reports 102 MB/Sec Write and 107 MB/Sec Read (1 GB Sequential). (With an Encrypted File System). Caveat: The drive is USB 3.0. Because of this, can't use standard USB-C cables, and need to use the ones that came with the drive. Overall is very portable, well designed as I'd expect from a WD drive.

I bought a 2020 13 inch MacBook Pro and it hardly has any space right out the box. I use this product as my primary source of memory and it runs smoothly. Decent price considering the options out there and it has a lot of power.

Pros: * Much smaller and lighter than expected. * Easy to carry for extra on-the-go storage. * Comes with both USB-A (standard) and USB-C cables. * Pre-formatted for best use on a Mac (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) Cons: * Since it’s pre-formatted for the Mac, it can’t easily be used with other systems unless reformatted. My Review: I was genuinely surprised at how small and light this external hard drive is. I have the 2TB version and it is literally about 2/3 the size of my iPhone XS (although a tad thicker). I have an older Seagate hard drive that is thinner but it’s only 750GB and I trust my data to Western Digital a LOT more than I do to Seagate. The drive has a standard USB-3 port and comes with two short cables; one has USB-A (the typical USB connector) and the other has a USB-C (the newer connector). There is a small white LED on the drive to tell you when it’s working, but otherwise it’s just a semi-stylish box that you can carry around to supplement your Mac’s storage. For what it's worth - this drive won't work (as is) with a new iPad Pro running iOS 12.4 via USB-C. It may work with iOS 13 or if you re-format the drive, but out of the box it doesn't work with the latest iPad Pros. It also comes with some software utilities that seem kinda nice. Not much else to say - fast, small, light, reliable, and easy to use.