WD - My Passport Ultra 3TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Classic Black
Model: WDBBKD0030BBK-NESN
SKU: 9059012
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Customers have good things to say about the My Passport Ultra 3TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive's large storage capacity, ease of use, and reliability. Many appreciate its compact size and fast transfer speeds thanks to the USB 3.0 connection. Positive feedback also highlights the drive's reasonable price. While some find the device a bit heavier than expected, the overall experience is overwhelmingly positive.
Just wanted to note that the 3TB (and possibly other capacities) "My Passport Ultra" drives DO NOT work with Apple's Time Machine feature IF encryption is selected. I tried two of these drives and both failed the same way when Time Machine was attempting to initialize encryption. It gets about 90% of the way into initializing encryption, then fails every time. I tried the same process with a 2TB Seagate Slim drive and it worked fine. The "Ultra" drives DO WORK with Time Machine IF encryption is NOT enabled. Both of the "Ultra" drives I tried were 3TB. Both drives were formatted with Apple Disk Utility to "OS X Extended (Journaled)" and a GUID Partition Map per Apple's guidelines. Could be that all capacities of these drives will have the same problem. Or it could be that Time Machine software has an issue with encrypting drives over 2TB. Could also be that these might encrypt if connected via USB 3.0, although the 2TB Seagate is encrypting on the USB 2.0 connection. The error messages I received during the encryption initialization process were "There was an error preparing the Time Machine disk. Couldn't mount disk." and then "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". Platform: I am running Mac OS X v10.11.3 (El Capitan) on an Early 2009 24" iMac. The "Ultra" drives were connected to a USB 2.0 port on the iMac using the USB 3.0/2.0 cable supplied with the drives.
Posted by JimboMon52
I bought two of these hard drives to backup my pictures and video files about one month ago. Its portability, 3TB memory, and fast USB 3.0 interface make it very attractive. I have not tried security features yet but they can be beneficial too. I do not have these hard drives enough time to evaluate their reliability but I am using three similar Western Digital 1.5TB portable hard drives for 5 years and, so far, have not had any problem with them.
Posted by Phystech
Western Digital's My Passport Ultra 3TB is the best hard drive I've ever owned. I use it for backing up my computer files as well as storing my music, photos & movies. It's small & portable but huge in storage space. The copy speed is fast and it's easy to use. This hard drive is also very well-priced
Posted by Unclejaybee
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