WD 1TB Black-Gray My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBTLG0010BGY-WESN (Old Generation)

This is my forth portable HDD in the last few years. My first portable HDD was a 1TB seagate which is nice and compact and still works well, but it is just not spacious enough. Just over a year ago I bought another seagate with 2TB of space. Unfortunately that drive failed a few month later. This spring I bought 2 TB My Passport in plastic enclosure. It was not as fast as seagate (115mb/s vs 130 mb/s) but seamed to be more sturdy. I later decided to buy more spacious 4TB and gave 2TB drive to my sister. I like semi-metal design of the ultra model and I paid $10 more over plastic model merely because of the look. Both metal and plastic models catch fingerprints easily, especially if you use hand lotion. Feature-wise my passport and my passport ultra are almost identical, except for certain software features that are quite marginal in my opinion. Reading and writing speeds are the same on both 4TB Ultra and 2TB my passport. Overall I like using my new WD my passport, and I like that it provides encryption feature. I am not sure that it is 100% reliable but at least it gives me peace of mind that my data won't be readily accessible to strangers in case the drive gets lost. Also I found a python script on GitHub that allows to unlock the drive on Linux systems, which is a major deal for me. For this reason I currently prefer WD over my old seagate with which I always had to choose between accessibility on Linux and encryption with microsoft's bitlocker.I also bought AmazonBasics Hard Carrying Case for this drive and it fits quite well

I love it. The size, the GBs, the style and specially the speed. I am able to work on a feature film with no power cords. Just my laptop and the HD on cafes for hours.One thing though. The cable connection to the hard disk was a little rough and difficult and made some noises...It got better, but all my past experience alarms went on like "THIS IS NOT GOOD". It has future malfunctioning all over it.I hope I was wrong. If something does happen I will come back here and report.

Ok, this turned out to be a great purchase, even though it didn't initially seem like it. Out of the box, it worked perfect, and a day or two later, it started giving this clicky sound anytime I was transferring files to or from the drive. In addition, transfers where extremely slow and would sometimes need to be stopped altogether. I was convinced that id have to get it sent back, when I decided to try a little something.....switching to "better performance" from "quick removal" under the hard drive policies. This changed everything.....click sound gone, hard drive faster, and now it just works perfect.

Update: 9/3/2018 (approximately 9 months after 1st use) - HDD still functions but performance has decreased significantly. Loading and transfer of games or large files take around twice as long as it did at first or vs the internal HDD. The Xbox One X recognizes this issue every time I turn it on and recommends I either swap the cable connecting the HDD or replace the WD entirely.I bought a brand new cable from WD, which didn't fix the issue, reformatted the drive, still didn't fix the issue. Then I hooked it up to my computer and ran WD Diagnostics on it, no problems found, all drivers and firmware were up to date. Tried transferring files from my computer to the Passport and it did seem quite slow, though having not tried it when it was functioning well I can't say for sure if it was slower. At this point I'm going to look at getting it replaced under warranty, which seems pretty good at 3 years.After all that, I finally bought an external SSD; so far the external SSD from G-Drive, has had no issues and has improved performance even further than what the WD was doing at its peak.Original Review:Two months in and I haven't had any issues with the WD 4TB Passport Ultra. I'm using it as additional storage with an Xbox One X, it was found immediately upon plugging it in and works seamlessly. Only complaint I have, which is quite minor, is that it is a bit louder than I was expecting; this isn't much of an issue with my current setup, but if I was using it with a laptop or desktop PC, it'd probably be a bit annoying.P.S. - This is the first external storage unit I've owned, so I don't really have much to compare it to.

As someone who has never used an external drive before, the setup and use was very easy on a windows 10 laptop. It comes with a cord and instructions. I do not use it to back up my files automatically though so unsure how well that feature is. But as storage goes, its a lot and very portable. Just be sure to eject the drive before physically disconnecting it because that could cause issues with your files.I do not see the need to buy another but if I ever do, I'll buy this again

Had issue with backup software installing at first, but could have been issue on my side. Now it is working fine. glad to have a viable backup now. decent speed in backing things up or moving specific files to folders on drive.