WD 5TB My Passport Ultra for Mac, portable external hard drive, USB-C, Mac Compatible, portable external storage, software with defense against ransomware, backup and password protection, Silver

This review is for the My Passport 2 TB standard version (not Ultra) - I just got this drive yesterday, and I'm a bit wary of writing such a positive review so early on, but I know if I don't do it now then I never will and I'll forget all the details. I'll definitely update it if I do start to have any problems with it later though. Be warned - this review might be very long, but there don't seem to be that many reviews of this particular model so I'd like to cover everything that would have been useful to me in case any of it helps anyone else. The reason I went for this particular drive is that I needed a portable drive of at least 2 TB, but wanted it to be as small and light as possible, so while 4 TB would have been nice, those seem quite a bit bigger and heavier and the reviews for them seem worse in terms of both performance and reliability, so decided to stick with 2 TB. All the drives I could find to have plenty of reports of them failing etc in the reviews, but the WD ones *seemed* to have less, and I get the impression that most knowledgeable people on other forums etc with experience of different drives tend to favour WD for reliability over other manufacturers these days. I almost went for the Ultra version, as my new laptop has USB-C and it does seem nicer than the extra-wide MicroUSB 3 connector, but I didn't particularly want it to be made of metal (it's just extra weight for me), and my laptop's USB-C ports are usually taken up by the charger and a hub anyway. Plus lots of reviews say the USB-C cable that comes with it is really bad, and I didn't like the choice of colours. So when I realised the standard version was £20 cheaper, available in black, and doesn't seem to have any real drawbacks apart from the wider connector (maybe the performance is slightly worse, but I'm not sure because that's not really mentioned anywhere) I decided to go for that one instead. Amazon's packaging of it wasn't great - I saw other reviews saying to order other items at the same time as a hard drive so that they get packed around it in the box, so I did, but unfortunately that didn't help because the packaging consisted of one small strip of the large air bubble type stuff placed on top of all the items, which left literally half the outer box empty for everything slide around in. Just picking up the box after it was delivered, everything loudly slid over and thudded into the other side of the box. It seems to have survived ok though (and of course it was in its own retail box which I would hope provided some protection). From looking into it I've found people saying that hard drives these days can survive huge forces as long as they're not turned on at the time, so anything that was enough to damage it in transit would have caused visible damage to the casing too (in this case even the cardboard retail box it was in doesn't have any signs of damage), and that it would be likely to not work properly at all straight away rather than just failing later. So I think it's fine. I currently have two similar-style drives - an older WD My Passport (Essential SE, apparently) 1 TB from sometime around 2010 which has a MicroUSB 2 connector, and a slightly newer Samsung M3 1 TB with MicroUSB 3 (same as this drive), so it's interesting to see how this compares to those. The first thing I noticed when unboxing it was that it is considerably smaller than either of those (about half the height, despite having double the capacity), and also noticeably lighter. So I am impressed and pleased with that - it looks very sleek, and the casing feels solid, so definitely no complaints about the plastic of the drive itself from me. When plugged in and spinning, it is slightly noisier than my Samsung M3, but still pleasantly quiet (no noticeable seeking noises at all so far, just the constant spin). And this is with a Razer Blade Stealth (late 2019) laptop which is almost completely silent when not doing much, and the drive in front of it at the moment, so I probably wouldn't be able to hear it at all if I wasn't in such a quiet environment. The cable that came with it seems to be working fine so far, but possibly is of similar bad quality to the USB-C version - it is quite stiff, possibly a bit wobbly when connected in the ports on both ends (although no loss of connection so far even when moving it) and is noticeably thinner than the cable (of the same type) that came with my Samsung M3 drive. So I might still get a better cable at some point, at least if/when this one starts to have any connection issues. In terms of performance (which I'm surprised isn't mentioned at all in the product details/marketing etc, other than I think I saw the USB 3.0 maximum speed of 5Gbit/s mentioned somewhere which is obviously ridiculous as the drive won't be capable of anywhere near that), I'm getting maximum read/write speeds of 126/116 MB/s in ATTO Disk Benchmark, and sequential read/write speeds of 138/116 MB/s in CrystalDiskMark (just as it came, with NTFS formatting and nothing on it yet). My Samsung M3 (which I remember performance being a point of when I bought it, although I hadn't been able to make full use of that until recently as my old laptop only had USB 2) seems to be maxing out at about 85 MB/s for both read and write (although with a lot more data on it, if that makes any difference), so I'm pleased with this. One issue I have with my old My Passport drive is that it always seems to spin down (to a lower speed if not completely off, I'm not sure) about 20 seconds after it was last accessed, and then takes about 5 seconds to get going when something tries to access it again, which can get very frustrating. I've tried increasing/turning off the sleep timer in both WD Drive Utilities and the Windows Power Management "Turn off hard disk after" setting, but neither makes any difference, it seems to have its own fixed internal idle timer for some sort of low-power mode which even WD's own software can't change. Thankfully that doesn't seem to be an issue with this new drive. I've tried enabling the encryption on this drive to see if it makes any difference to performance - it doesn't, but as the "encryption" process is so basic (it's basically just setting a password on the drive in the "WD Security" software, and it seems to take effect immediately), I'm guessing the drive is actually encrypted at the hardware level all the time (as otherwise it would surely take time to encrypt/decrypt the existing data when setting/unsetting the password). So I'd say that's a drawback as it means even if you don't use the drive encryption, if the controller fails but not the drive itself, you can't take out the actual drive and connect it up to something else, but on the other hand you apparently can't do that with these particular WD drives anyway as the controller board is soldered directly to the drive rather than it using standard SATA connectors or anything. I'm not sure how the password system would work if you connect it to other devices such as phones/tablets etc (on Windows, the drive having a password set causes it to appear as a CD drive with an executable file on it which you run and enter the password into, which then causes the actual hard drive to show up as well), but if I wanted the drive encrypted I don't think I'd rely on this as a solution anyway as WD's system apparently has a lot of vulnerabilities. I also tried enabling write caching for the drive in Windows (before trying the encryption), but it seemed to make barely any difference at all (write speeds very slightly higher, read speeds possibly actually lower, but probably all within the margin of error anyway) so I'm going to leave that off as it's not worth the extra risk if the drive gets disconnected by accident (especially if the cable does become dodgy). I think that just about covers everything I've thought of so far, so I hope someone finds it useful :)

What to say, it does exactly what it's supposed to. Portable, cheap storage, great for a laptop. Not the fastest transfer speeds every but I regularly copy over 30-40GB on a macbook and it takes around 10 mins which is fine, if I wanted speed I would buy an SSD but at a much greater cost. After about 6 months no faults and no corruption. Wouldn't hesitate to buy again.

First delivery of this was a dead disk. The device light comes on when connected but no further interaction - all manners of connection failed across multiple desktops and laptops. Nothing audible nor any signs of movement. Got on to product support and they agreed disk is faulty and sent out a replacement. The replacement works fine - connects first time. So now I got 5TB in a single disk, hurray. Noted what other reviews said about the connection cable, I will try get a better quality one to try - speed is poorly. Between another USB 3 disk ("X") via the desktop to this 5TB disk (type C), over the same USB powered hub (100w), the speed maxed at 30MB/s, with a bit of 31. Slightly slower speed, averaging about 22MB/s when copying from same 5TB disk to itself. Maybe 5400rpm answers it. This is copying 120GB folders and files. I am after the capacity, much less about the speed. Further tests, copying from X drive to internal SATA disk on another computer over the same LAN, the speed peaked about 40MB/s, mostly in the region of 32MB/s. Copying back to the same SATA disk peaked at 82MB/s, mostly 45MB/s. The SATA disk is for storage rather than speed, 5400rpm. While writing this, I also discovered that using my alternative type c cable (not sure if it is better or worse than the supplied short cable), along with the type c - A adaptor, has been stable, compared to (a) the same cable and adaptor to the usb port on the front panel (motherboard header), and (b) the same cable on to the type c, front panel on mb header. In both cases of (a) and (b), the drive "disappeared" / disconnected when not in use for say 2-3 minutes. I assume that's because of the quality of the cable and lack of power. Using the powered USB hub solved the problem. But next on shopping list is a good quality type c cable. Happy to give 5 star however for many people speed will be important. In longer term with larger capacity, this disk with its speed will quickly rank near bottom. When I start using this for live reading and writing video processing and scratch temp it will struggle to keep up. So, 4 star. --Update-- With a new 100w type c cable : --- On type c header on motherboard, - copying from from the X drive to the 5TB, this peaked at 40MB/s, with a bit of 41, - writing back to the 5TB (copying) peaks at just over 13MB/s (didn't achieve the 22MB/s above) --- On type C with USB adaptor into the 100w powered USB hub - copying X to 5TB: surprisingly, this time it is peaking 20MB/s (second test, same outcome) - copying 5TB to itself: also just over 13MB/s Rather confused with the lower speed with the new type c cable. Is it doing some load balancing / queueing. I then tried copying one file 565GB from same X drive to the 5TB (over 100w hub), peak is 20MB/s. Copying the file to 5TB itself, same as above, just over 13MB/s. Not sure what to make of it. A big tanker indeed but not sailing in a rush.

So far so good. Easy to use and fast enough for me as back up drive. Nice design but not on show so kind of superfluous. Hope it lasts as long as previous WD drives

It's pretty & functional. I've taken the extended insurance warranty as well. Software could be a little better though. It defects an older version and fails to upgrade or reinstall. Overall a nice piece, might I add - prefect for special occasions.

Probably one of the best ones out there. I purchased a 2TB one. It is slim, lightweight, with an elegant design. On UBS 3 it achieved a a write speed of 100Mb/sec. One of my main reasons for buying this one was the Password security it offers for my personal files. So while there may be other good ones out there such as Toshiba or Seagate, few offer password protection like WD does (and then at such a brilliant price) I have two computers. One has Windows 7 the other Windows 10. The Windows 7 computer WOULD NOT download the security et.al. programmes beyond 18% using the WD Discovery provided with this HDD. However it did already have an older version of the security/partition etc. programmes from a few years ago. The new WD Discovery worked fine on Windows 10. I found that the password I installed on the Window 10 computer then worked well with the older already installed Discovery on the Windows 7 computer. Essentially what I am saying is that the Security et. al software will only download with Windows 10 using the Discovery Downloader (Orange icon) provided with this product. It will not download on a Windows 7 platform . However once a Password has been installed on the HDD through Windows 10 then this will also work on a Windows 7 computer provided a previous version (Blue icon) of WD Discovery is already installed. Of course if you do not use Windows 7 and only deal in Windows 10 then unlike me you should have nothing to worry about. It should work straight out of the box. Finally do not expect miracles from their help desk. Everything I have written above I had to work out for myself. They did not appear to have any idea of the above basics!!!

I need high capacity external drives for a third backup of about 10Tb of data. I back up in real time with dedicated external drives that are permanently connected to my PC and NAS devices but I also wanted to have drives that are bus powered for easy removal, not permanently connected to guard against devious ransomware that might manage to get on my system despite the extensive security. This drive seemed like a good, reasonably priced high capacity drive that I could use with FreeFileSync open source backup and sync software and it has turned out to be perfect. I have divided my data into two divisions and I mirror sync one division to one drive and the other division to a second identical drive, both roughly weekly so the most I could lose if malware managed to get onto my PC, my permanenly connected external bakcup drives and my two Asustor NAS would be up to a week's work that had not yet been synced to one of the MyPassport drives which would be a bit inconvenient but not a disaster. The drives are compact, smaller than a Seagate 4Tb drive I was using before I bought the MyPassport, virtually silent with a very small pin prick blue light that illuminates when the drive is connected and flashes when the drive is being written or read. It gets warm when a lot of data is being transferred but not hot and the transfer speed is good, as you would expect from a USB 3.0 device. One thing that might be an issue with how often I attach and detach the drive from its cable is that the connector at the drive end is USB-B, the type with the flattened 8 shaped connector. I am concerned the connector inside the drive may become detached from the drive inside the case. A more firmly attached USB-C connector might have been a better choice. Also, with it being bus powered, the cable from a USB-A 3.0 socket on the PC to the drive can't be longer than 50cm or the drive periodically disconnects due to power fluctuations. I need a longer cable so I can leave it plugged into the tower of my PC under the desk and have some spare to leave on top of my desk so I can easily attach the drives when running the back up without have to grope around on the floor. The only way to do this is to have a powered USB 3.0 hub connected to one of the USB 3.0 sockets on the PC and then attach a longer cable from the hub to the drive. Doing it this way has enabled me to use a 2m cable from the hub to the drive without any disconnections. This would be necessay with any bus powered device - that's why the cable included in the box is so short and only usable to connect to a laptop with the drive right next to it. I will see how reliable the drives are and how durable the connector socket on the drive turns out to be after plugging in and unplugging twice a week but sofar, so good and I can recommend this drive.

Good, but eventually your free trial of Acronis will expire and you need to use a yearly subscription plan to backup and restore your own files, on your own external hdd using their software. With free trial it is slow, clunky and large restores (which I am working through right now) are hard to export and to collate. Not a smooth process, especially if you have had to reinstall the system more than once and have different backup files. They removed the mount option from Acronis, so recovering from Acronis backup to VHD seems to be the 'fastest' way. Going folder/file at a time is so slow the program seems to freeze for extended periods of time. My latest hdd is a Seagate, hoping they don't require a subscription or have poor software.