wd my passport portable hard drive

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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2019

Capacity: 5TBStyle: Standard EnclosureColor: Black Verified Purchase

During last 15 years, I bought more than 10 Western Digital hard drives, both internal and external. They all worked well, I ever had only one hard drive failure, and it was after many years of service.

When I got this drive, initially I was very happy with it. It looked well constructed. It passed all self tests and external-program surface tests with flying colors. Surface tests and full formatting took a normal time for an external drive of such size (about 15 hours for full write/read surface test). However when I started backing up my data to it, it was progressing much slower than expected. Normally it takes from 20 to 30 hours to back up all my data (about 3.5T) to an USB 3 drive. It took more than 100 hours to back up my data to this drive. It looked like each file was being written with a normal speed, but there was a long wait between files, sometimes several minutes, when the drive seemingly was not doing anything. I verified that it was not my computer, or cable, or my USB port - other drives attached to the same port/cable did not experience such problem. The problem stayed consistent throughout the whole backup process. Rebooting computer or changing USB port did not help. The drive did not exhibit unusual noise or vibration, read speed was not affected, and in the end the data were written correctly.

I tried to update drive firmware, but was not successful. WD firmware updater was only saying "disconnect all USB devices except one hard drive you want to update", even though I did not have anything else connected. I was not able to get past this message.

I was seriously considering returning this drive, but in the end decided to keep it, because I need a new external hard drive, there are not many options for 5T portable drives right now, and I did not want to spend the time on testing and then backing my data on another drive. Also, as far as I can tell, whatever problems this drive has, it does not affect data reliability.

Final point - WD now supplies a new software called "WD Discovery". No documentation was included with the drive, but WD web site says that "WD Discovery allows you to download and keep up to date other WD Apps, and learn about software from WD partners". The last part sounds like it is a big piece of adware, but for curiosity I tried to install it under Sandboxie (a virtualized environment guaranteeing that programs can be cleanly uninstalled). Installation failed because WD discovery tried to install a kernel driver that Sandboxie does not support. Why a program whose stated purpose is to help download other apps would need a kernel driver is beyond me.

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2019

Capacity: 4TBStyle: MacColor: Navy Verified Purchase

This device actually has USB 3.0 Micro-B connector, not a USB-C connector.

In the box, they include these adapter cables:
- USB 3.0 Micro-B to USB 3.0 A
- USB 3.0 Micro-B to USB-C

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2019

Capacity: 5TBStyle: Standard EnclosureColor: Black Verified Purchase

The added cost for the jump from 4TB to 5TB is egregious. HDD drives are too slow and antiquated to still cost this much.

For some reason, this model has no non-slip feet, and the cheap plastic surface is especially glossy/slippery. As a result, it slides around like a hockey puck on basically any flat hard surface. I have three previous My Passport models, and they all have non-slip feet. This is a really unbelievable design oversight by WD.

The bundled software is utter garbage: the LED on/off toggle in WD Discovery doesn't work, and WD Drive Utilities immediately crashes and stops responding when I open it—it has to be force quit and then makes properly ejecting the drive a hassle as it gets stuck as "in use."

I have nine other WD external hard drives, but this will most-likely be my last.

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2019

Capacity: 5TBStyle: MacColor: Navy Verified Purchase

This unit DOES NOT have a USB C Connector. I can buy adapters, Western Digital; make your product description accurate! There's a reason none of the pictures show the connector on the hard drive: it's not USB C.

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2019

Capacity: 2TBStyle: PCColor: Black Verified Purchase

Arrived in unopened/undamaged packaging and there was no cosmetic damage. Drive arrived pre-formatted as NTFS and had both MAC and WINDOWS installers. I ran the included installer and then full WD diagnostics before I put the drive to work. Drive stopped working after less than 10 hours of backup use and will no longer mount (or dismount) on any of my systems (WIN7, WIN10, MACOS). WD software cannot 'fix' or mount the drive meaning I can no longer use it...and it now makes that annoying clicking noise reported by others. I have used WD drives, both internal and external, for 20+ years without incident or failure. This one is a disappointment and is rated accordingly.

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2019

Capacity: 1TBStyle: Standard EnclosureColor: Black Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

My intention is to use it as a backup drive. It is physically a little smaller than older USB drives that I have from WD. I evaluated it by connecting it to a USB 3 HUB connected to a relatively new desktop computer and ran a test program on it. This is what I got when I ran it:
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 130.506 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 124.038 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 0.605 MB/s [ 147.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 9.243 MB/s [ 2256.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.587 MB/s [ 143.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 9.033 MB/s [ 2205.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.501 MB/s [ 122.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 8.738 MB/s [ 2133.3 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [G: 0.0% (0.2/931.5 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2019/10/09 21:58:49
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 18362] (x64)
You can see that it is relatively fast when reading and writing sequential data, but substantially slower with random reading and writing as one would expect. These speeds aren't much different than those measured on internal mechanical drives.