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For Western Digital My Passport Ultra 500GB (WDBWWM5000), 643 customer reviews collected from 1 e-commerce sites, and the average score is 4.3.

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21.9.2016

This is my fourth WD Passport external drive in the last 10 years and they've all served me very well (3 are still working perfectly, 1 broke from user error I think).If you're looking for something simple and easy to use, this is a winner. You can use the bundled software if you want, but you dont have to. The WD Essentials etc software comes bunbled with the Passport series of drives, but not with the Elements (I believe, though i've never owned one), so that's the only difference as far as i know.The software includes Backup, Security and Drive Utilities programs. I dont use them, but the Security one seems the most useful - it provides a software/firmware level password protection function which means that the drive itself,when "locked" and plugged in, will not appear. Instead the WD Unlocker - which appears to the computer as a CD drive - allows you to type the password in to unlock the drive. Once unlocked, the "whole" drive appears as removable media ie: as normal. This wont stop someone from taking the physical platter out of the drive casing and putting it in another casing and plugging it in to their computer, but it's okay for basic pasword protection. The data itself is not encrypted and is still readable on the platter. Personally, i use bitlocker to physically encrypt the data itself as it is written onto the drive, so even if someone took the drive apart, it would still be secure. (If this is wrong, some one please correct me :P)The drive spins at 54,000 rpm, which is pretty average - you can expect max real-world read/write speeds of 120 MBps, but this can drop to 50MBps depending on which physical part of the drive you're writing to. (This drop happens with all spinning hard drives, but by increasing the spin speed, you can shift from 120-50, to eg: 180-90). Personally, i'm a bit of a speed freak, so i try and squeeze as much juice out of it as i can, but in real terms, it makes no difference and you wont even notice.Make sure you're using USB3.0 to get more than the 40MBps cap that USB2.0 has.Although, frankly, given the change from USB A-type connector (The rectangular shape that most people associate with USB) to USB C-type connector, and the advent of USB 3.1 and beyond, I might suggest waiting a few months/years until the new generation comes out. The world will be well rid of the stupid Micro-USB 3.0 that these external drives use (no, not the same one as your phone). It's hideous, trust me.Personally, i'm not a huge fan of the berry colour, but i had to differentiate it from my other WD drives at a glance. I also preferred the old design style, but oh well.Cons: Can't think of much, other than it "only" being 54,000 rpm. Though I stress that this is EASILY fast enough for most users.
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16.6.2016

Bought this to replace my large 1TB AC power driven Maxtor external hard drive when I discovered it wasn't compatible with Windows 10. A blessing in disguise really because this is just SO much more portable and is backwards compatible too. I did reformat it (easily) to ex-Fat as soon as I got it so I use it with Mac as well as Windows PCs. And with it being USB 3.0, it's so much more noticeably faster than my old USB 2.0 one. I'll now have to transfer all my pre 2016 photos/docs/music from my old hard drive to my old Win7 laptop just so I can then move them all onto this new one so it's all in one place.I haven't entirely gotten the hang of the software yet (other than ticking all the boxes and doing a regular back up as I prefer sometimes to do a manual back up by hand to ensure that my settings such as bookmarks/favourites/contacts and address books are also backed up). The auto back up was pretty fast though and in opening the folders, it appears that everything I checked is there (there are no check boxes for contacts/favourites that I have found hence why I do these parts manually). I should be able to restore all or selected folders should I ever need to. Have yet to test that future backups are incremental - i.e., that's it's smart enough to just add NEW or AMENDED stuff to the back up and not do the whole thing again but the blurb says it should. I'm just very suspicious that some tech gadgets never quite as smart as the manufacturer would lead you to believe, but so far, it's done what I've asked of it, the biggest advantage being it's size. Picture colour is true to life too. Maybe the only improvement I would suggest is a slightly longer USB cable as I often sit with my laptop on my actual lap and need a longer cable to sit the hard drive maybe on a nearby table/the floor whilst connected. At the moment with the cable being short, I have to place both on a table/desk or the floor to do so.
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12.5.2016

Warning!! Qnap TS-453 (and possibly other devices). This drive causes severe problems on the NAS when connected with the usb 3 cable. It is incompatible basically and nothing that Qnap or WD can do anything about. AFASIK this applies to the 3TB version only. Qnap claim the 1 & 2TB version is OK but I can't confirm or deny it as I haven't tried them.I bought this drive specifically to connect to my NAS and the moment I tried to copy anything to it, the NAS became unresponsive and had to be rebooted.After a lot of testing I found that using a normal USB 2 cable solved the problem. Less speed but at least I can use it for the intended purpose.The drive works perfectly connected to a PC so it'san issue with the Qnap hub and if you need the speed and have a Qnap TS-x53 pro avoid it.Other than this problem the drive appears to work well, it's small and compact and at the time of writing came with the WD neoprene case which is a rather tight fit but just about works.As a lot of people have mentioned, be aware that the included cable is only .5m long. You may want to consider getting a longer one if you think you'll need it but when connecting to laptops or enclosure it should be fine.Included utilites which work on the PC or MAC only are not strictly necessary but one I found useful was to set the sleep timer period. Once this is done it will set it in the drive and will work when connected to anything. ie. the tools do not need to be constantly running, the setting is stored on the drive itself.WD also provide a backup utility which is basic and maybe adequate but if not just use your own software to perform automated backups if need be.3 year warranty is always a good thing and you should register the drive on [...]. This will confirm the warranty period.
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3.3.2017

I bought this 1TB hard drive to replace a similar device I have that has gone missing. This was delivered the next day as promised, well packaged and protected.It's a good size, small enough to go in your pocket, and looks good. I chose the 'berry' so that it would be easily distinguishable from my other devices. The colour is actually more pinky than the photo would suggest, I was expecting something dark reddish and it's actually more cerise, but I like it.It's plug and play which is great, and it worked perfectly on my windows laptop, not so on my Mac. Once I'd used it on my PC I could open files on the MAC, but couldn't transfer to the hard drive from it.Perhaps this is a formatting issue - I don't really know enough about the tech side to comment any further. One of my main requirements for it was to back-up my PC, and there were no problems with that. Aside from the backup I also used it to transfer quite a large amount of files (some from another hard drive), which took several hours (108GB of docs and apps took around 4 hours, over 3000 photo's took around 2.5 hrs). Saving smaller amounts was obviously much quicker and opening files is instantaneous.I'd definitely recommend this device based on the first couple of days. If anything untoward happens with it in the future it I'll update this review, but I never experienced any problems with my old WD device!
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11.10.2016

It was all really quick installing and I didn't have to do anything when connected to my iMac 10.7.5. It just did everything itself and they built their rapport so easily, swiftly! The size is compact so no waste of table-top space. The colour is as we see on the screen. I was using WD Passport for the past 5 years and it got full, so I went for the next one. 2TB is a lot of space, I would imagine. And now this Passport not just stores what I pass on to it, but deals a lot more with my computer and the data. It scans and backs up all data on the system. This feature is something I used to dream of in the past. Now it is a reality for me. I was a bit withdrawn when,at the time of skimming through the product description, I read that I would have to do some configuring with this Passport for my iMac, but to my surprise, the cute little but powerful 'hybrid' hard-drive simply befriended my iMac without asking me for anything. I just connected by the already provided USB cable, and my system recognised 'him' instantly. All so cool. I highly recommend this product to anyone who is seriously thinking about storing their data outside their system. With the last five years of my experience with WD Passport, I am now quite confident that I do not need another alternative device or means to back up my data. WD has never created a problem for me so far. Thank you WD.
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2.9.2015

External storage was always significantly slower than internal .. that is until USB 3 drives became available. WD have been on the forefront in offering affordable and reliable drives.The drive is very fast and build quality is great. The berry coloured one looks great too!Backup conscious users will be pleased to find WD Smartware Pro software which works a treat. It also offers 256-bit hardware encryption, which can be activated if necessary. This can be used to encrypt specific files or folders.One qualm I have is the shortish cable on offer, as I use this mainly on a desktop. But then again, if it were longer one could argue that it would not fit the protective cases available for these drives.I also got the Amazon basics case which is good value and fits the drive plus cable easily.The WD 2TB is plug and play, (as expected) and current is drawn through the supplied USB3 cable which aids portability.This offering is covered by a 3 year warranty and comes bundled with "WD SmartWare Pro automatic back-up software WD Security and Utilities". Please note that you cannot use this drive for Windows and IOS concurrently. (IOS promts you to reformat the drive)Bottom line: I highly recommend this drive to anyone wanting reliable, portable and affordable external storage.
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9.1.2017

First impression: since i'm waiting to buy a second disk, the same size and color, I can only tell that is pretty fast and reliable. It has the 4TB capacity with HFS+.It has a nice black glossy case, it's small and the cable is just the right size.It's fast, either NTFS and HFS+, doesn't overheat, and it's silence.Comes pre-formated in NTFS and brings inside all the apps needed for Windows and Mac, and manuals to.It can be formated with an app offered by WD that also diagnost the disk it self, using SMART.Second impression (RAID 1 - SoftRAID):Waiting for 2nd disk of the same size and color.EDIT 2: [19/01/2017]This is the second disk i bought, to use both in a RAID 1 with 4TB.I use a iMac,so i tried the SoftRaid to format both disk in to a RAID and failed while formatting to HFS+ so i went with the "Disk Utilitys" that comes with the OS.The READ and WRITE speeds are as fast as one single drive. From 80mb/s to 150mb/s.I have bought 2 of this disks, paying 400$ (+ shipping) for both, but one of the best things about this RAID 1, is that it doesn't need an energy power source and enclosures. Everything already comes out of the box, Plug-and-Play.I'm using 3 disks, 2.5 inch, with a TP-LINK usb hub with power adapter, and both 3 work great.Recomended!
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1.11.2015

I have always used Western Digital hard drives since i had a bad experience with quite a few Seagate hard drives many years ago. What you definitely get with Western Digital hard drives is reliability. I can personally vouch for that because i have four WD green 2TB hard drives i have used heavily for over three years and they are working perfectly still to this day. I have a few external USB powered hard drives but i wanted a USB powered hard drive that was at least 3TB or more in storage size and after lots of research, i decided on the WD My Passport Ultra Premium 3TB hard drive because the reviews are very good and its WD. I have used this hard drive for over a month so far and it has been flawless.Positive points about the hard drive:1)You get great reliability with Western Digital.2) It is USB 3.0 but also backwards compatible with USB 2.3) It is USB powered, so no need for an external power source.4) Pretty good transfer speeds on USB 3.0.5) The size of the actual drive is great, you could easily slip this in a pocket.Negative Points.1) Short USB cable supplied with the hard drive.2) The hard drive isn't light, it definitely has a weight to it.3) You only get roughly 2.8TB of storage space but this is to be expected.
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24.9.2015

This is my second MY Passport portable hard drive. The other one I bought a couple of years ago and was physically a bit bigger, less storage and weighed more. I was delighted to be offered a new version to try out and it is very good.It weighs about 180g and is about 8/11/1.2cm. It has aTbyte of storage.I started by trying a full back up of my PC but that hasn't worked very well for me. I'm still struggling with the back up software and I'm not sure whether this is really what I need. I found it hard to get definition of what should be backed up - maybe you can't do this and it is slow and my laptop keeps shutting down.I have now copied my main photograph directory directly to disk,15.5 Gbytes and it copies in no more than 20 minutes and looks easy to access and I have a copy.So its a great bit of kit, Its small, it will travel (although I think I will buy it a padded case) and it is a good progression from teh older version - which I also liked a lot.
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30.5.2016

WD is a reliable brand have been using WD for many many years and these never let you down, this one is no different, I took one star away as in this D&A we are dealing with various platform and different operating systems so the drive does work with one OS only , I know the answer that is solid state drive but so stupidly expensive as a compromise this renmans the only viable option, so far going good using that on my mac and it does pose the problem as all the work computers are windows based so have to transfer the data onto a flash drive for the transfer, I hope there will some soft ware or windows and mac will agree to create a transfer able platform, who knows,but at the moment they both are at each others throat, and we consumer are being miss used paying them billions for the job bad done, this drive is a reliable little portable goody, I can recommend
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5.4.2016

As you may have guessed these are 3Tb in size, and an increase on the previous model's size of 2Tb.In fact they look very similar, with the 3Tb models having a more shiny finish.Technically, they are USB3, and I was able to transfer data between two of these 3Tb models at an average of 100MB/s. This speed goes down of course if you only have USB 2 sockets, and will REALLY crawl if they are USB1.1 from many pre-2000 systems.As I understand it, they are slightly slower than the 2Tb models. I didn't (subjectively) notice any slowdown unless I was specifically measuring transferring between two of these WD drives.Finally,I'm sure others will comment and if necessary explain about exFat-GPT being used to allow the hard drives to exceed the 2Tb limit that's been around for years. It MAY mean upgrading any backup software that does not cope with GPT .
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7.9.2015

out of the bo, I was surprised at how light and compact this is, easily small enough for everyday carry in the laptop bag. I use an external hard drive for carrying work back and forth between different sites, and to store my not very huge collection of photos an other files, so 1TB is plenty. I have had an earlier model of this drive, and I really noticed the difference in file transfer speed over USB3; with the old USB2 one there were long gaps where I was drumming my fingers on the table waiting for the files to finish moving, with this one it seems to be only a few seconds. Setting up and getting started was not difficult, I'm no sort of a techie but the WD smartware pro included is easy enough to use.For the price, and as long as it lasts, this seems like a good buy if you need external storage and have a USB slot available.
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10.12.2015

No more messing about trying to find space on old hard drives in order to back up computers. 2TB at this price is a real bargain. Was not concerned about colour, so took the cheapest option (black).The spec shows compatibility with Windows Vista, 7 and 8 but I had no trouble at all installing on several ancient Windows XP computers. It did take ages trying to install on one computer but I simply downloaded driver direct from WD on internet and everything worked fine. Can't vouch for USB 3.0 speed as don't have any devices using that but even standard USB and USB 2.0 speeds were fantastic compared to other backup methods I've been using (mainly via home wired network). As others have pointed out,the USB lead supplied could do with being a bit longer but it hasn't been an issue and anyway, that's easily replaced if need be.
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17.12.2015

This is very nice. It's surprisingly small, 110 x 84 x 23mm, so just larger than a cigarette packet. It's entirely powered by USB, and doesn't need its own separate power supply plug, which is great, and is a definite step up from the older hard disks that I have.It's also surprisingly lightweight, so would be very portable, although it isn't ruggedised.It comes complete with USB 3 cable, although at 45cm long it's a bit on the short side.Data transfer is fast and reliable.It's very quiet in operation, and not annoying, although it's little ticking noise can take you by surprise!There is a light that tells you when the disk is being accessed,and it blinks intermittently all the time the disk is connected (not sure why!)It works fine on my Mac running OSX 10.11 El Capitan.
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5.11.2017

I would recommend this to everybody. It has saved my bacon twice. I regulary back up my hard drive and on 2 occassions through no fault of my own I have needed to reinstall the contents of my hard drive. The first was ransom ware infection and the second a failure on updating a photo editing programe - installed a new version of the programe, didn't like it, so tried to revert back to the original and the original and my complete library of images were removed. 6 years of images gone!However with this piece of kit I was able to re-instal the hard drive contents (which I made a back up of before updating the programe.So my honest review is - "if you value the contents of your hard drive thenbackup regularly" and this piece of kit is a breeze to install and use.
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