Top positive review
3 people found this helpful
Solid backup for off-site storage without the cloud.
By C. Rogers on Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2014
I recently started going through all old home videos and pictures, and aggregating them onto my home (RAID mirrored) server. I bought this little (physical size) hard drive for one reason: to backup that data on the server. While the data is mirrored on the servers hard drives, those two hard drives are in close proximity and are susceptible to failure from external sources (electrical/thunder, water, fire, etc). The reason why I paid more and went with a small hard drive (2.5") as opposed to a full-sized hard drive (3.5") was for the ability to store the hard drive into a safety deposit box. Now if you do some research, hard drives aren't great for long term storage that is disconnected. If you attempt this method I add the caveat that you should connect the hard drive to a machine once in a while. I personally plan on updating the files every 4-6 months. "But C.Rogers, why would you do this when there is cloud storage!?". Simple, privacy and speed. Cloud storage is over the internet and subsequently is limited by the fastest upload speed your internet provider gives you. It is further limited by any bottle-necks the data hits along the way to it's destination. When you're talking about backing up terabytes of data, this is already a turn off as it would take a huge amount of time (a week or more?) to upload initially. Granted after that it can do incremental back up's that won't take nearly as long, that leads me to my next problem, privacy. There are two aspects I worry about, non-encrypted transmission and legality/security of the service (who really owns the data on their servers, and how secure is it really?). Does the service provide the ability to encrypt the uploads and downloads so no one in between can look at my data? Does the data stay encrypted on their servers? When push comes to shove, who owns the data once it's on their servers? Finally how secure is the service from being hacked? While all these questions have answers that would probably sway me toward cloud storage, the fact that they exist at all means there are far more variables than I'm comfortable with. More variables mean higher percentage of problems arising from unforeseen scenarios. You know whose going to hack this hard drive when its not in my possession? A bank robber. Done. "You said it's fast? How fast?". To that I can't comment fully as I don't have a machine with USB 3.0. Best I can offer is USB 2.0. To that end I can mention that I'm getting an average of 20 megabytes (not megabits*) per second writing and about 27 megabytes per second reading. Compatibility: Confirmed working on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2007 without issue. Construction: Feels solid, nice little rubber pads on the bottom. Still a hard drive though, I wouldn't go dropping it. Noise: Church Mouse status Bloatware: Minimal. It comes with Western Digital's management and back up software installed (totaling 254 MB on the hard drive). I imagine I could delete it, but I see no need. In fact I might need some of it in the future. Additionally, it's not "in your face" as soon as you plug it in. There if you want it, but silent if you don't. Other notes: The wire it comes with is about 12 inches long. If this is your first USB 3.0 device, be aware that it is a different wire than USB 2.0 1.1 and 1.0. While I believe USB 2.0 and previous micro wires will work, you will not get USB 3.0 speeds. Thus if you need a longer cable and want USB 3.0 speeds, you will need to order one separately. tl;dr: +Great hard drive for a reasonable price. +Small enough to store in a safety deposit box. +Speeds of 27 MB/s read and 20 MB/s write on USB 2.0. +No real bloatware, just additional utilities included on the hard drive totaling 254 MB's.* +Pretty quiet. -USB 3.0 cable provided is only 12" long. *did not use the auto or cloud backup options, can not comment.
Top critical review
2 good years, then dead. Warranty service experience added.
By On-mission on Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2016
Bought two of these in Nov. 2013 (a black one for my laptop, a red one for my wife), both seemed to work fine since - until today. Still well within the 3 year limited warranty, mine died today. WD's own Utility software couldn't read the drive to give a diagnosis, but Crystal Disk Info showed 767 Reallocated Sectors (100 is very high), the drive began to randomly 'click' today, and Windows 10 file manager recognized it only as "Local Drive" but couldn't access it at all. Thankfully it was used for backups only and I didn't have anything 'one of a kind' on it. The irreplaceable stuff is on my wife's WD Passport - so now to get that off in case it fails too. In my book, a product review also includes service (including warranty) after the sale. In order to get an RMA, I had to call their customer service operators last night as the WD website got stuck and repeatedly asked for my address - although I had entered it several times previously. When i called I ended up w/Jose who, though efficient, was a bit terse and bordered on curt w/me a couple of times. Don't know where WD's CSR's are located, but heard a young woman laughing and talking loudly quite a bit in the background. I'm sure that she was probably just in the cubicle next door and laughing with a customer but, when you've just had a catastrophic hard drive failure, you want calm and compassionate reassurance - not laughter. While waiting for Jose to do his thing and listening to the laughter, it conjured up the image of the old Discover Card "This is Peggy" commercial with the man in a little hut inside the Arctic Circle taking calls for "USA Credit". So a little unnerved I was as I gave them my address and credit card info for what WD calls an "Advanced RMA" - wherein they ship a new HD immediately, put a hold on my credit card for $127 (a new model on Amazon is $89), and give me 30 days to ship the dead HD back, or have my credit card docked for the overpriced, new (supposedly) HD. I'll update the review when we see if I get a new model or the older (possibly refurbished?) model from 3 years ago... I was nice to "Peggy", so hopefully the rest of the story will turn out well. In the meantime, the WD SmartWare isn't very smart. It doesn't automatically update (though the box is checked to allow updates...), and never were really sure if it was backing up. Turns out that the software hadn't updated on my pc since July 2015 (two versions ago), and my wife's situation was even worse... the WD software on her pc wasn't backing up at all, and hadn't updated since November 2014. So we ran several manual backups just to be on the safe side. Strangely, we discovered these software issues over last weekend and, concerned that we may have more WD software problems, had begun backups with Windows 10 Backup utility, which is much less intrusive and draining on the computer than the SmartWare Continuous backups. Then today my HD failed. Coincidence? Bottom line... not sure if I'm too enthused about getting another Western Digital 2TB Passport Ultra for free or not... UPDATE March 2, 2016. Received a replacement hard drive for the one that died within 3 days. WD did a good job responding and shipping quickly. I would have been surprised to see a new HD to replace my dead one, and sure enough, the HD that they sent was EXACTLY like the one that I bought more than two years ago, and is clearly refurbished (says "Recertified in Vietnam" on the bottom). While the recertified part isn't a big deal to me as I've bought numerous refurbed products over the years with excellent results (typing this review on a wonderful little refurbed Lenovo T430s ThinkPad...), the part that has irked me since getting the HD is that when I registered the new/recertified HD with Western Digital on their online portal and checked the warranty, I see that it expires at the end of May 2016 - whopping four months after it was sent to me - and six months short of the November 2016 warranty expiration of my old dead one! The least that WD could have done was to extend the warranty of the recertified HD until then...or I could extend it myself until 2018 for an additional $25. Bad business practices, WD. To their credit however, my fears of "Peggy" in the Arctic Circle stealing my credit card info or at least not crediting the $127 for a "new" HD were, so far, unfounded. The hold that they had placed on my card for the full, inflated price of the replacement HD has since been removed (because I sent the dead one back to them post-haste, and at my expense!). Overall, the first HD lasted only two out of the three years of the warranty. But WD did "replace" it with a recertified model. However, I had to pay to ship the dead one back to them, then got shorted six months on the warranty as compared to the original. I'm not impressed with WD and won't be buying anything else from them. Hopefully I won't also be updating this review later this year because the recertified HD dies out of warranty. The barely three stars that I've generously given will then fall like rocks.
Sort by:
Filter by:
By -
Verified Amazon Purchase
Vine Customer Review of Free Product
Sorry, no reviews match your current selections.
Try clearing or changing some filters.Show all reviews
Show more reviews