WD 2TB My Passport Ultra Portable Hard Drive USB 3.0 Model WDBMWV0020BBK-NESN Black

Pros: I have tested this portable drive in a variety of Operating Systems ranging from Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1. Also including server 2008, 2012 and Ubuntu. The drive is a top notch performer in both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connections. I tested the transfer of many smaller files and larger backups files and in both situations the drive performed as expected. Aside from very light, it is very portable and fits almost everywhere including pockets. Benchmarks: USB 3.0 CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 50 MB Seq Read: 104.5 MB/s Seq Write: 99.55 MB/s 512 K Read: 46.23 MB/s 512 K write: 66.88 MB/s 4K Read: 0.631 MB/s 4K Write: 2.222 MB/s 4K QD32 Read: 0.755 MB/s 4K QD32 write: 2.319 MB/s USB 2.0 CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 50 MB Seq Read: 34.22 MB/s Seq Write: 28.45 MB/s 512 K Read: 23.76 MB/s 512 K write: 26.96 MB/s 4K Read: 0.696 MB/s 4K Write: 1.958 MB/s 4K QD32 Read: 0.736 MB/s 4K QD32 write: 2.054 MB/s

Cons: None.

Overall Review: The enclosure is a bit wider than most 2.5" Drives that I have worked with. The drive uses the USB 3.0 Micro-B plug. The other thing that you may want to consider is the length of the cable which is around 1 foot. If you have the need for a longer cable consider a USB extension cable and make sure it is USB 3.0 compatible.

Pros: I just want to start by saying that this drive the by far the best external hard drive ever conceived. I own 6 different external drives and this one blows them all away. To start, the drive requires no external power source. You just plug it into the USB port and you're ready to go. It's USB 3.0 native. There is a very clear difference in speeds between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. This thing is blazing fast for an external hard drive. I have seen burst reads and writes of 500 MB/sec and sustained reads and writes of 90 MB/sec. Of course, like any other drive, at least in my experience, the speed will eventually level off on the larger file transfers. With USB 3.0 it normally levels off around 60-70 MB/sec on average to large files and with USB 2.0 it drops to around 30 MB/sec for larger files. The convenience of a portable hard drive can not be overstated. This drive is fairly small, especially for a 2 TB. It's got a bit of weight to it, heavier than the 1 TB WD My Passport I own. You can easily fit it in your jacket pocket and take it to wherever you might need to go. They add in a nice little pouch to carry it in. Which is nice, as I was carrying my other portable drive in a zip-lock bag. I have put these drives to the test, taking them in from 20 degree F weather after sitting in my car all day, plugging it in and it fired up straight away. No hiccups, no issues. I've also dropped mine on a number of occasions and it has never hesitated to work perfectly. This drive comes formatted for Windows out of the box. There is also software onboard to format for the Mac OS, and there are also identical drives preconfigured for Mac. As with most other external hard drives, it comes with software preinstalled for data backup. The back up software is easy to use. You can configure the back up manually or let it go automatically. The auto backup will auto locate your files, categorize them and automatically prioritize them and create a schedule for back ups. Doing it manually is just like any other back up software, add files, choose when to back them up and how often to repeat. The Passport Ultra also has the option to backup to the cloud. You need to create a Dropbox account to use the cloud backup option. Dropbox is free with 2 GB of cloud storage with the option to upgrade to a larger amount or earn free space by completing a few easy steps and referring friends. My Passport also comes with recovery software. If you need to backup a file that's become corrupted or deleted it gives you the option to choose which version of the file you want to recover based on date. There is included utility and security software on this drive. You can set up your drive to require a password upon opening and there is also the option to apply hardware encryption on your drive to keep your data private. The utility software allows you to run diagnostics if you're having issues with something or to perform preventative maintenance.

Cons: None. I own two of these and they're both extremely fast and reliable as well as convenient.

Overall Review: I gave this drive 5 Eggs. I don't hand out that kind of rating unless the item is the best in it's class. In my opinion, this drive is just that. I was so happy with this drive I recommended it to my Uncle for use in his business. This drive has it all, speed, portability, features and capacity. It's the total package. If I ever need another external hard drive again, I'm getting another one of these. I have used this drive on the X Box 360 and the Wii U. You have to partition part of the drive for use on those systems and it's got the speed to run games straight off of the drive without any kind of lag, so I can stop buying discs. I would never buy another disc again if I could get away with it. Including BD-R. When you consider how much 50 GB BD-R discs cost, its cheaper and more convenient to get one of these to hold your movies and games.

Pros: A very portable design for this Western Digital "My Passport". It is powered by it's USB connection. It stays fairly cool while reading/writing. Also, it is very quiet compared to other similar products I have running. - Read Benchmark: Min: 52.5 MB/s, Max: 119 MB/s Access Time: 18.5ms Burst Rate: 170 MB/s - File Benchmark (512MB): Read: 113336 KB/s, Write: 102836 KB/s Read: 130 IOPS, Write: 439 IOPS | 4kb random single Read: 139 IOPS, Write: 403 IOPS | 4kb random multi - Copying 15GB file from SATA3 SSD to My Passport Ultra 2TB USB 3.0: 105-120MB/s transfer rates, averaging at 109MB/s.

Cons: Like most of these smaller USB 3.0 drives the My Passport Ultra 2TB also has a short USB 3.0 cable: 15". May not be a con for some users though. This is more meant to be a pocket drive than to be an addition to your desktop hardware/furniture, I believe.

Overall Review: I have quite a few external USB drives and I believe this is the best physical design I have encountered yet. It is the perfect size for portability: not too big that I need a separate carrying case, not too small that it is easily lost or misplaced. This 2TB drive is near a 1/4 the size of my 3TB USB 3.0. - Extra Read Tests: Random seek 50 IOPS 20.145 ms 0.024 MB/s Random seek 4 KB 56 IOPS 17.722 ms 0.220 MB/s Butterfly seek 50 IOPS 20.132 ms 0.024 MB/s Random seek / size 64 KB 56 IOPS 17.904 ms 0.859 MB/s Random seek / size 8 MB 15 IOPS 66.019 ms 61.420 MB/s Sequential outer 1706 IOPS 0.586 ms 106.598 MB/s Sequential middle 1491 IOPS 0.671 ms 93.185 MB/s Sequential inner 897 IOPS 1.115 ms 56.078 MB/s Burst rate 2642 IOPS 0.379 ms 165.123 MB/s I would recommend this to anyone looking for portable storage or even for a good backup option.

Pros: I have several other external hard drives that I use, a few of them are USB 3.0. NONE of them compare to this one. I'll get to the numbers in a minute, but let me just say that I will never buy another external hard drive again without taking a serious look at the Ultra series. I have a standard My Passport 2 TB USB 3.0 drive and this thing blows it out of the water. Here are a few notes I took while testing: - Good packaging - Sleeve is a nice touch - Went to Western Digital to get the latest software since the software on the drive was from early 2013. Once installed software worked perfectly. The backup software was easy to use, had good options and had two modes Categorized Backup (ie music, videos, documents, email, etc) and File Backup. I'm not entirely sure how accurate it is though because it said I have over 75 gigs of videos/movies, but this computer is my work laptop and I don't have anything like that on here. There is, however a file/folder mode and that's probably what I'll do instead of the "Smart" categorized mode. - Drive is FAST. Writes at over 112 megabytes a second?! I thought, "that can't be right." Tried it again. This time I transferred 30 gigs in under 5 minutes! Wow! Granted the drive was empty, essentially, but wow. Burst read speeds were up over 214.3 megs a second via HD Tach. The average read for the entire drive was up over 91.6 megs a second. Honestly, I'm blown away I was not expecting a portable hard drive to perform like this.

Cons: Zero. Nothing.

Overall Review: Aside from the performance, there's a good warranty too. Honestly, this drive was fabulous. I will only recommend these drive from now on to my family and friends. The price is a little steeper than most, but what you gain in performance outweighs the cost, in my opinion. Fantastic job Western Digital. I've found this drive on a sale in a few other places. Not that I don't love Newegg and usually they are the lowest, because I do, but when you can find it for over $10, that's a great deal. Either way, can't go wrong and I'm sure Newegg will have these on sale at some point. Great get!

Pros: Small size, robust backup solution, Continuous backup options, Revision history, Drive password security.

Cons: Price, activity light is kind of bright.

Overall Review: : I have a lot of good things to say about this drive. First off I’ll talk about the physical drive. It has a very solid case that is around the drive. It also is a 2.5” drive so it has a very small form factor. It is USB powered so no additional power cable is needed. And it’s USB 3.0 so speeds are very nice for this drive. Also it comes with a nice soft carry bag. That may not seem like a big deal but when transporting the drive you don’t have to worry about losing the cable since it’s in the bag. Now for the transfer speeds. I’m going to keep this simple. On USB 3.0 I was averaging 100 MB\s while moving data to and from the drive. While on USB 2.0 I was averaging 30 MB\s And finally the software that comes with the drive. This drive is a little pricey and you can find 2TB drives for cheaper but the software is what makes this drive a winner. First it comes with a password encryption software to allow you to password protect your drive and even allows you to save your login as an auto login account to prevent you from having to type in the password every time. Next is the utilities program that allows you to run diags, set sleep timers and do proper drive wipes for your data. And finally is the backup software which I feel is great for free software with a drive. This software scans your drive and separates all your data into categories. Next you select which areas you want to back up and too where you want to backup. It offers backup options to Drop Box which is nice but since the free drop box account is only 2G it does limit you. I chose to just backup to the drive only. Once you have decided to backup you can schedule backups or do a continuous backup. The continuous backup is awesome great since this software allows for revisions on the data. What that means is if you did continuous backups you can have revisions (5 revisions by default and more if you choose) and those revisions allow you to restore a file back days in case you mess it up and accidentally save it. So if you mess up a file and save it and don’t realize it until the 3rd time you open it, you can go back to the 5th revision and it will restore back to the file before you messed it up even though you have saved over it 3 times. (Incredible for free software) And the restore options are very granular which allows you to pick and choose what files you want to restore and not all of them. It also allows you to restore to the original location or to another location in case you want to keep the original file. In conclusion this is more than just a portable drive, it is a storage drive and all in one backup option for your home computer that was a whole lot more than I expected. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for such and you will not be disappointed. If you are just looking for storage space this will work for you but there are other options out there for less up front cost.

Pros: 2TB space USB 3.0

Cons: None

Overall Review: I have a 1TB version of this drive already and just needed an extra drive for backup purposes. The USB 3.0 is speedy and I really like the size of this drive. It runs cool and quiet and is fast. Perfect for backing up family videos and family photos. Recommended.

Pros: Pricing is good for 2.5 portable externals USB 3.0 Very lightweight and well made enclosure Backup options

Cons: Cable provided is a bit longer than a foot, best used for a laptop considering that. Not really a con however depending on how you look at it.

Overall Review: Transfer speeds were good for a 2.5 external, getting 110+ Mb/s, spinning down to as low as 70mb/s. Honestly need to check USB 3.0 drivers to get full speed, USB 3.0 is still fairly new considering, and certain Intel storage drivers could interfere with getting the best speeds from 3.0 drives and SSDs.

Pros: Other external drives seem big and clunky in comparison. Fast & stable for all files, large or small. Very good software for easy backup if you wish. 3-year warranty is fairly long for a pocket size portable drive.

Cons: USB cord has what appears to be a special plug on one end which connects to the drive, so don't lose the cord! USB cord is only about 1 foot long so it limits where you can place the drive. Many portable drives come with these short cables.

Overall Review: We've had a few external drives over the years, some of which were self-contained while others were bare drives which we placed inside external cases. For a long time speed was limited to around 30MB/sec. because that's all you can get on a USB 2.0 connection. But now external / portable drives have matured; now they can show a turn of speed over USB 3.0, reaching upwards of 70MB/sec. at least. When we transferred 120GB of HD video this little Ultra clocked a sustained rate of 88MB - 90MB/sec. Probably would have stayed with big file portability as the main use for the Ultra if i hadn't tried the backup software. Seriously, this is as easy as it gets. Let the software scan your whole computer for photos, music, video, etc. then allow it to backup as much of the resulting list as you want. After we confirmed that it found all our media we told it to backup everything. After that, it will automatically backup any new stuff we save on our computer. Couldn't be easier. We don't use Dropbox, but we had no problem selecting all the photos we like and uploading them to our own cloud storage. Uploading to the cloud does not take advantage of the Ultra's speed but it gets the job done while you go on doing other things. Previous external drives had the disadvantages of being bulkier, running hotter and making more noise. My Passport Ultra is sleek, cool and nearly silent. Place it on your shortlist of worthy contenders.