Best Portable External Hard Drives Reviews

HDD too easy to use. I don”t know if the credit of easy to use goes to Apple or Western Digital, but as a user I am happy with the combination I have. I wanted something gigantic and portable to supplement my new MacBook Pro, which has a 121GB solid state drive–very cool and functional, but maybe not sufficient by itself for the next 3 years. The My Passport is a nice visual match for the MacBook, with more capacity than I’ll need. I use it for Time Machine backup, and also have some legacy data–photographs, music, finances &c–just stored as normal files on disk. All the documentation is on the disk itself, so when I first plugged it into my old XP PC, I got the usual misleading message asking if I wanted to give permission to search for a driver on the web. That’s completely unnecessary–it just works, and you don’t have to do anything.

However, I did have to reformat the drive in order to be able to use it on the Mac, since I naively did not realize the file systems are incompatible. It was easy to do. I copied the documentation & drive management software onto all my computers (belt & suspenders), plugged the drive into the Mac’s USB port and reformatted it. Didn’t take very long. Then I copied the docs and drive management software back onto the drive, and installed the software on the Mac. No problems, although in the end I am using Time Machine for backups instead of Western Digital’s software. Then I copied all my legacy data from all my PCs over the wireless network. That took a few hours, and several times the Mac would tell me I didn’t have permission to copy one of my files. Typically this would be a pdf or spreadsheet I got from a fellow committee-member at church. I would just make a copy on the PC, and copy the copy.

I travel all the time & work with several computers, office, home, personal, & in different countries, etc., this product allows me to keep important info in a small package without having to have a laptop etc. with me, it is the one thing I will not leave home without

The instructions on the drive say not to move it when it’s operating, but I made the decision to use it for Time Machine back ups while in a One-to-One session at the Apple Store. The staffer & I started the process, which takes an hour or so the first time. We did other stuff, and the initial back-up was still going on when session time ended. So I left the drive connected, put the MacBook & drive in my bag, and carefully strolled through the mall to drink coffee and wait for it to finish. No problem. I enjoyed the coffee and worked the email, never have had a problem.