This portable hard drive does everything you need it to and is very reliable.

Pros:
- Very small/portable for 1TB capacity
- Sleek design
- Quiet and cool
- Subtle indicator light
- USB 3.0 speeds (though I have not tested these since my laptop doesn’t have 3.0)
- Works perfectly fine with USB 2.0

Cons:
- Specific USB 3.0 cable (It can plug into USB 2.0 fine, but the part that plugs into the actual hard drive is different from your standard usb/mini usb cable. However, I’m sure these cables will become more common as USB becomes more prevalent)
- Very short USB cable

I’ve owned and constructed my fair share of external hard drives, and I have to say that I’m impressed with this piece of tech thus far. First of all, 1 TB in such a small form factor is impressive enough. It can fit easily in my back pocket or the front pocket of my backpack, and the case construction seems solid enough to take a few hits. My biggest complaint about HDDs like these is that if you leave the USB cable connected to the device while transporting it around, it’s likely to loosen the connector over time and ruin the USB port on the drive.

That being said, don’t do that and it wont be a problem. I haven’t had this drive long enough to tell if this would happen or not, but the connector seems to be fairly rigidly connected to the case so I’m not worried for now. One thing I do have to note is the short length of the USB 3.0 cable included with the drive. For laptops it’s fine, but if you have a bottom located front side USB port on your computer and want to rest this drive on top of a larger case, you would have to get a longer cord (I was surprised at how expensive this would be). Not enough of an issue to take off any points. Oh yeah, USB 3.0 is great. This thing is quite speedy with a new USB 3.0 sporting mobo. Rock it and love it.

an external hard drive that required no separate power supply, was compact, and had a fairly large capacity (1TB+). This product met all of those requirements. We literally took the drive out of the box, plugged it in (recognized by and compatible with Win7), and approximately 4-6 hours (not sure of exact performance) later had backed up 900+ GB of media (pictures, music, and videos). We are quite pleased with its performance in these respects.

i wanted to use the pre-loaded WD software to automatically back up media files. The problem is that we do not keep media on the C drive — which is the ONLY drive you can have automatically backed up. There is NO way to specify a different drive. So if you are like us and keep files on other drives, you are out of luck…

I have a 500 GIG version of this portable hard drive which is several years old, & I am very pleased with it but all of us in the family was sharing the same drive so I figured that it was about time to get each our own. I was going to go for 2 more 500 GIG ones but the price of the 1TB was just too good to pass up.

Since we are not using the Passport for automatic back-up we didn’t install the software (well we did on one then removed it as it really didn’t fit our needs)and although our USB ports are still 1.0 and though that there may be an issue but there wasn’t and they work fine.

The order came much quicker than I had expected and we are pleased with the transaction, shipping and most of all our new portable hard drives.

It’s my first external hard drive to use. I wanted a portable hard drive to store my personal data on and I have a windows 7 virtual machine in it and I’m able to plug this hard drive to any computer that has a virtual machine software and I have my PC in my pocket wherever I go (home, work, … etc).

Portability was a main factor for me, and this hard drive is very portable it can actually fit in your shirt’s pocket, but I don’t do that actually, I bought a case for it to protect it and it has a space for the USB cable too, so I do recommend getting one if you gonna have it with you on the go often. The only shortcoming I see which is not really vital is that the USB cable is a bit too short, but it’s not that big deal anyway. Other than that tha drive is very stable I move it a lot while using it and having the VM running and nothing ever happened.

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.

Pros
+ Excellent transfer speeds at USB 2.0 (the device does same faster than my previous USB external drives)
+ Small form factor
+ Attractive design
+ No need for dual USB connections to make the drive work (some previous drives required this for power reasons, and it could be a real hassle at times)
+ Inexpensive (compared to previous models)
+ High capacity (you can get this in 1 Terabyte size, which is great)
+ Pre-formatted with NTSF (yea! No more multi-hour formatting before you can use the drive! However, if you are a Mac user, you will have to reformat)
+ No forced to use the included WD backup and encryption software if you don’t want to

Cons
- Provided cable is a tad short (this could conceivably be a “Pro”,” however, depending on your needs)
- Pricing differences based on color choice
- No drive pouch or soft case provided

The drive is fine and was fast, reliable and tough until I made the mistake of installing the included back-up software.

I’m in the process of removing this software because it rendered my computer almost unusable. I don’t have the fastest or newest but it’s a dual 3.2 GHz processor with 8 Gb of RAM running Vista Pro and the “WDSmartWare” software has almost ground it to a standstill. The software is supposed to run in the background and keep track of changes to files for continuous backups. Instead it’s chewing up 40-60% of the available processor cycles. This is after the initial back-up which I ran overnight and neither the WD or my internal drive is anywhere near full.

Fine drive if you just want storage, but whatever you do don’t let it install the included vampire like code. It will bleed you to death.

UPDATE – just to confirm it was in fact the “WDSmartWare” software – I uninstalled and everything is back to normal. Program load times, response times and file saves are about five times faster than they were a few hours ago with the “WDSmartWare” software still installed.

I save MP3 audio books. The CDs that I was using were going bad. I needed something which to move all the books.

It didn’t take a long as I thought it would. Easy to do. Easy to access after the move…MUCH easier than the CDs.

Down side: I filled the 1T drive. Now, I have to get another for my 1960-70-80s MP3 Music CDs !!! And the ones I brought back from Vienna that you can’t get here…can’t loose those!!!!

Works great and easy!

I was very excited when I received this and saw the size of the package and the sleekness of the drive for a 1TB small form factor storage solution. Unfortunately, that’s where the happiness ends. The drive itself caused nothing but problems and didn’t work properly from the beginning. Took me a while to realize that the drive was the cause, but my whole system would slow to a crawl while the drive was connected. As soon as the drive was unplugged, everything began working normally again. Almost completely unresponsive, wouldn’t re-format properly, generally just an IT nightmare. Tried it on multiple computers with the same results. Sending it back and going with a different brand. Very disappointed in WD with this one…

There is not much to say about this sleek external usb hard disk, the design is minimalist. It is fast, and quiet. In our offices the WD My Passport series has been working flawlessly, I expect the same from this one. My only complain is that the bundled USB cable is a bit short, a couple extra inches is something I would have appreciated.

the transfer speed (copying from my iMac to the drive) slowed down considerably — normally it takes about a minute to copy 1 GB; this suddenly slowed to about 2 hours (!!) to copy 1 GB. I have many other 320GB WD external drives, all of which work fine. Then, 6 months after owning this drive, my computer stopped recognizing it altogether. Don’t bother.

The most important attractive thing about this hard disk is the size, i’ve never seen a portable hard disk this tiny size before, besides this it is beautiful to the eye, the case is rounded and has a shiny polished finish. it’s really beatiful. Talking about the speed, i don’t know what were the “problem” but i needed to backup about 450 gb from my two months old i5 2.6 ghz, 4 Gb ram , windows 7, , usb 2.0 laptop and this process took more than 10 hours with a 10 to 14 mbps rate. Most of the files were between 700 mb and 2 gb each one, i don’t know why it took so long. bottom line this is a great product, maybe with an usb 3.0 laptop or pc upgrade this hard drive will be faster.

One terabyte that fits in your jeans’ pocket. I don’t want to go all “when we were young we walked 10 miles to school, etc.” on you, but my first hard drive was such that I would have needed 50’000 of ‘em to match the capacity, occupying a solid cube 9 feet on each side and setting me back 30 million dollars. That’s mind- blowing progress indeed, and while the original advances were made by firms like Seagate and IBM, those have mostly sold off/sourced out in the meantime, leaving Western Digital as the Bleeding Edge hard drive brand.

This device looks like a cigarette holder with a glossy finish. The edges are rounded, and the usb connector is the only opening in the case, so for my occasional transport I just carry the drive in my jacket as-is. It would have been super- neat to have a rubber flap over the usb and perhaps a more scratch- resistant matte finish, but there is no issue here, especially since WD offers inexpensive hardshell and neoprene cases.

The raw read performance as measured by HD Tune is 2 to 3 times faster with usb3 – nice to see that WD’s marketing blurb “up to 3 times faster” is actually true! However, this advantage quickly comes down as you use more complex operations such as copying small files. Given the choice again, I probably wouldn’t bother with an USB3 PCI card and just wait for my next PC to have it onboard. If you mainly copy large files (such as movies), you may benefit more from USB3 than I do.

I bought this hoping to replace my 2 year old Iomega drive which had started to make clicking sounds. Well, the Iomega drive is still kicking, but this drive randomly stopped reading both partitions! I’m quite upset about this, as I’d already spend hours organizing my backups and data, and now have to purchase another drive because I don’t trust it. It’s still usable.

Needed a reliable 2tb backup. Runs every night to backup my main hard drive. Years ago I would buy Seagate drives but after 2 of my drives failed only after about 2 years I thought I would try western digital after recommended by IT at my work. I own 5 different WD drives with the longest now 5 years. No problems yet but I figured its time to start backing up things just in case, most drives fail between 5 and 7 years statistically.

My friends are amazing! I say this because one of them bought me this external, about a year and a half ago, for christmas. While I initially had some minimal difficulty with setting it up on my Mac, I’ve been using it on EVERYTHING since. It works with my:
- Toshiba laptop, running Windows XP (sometimes Vista ~ blugh!)
- Macbook Pro, with OS X
- Playstation 3
- XBox 360
…haven’t tried hooking it into my Wii yet.
Personaly, I LOVE having my digital library of music (about 100GB), movies (approaching 1TB), and pictures on this. I have it hooked up to my PS3 most of the time, and watch movies through it. It’s great for home entertainment.

So far, it’s been very reliable. I’ve enjoyed this SO MUCH, I bought 4 more (when the price dropped to $70); 1 for me, and 3 as gifts for family/friends. It’s a great deal in my opinion.

I RARELY give anything a perfect score (I’m extremely critical; check my other reviews if you want to verify), but the ONLY thing I deducted for on this was 1star for the initial confusion I had getting this to work with my Mac. …that was probably tech. illiteracy on my part too.

I can’t really say much else about it, I’m not SUPER tech savvy, but I can’t recommend this enough.

Ok this is how I enabled it to work on my Mac and it also works on my Windows computer:
Well I figured it out for all those of you who need to format this for a MAC.
Open your Disk Utility and find the Drive WD External HDD… Click on it once and you will see options on the right.
Hit the button on top called PARTITION. Where it says VOLUME INFORMATION, change the name to something like ‘backup’ or whatever name you choose, and then where it says FORMAT, hit the drop down menu and choose MS-DOS FAT
Hit APPLY. Let it run thru it’s thing. Then eject the drive. Plug it back in and then drag and drop your files. It works perfectly

Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
This is it. Quiet, simple. If you need only 1 TB, the 1TB Elements drive is even cheaper.
When you receive the drive, reformat for Mac. It’s easy. Here’s how:
FORMATTING DRIVE FOR THE MAC
1. From the Applications folder select: Utilities, Disk Utilities.
2. Select (on left side): 2 TB WD Ext HDD 1021 Media
3. Select (on right side): partition tab
4. Select (under Volume Scheme): Partition 1
5. (Optionally): Give the drive a NAME under Volume Information
6. Click: OPTIONS
7. Click: GUID Partition Table
8. Click: OK
9. Click: Apply
10. Click: Partition

Check Western Digital website. About 4 years ago a WD that I had would unmount on occasion from my mac. The WD website detailed a procedure to unplug it / restart / plug it back in for macs to see it and it worked fine. I don’t know why that happened once in awhile. If it does come on again, make sure your data on it is backed up. I would be nervous that it’s a sign of possible failure – as all drives eventually do now.

I ordered the WD 1.5 TB Elements in April. It worked great out of the box and after transferring some pictures and music from family computer, was installed mostly as a DVR as part of a HTPC (all parts bought from Amazon). By early June, something was amiss and after testing various cords and computers (per the WD website), its pretty clear the device no longer works. As it happened, there’s a 30-day return policy for what for me was a less than 60-day product. What seemed like a great deal for massive storage gets pretty expensive if it lasts just long enough to get you past the return date.

Looking back, I would have spent the extra money for an external hard drive that didn’t need a power cord. However, it’s a great value for the money. Can’t imagine what I would do if my computer crashed and I lost everything. Good thing to always have a backup plan.

I plugged the device into an available USB drive and waited about 2 mins before my computer initially recognized it. Now it takes less than 5 seconds before the drive is recognized.

Based on the build of the drive, I suggest only using it when it’s laid down horizontally, glossed over beveled edges don’t suggest that this drive is compatible with running vertically.

It’s almost TOO quiet–without a very dim indicator light on the back to indicate that the device was even plugged in, I’d have a hard time knowing if the machine was running or not.

As an aside, I don’t like that this only has a 1 year warranty whereas WD’s internal harddrives have all been kicked up to a 3 year warranty minimum. That doesn’t really inspire confidence, WD.

I had outgrown my old external hard drive which I used exclusively to back up my computer files. I resarched quite a few new ones before deciding on this one. The size 1.5TB was one of the main selling points. I can not only backup my stuff, but I can store tons of photos and knit/crochet patterns on it. My previous drive was only about 75 GB, so didn’t hold much, but I still stuck with the Western Digital because the old one had given me no problems at all.

I bought this for my EOS 5D Mark ii camera. I need a lot of space to store photos and video of great size. This has been working great for me. The only drawback I would say is the power cord. I expect this to last me a few years before I have to replace it so I hope that I will not have to purchase another model with a power cord in the future to get this kind of size and value. But because of the cost… it was hard to say no to this model. No problems so far and I am within 2 months of use.

This Western Digital external hard drive will absorb whatever you send its way, with no trouble. And “no trouble” also describes the set up. Windows fought me to the mat after I initially connected it, but suddenly was all cooperative when I thought I was caving into it. Plug in the power supply cable, and plug the little power unit into an AC socket; plug in the USB cable at both ends; and away you go. Windows says the drive has to be reformatted! Of course, I said NO! So we argued for a while. Finally I said Okay, and in a couple of seconds, everything was working. I guess Windows just had to show who was boss. The drive sits quietly next to my desktop, silently solving my “(internal)hard drive full!” problem, and I’m very happy with it, when I even remember that it’s there.

Yes you can. I can guarantee that it will work and you will have no problem because I just did a backup from a 2tb WD HDD to another 2tb WD HDD two days ago. The only problem is that it will take over a day to transfer 2tb to another external drive.