Best Portable External Hard Drives Reviews

WD HDD My Passport is absolutely amazing. The size and shape are so sleek and… well sexy to a computer geek. IT holds a fair bit of information and loads the material very fast. overall this is one great hard drive. However, there are more hard drives out there that are just as good as this one only between $80-$100 cheaper. I got caught up in the moment of purchasing one after i built my first laptop and did not exceed my budget so i had money left over to get a separate hard drive that failed to really research the product and compare it to others. It’s a great buy and everything, i mean it works wonderfully and i expect no issues with it in the future. I just feel that i paid a little too much for it.

I was very impressed with the sleek design and portable form factor. USB3.0 was about 3x faster for me in transferring large files compared to USB2.0. The fact that it is USB-powered is nice. No more need for an extra power supply brick. It does, however, use a proprietary USB cable to supply power to the device. I’m a little afraid I will lose that cable.

However, I have one complaint. I don’t know if it is just me, but does this hard drive only synchronize files (videos, music, photos) from only one computer? I first synchronized files from my laptop into this hard drive without a problem, but when I went onto my actual desktop computer to sync more files into the hard drive, there was a message that popped up saying that the hard drive did not recognize my desktop computer. In order for me to sync files from my desktop computer to my hard drive, I would have to reset (delete) all the files I currently had in the hard drive. If this hard drive is set up to be like this, then it’s really disappointing.

I’ve been wanting to get a large capacity external hard drive to back up photos, videos, and other important files from my computer’s hard drive for a while. This one will do all I need it to do and with 1 terabyte of storage, it will be quite some time before I’ll fill it up. I haven’t taken a look at the preloaded software yet, but I doubt I will use it. I’m more of a hands-on guy who doesn’t like to put things on automatic pilot. I like the blue color too because it’s easy to see inside my black laptop bag. I don’t have a USB 3.0 port, but I’m sure that will make backups much faster when I upgrade. It works as advertised, it’s “plug and play”, and I’m sure it will serve my needs for quite a while.

The light will come on on the device. But none of the computers recognizes it. Western Digital sent me a chord, saying that the problem was with the USB chord. Still not working. Asked them to help with data recovery. They told me I have to pay someone to recover data, which may cost up to $2000. Do NOT buy this product. If something goes wrong with the product. If you do, make sure you back up all your data elsewhere, because this product is not reliable.

Smartware software got hung up at the last 25 seconds of the install. I went online and downloaded firmware updates and tried everything that was recommended in the forums. Nothing worked. Called WD and they told me to do the same things that I already tried. Could’t get it installed. I could have used the hard drive without the software but then it wouldn’t do the automatic updates. I wasted over 6 hours of my life that I ain’t getting back. According to the online forums this is a very common problem. I found the product unusable and had to return it.

Smartware software got hung up at the last 25 seconds of the install. I went online and downloaded firmware updates and tried everything that was recommended in the forums. Nothing worked. Called WD and they told me to do the same things that I already tried. Could’t get it installed. I could have used the hard drive without the software but then it wouldn’t do the automatic updates. I wasted over 6 hours of my life that I ain’t getting back. According to the online forums this is a very common problem. I found the product unusable and had to return it.