WD 4TB My Passport Portable Storage External Hard Drive USB 3.2 for PC/MAC Black (WDBPKJ0040BBK-WESN)

Pros: Read/write is noticeably fast, but I havent truly clocked the top speeds. It runs quiet. It has held up to some prolonged, large uploads/downloads and is still kicking…BUT it needed some support. Getting to that in the Cons section.

Cons: It is big (thick) for a portable drive, but I expected some trade off for 5Tb. It is not very at aesthetic or nice to look at. The big downfall is lack of adequate cooling. It gets HOT if you are transferring large chunks of data. In fact, it gets so hot that it turns off abruptly and without warning. Im not sure if this is a self-protection feature or if it is outright crashing. It would reach this disabling temp at about 20Gb writing at around 10-15Mb/sec (internet download speed). The have to run a mini USB desk fan pointed right at the drive to keep it cool enough to prevent shutting down. Also set it on top of a plastic soda bottle cap to give it some more surface area for the fan to blow across. It has never crashed or had an issue with the fan on it.

Overall Review: TL;DR: Dont expect it to perform (or run continuously) without some external cooling support. It overheats during large/long file transfers, even at average speeds.

Pros: Works as intended. I bought this product for home personal cloud storage and I guess it will work well.

Cons: I suggest to remove cable from the device after finishing using it, because that connector which is connected to the device doesn’t look so strong.

Overall Review: I have a friend who travels a lot and he used this portable passport for years.

Pros: + small footprint for a larger capacity drive. fits in most of my drive cases
+ seems fast, although I have not tested the actual read/write speed
+ nice case design

Cons: + it did not come with the encryption software, so I had to download it from WD
my previous passports came with it, which was very convenient

Overall Review: I have had great luck with WD Passports. I have 3 and the others are pretty old and have been used a lot, with no issues.

Pros: All you have to do is set it up( which is easy) and it does what it needs to do!

Overall Review: A good drive because I have internal ones in my past computers, never had a problem.

Pros: Easily connects to all my computers and works very well!

Cons: Will not connect to my Samsung TV which is one of the reasons I purchased it.

Overall Review: Overall, great for data storage.

Pros: This is the unit recommended by our tech support. We had 2 others and needed new ones. Good product for low cost.

Overall Review: Yes, I would recommend this…installed on work and home laptops.

Pros: – Will make you more careful when shopping around for gear.
– Will make you distrustful of marketing departments.
– Will make you distrustful of version numbers.

Cons: – The actual USB version of this drive is “USB 3.0”, so its speed is 5Gbps.
– The “marketing” USB version of this drive is “USB 3.2 Gen 1”.
– “USB 3.2” tells you *nothing*. It could be 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2.
– USB 3.0 is now called “USB 3.2 Gen 1”
– USB 3.1 is now called “USB 3.2 Gen 2”
– USB 3.2 is now called “USB 3.2 Gen 2×2”
– Yeah, so “USB 3.2” can mean “USB 3.0” or “USB 3.1” or “USB 3.2”

Overall Review: I am so angry at marketing tricks like this. I thought I was buying a bonified USB 3.2 20Gbps drive. Nope. Because USB 3.2 might not actually mean USB 3.2. It might mean USB 3.0 (5Gbps) or it might mean USB 3.1 (10Gbps). In this drive’s case, “USB 3.2” means USB 3.0 (5Gbps). Do a Google search for “USB 3.2 explained: Making sense of current and confusing USB standards” and keep yourself informed.

Pros: At this point, there is nothing I liked about the product. The quality seemed cheaper than the older model (in this case I’m referring to the cable and plug to connect the cable to, it didn’t feel good when I plugged it in and the female plug seemed a bit recessed and slightly lower than it should have been). The drive wasn’t ready to use out of the box like the older model. I’ve not installed any software onto this laptop and don’t want to have to for an external hard drive (especially when the older model didn’t require it). The software requires you to share your use and system data to install. It’s garbage. When I buy an external hard drive, I want to use it out of the box with minor setup and no internet connection and I certainly don’t want to be refused an install unless I agree to allow them to gather data from my computer and my use.

Cons: 1. They do not include the unlocking software on a partition as in the past.
2. You have to have internet to install the latest software; if you don’t have internet, the drive is useless.
3. They ask you to share your data when doing the install. How they collect the data and what they collect is as follows “Product Improvement collects and periodically sends diagnostic and usage information, which helps WD improve the quality and performance of our products. This information generally includes devices, application and service usage, as well as error diagnostics. This may include items such as device configuration, CPU and other usage statistics by application, API calls, service crash information, network status, storage utilization, and size and type of files.” If you select “do not share” the software repeatedly fails to install (saying “We are experiencing issues. Please try again later.”) notice, you don’t even get an apology. As a test, I decided to agree to share the data, and installation proceeded but I cancelled the install before it completed. I attempted to install again but refused to shared my data and every attempt (at least 20) afterwards failed. Again, I don’t buy an external hard drive for anything other than my use; it is not a portal into my computer for the outside world. I’ve begun imagining what the auto industry would be like if every time we bought a car we had to share information on how we used the car with the car manufacturer, or read and agree to a 60 page document before purchasing the car. Or be told we couldn’t modify the car. These controlling buyer unfriendly techniques are not necessary.
4. They do not support Linux (Linux is certainly popular enough now to support it), to be clear, I tried using this product on a Windows 10 laptop.

Overall Review: Another heavy handed company that forces you to jump through needless hoops to use a product. They could easily include the unlocking software already installed on a partition as they did in the past. Going the extra mile to refuse software installation unless you agree to allow them to gather data on your machine and how you use the drive makes you wonder if this drive is really a Trojan horse to build a large data base to sell for profit. Also requiring a large install of software I didn’t want in the first place is absurd, it is an encrypted external hard drive, why all the nonsense? I used to like Western Digital, I have several of their drives, but now I will avoid them.