WD My Passport Slim 2TB Portable Metal External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto Backup

I have several external hard drives, including an older NAS drive that contains all my pictures and music. Thinking about the age of that drive I started getting worried about losing all my digital pictures. So, I got this drive to use as a backup to the main network capable drive. The drive is the perfect size, I hooked it up to a computer on the network and in seconds was copying my pictures and music to it. It's a perfect size for me to lock up in my firesafe so that all my important digital content is secure and safe. This is my 4th WD product, I have a 1TB network drive (that I'm using this to backup) a 3tb drive that is hooked up to my WD Live TV and now this drive. So far, I am loving all my western digital products. They are easy to use and reliable. (Note: my 1TB network drive is about 5 or 6 years old and still working great, but now I'm covered just in case.

This is based off my initial experiences with the drive and might be updated as time goes along. That being said, this is a great hard drive. I bought the 1 TB version to replace a 500 GB USB HDD by another brand that was starting to act shaky as the sea. Out of the box, this drive feels very solid. The metal enclosure feels nice in the hand and feels like it would offer some moderate protection should it encounter a rough ride in a car when kept in a laptop bag. The transfer speeds over USB 2.0 from the aforementioned HDD to this one have been very good so far. I cannot test USB 3.0 speeds yet, but a roughly ten year old desktop computer has had no major problems so far with using this drive. The drive initially didn't seem to be detected in Windows Vista on the aforementioned computer, but I assume that was because it was connected to the same pair of ports as another drive as when I moved it to the back of the computer, it came up and installed right away in Vista. Keep the power limitations of USB in mind if you want to use it alongside another USB HDD on something like a laptop and you'll be fine. Overall, a really great hard drive that will work great for being able to hold documents, videos, or whatever else you might want to keep safe.

What a great little drive this unit is. It is very portable, and also very fast. I am getting anywhere between 80 -105 MB/s with this unit. Very fast transfers and definitely USB 3.0! It only needs one USB 3.0 port and it is fully powered. I like that it is metal in order to keep it running cooler for when you are doing large and long transfers. I give it 5 stars! If you want a portable USB 3.0 drive that is fast and works great out of the box, then consider giving this one a try. You will be impressed.

There is a newer version of this drive which is near identical to this drive and the firmware enables slightly faster read/write speeds - WD My Passport Ultra 2 TB Portable External Hard Drive, Black (WDBBKD0020BBK-NESN) . This is my 4th WD Passport drive and my first WD USB 3.0 drive. I use my Passport drives to backup my data/documents. I backed up my 1 TB video archive at transfer speeds as high as 100 mb/s. Read speeds were also in the same range - 110-115 mb/s. My earliest WD Passport drive (160 GB/USB 2.0) is about 6 years old and still works well. WD drives are an ideal backup drive because of their portability and reliability. The only think I miss are the custom neoprene cases that WD used to offer with the early Passport drives. Guess since the prices are about one third of the 2009 drives for 15x the capacity, I should just pony up the 5-6 bucks for the AmazonBasics Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Essential or the Western Digital My Passport Carrying Case - Black . ;o) Recommended - but only if cheaper than the new 2015 version.

Had a smaller (1T) and more basic version of this drive before. Loved it. Ran out of room on the old drive and wanted to stay with a WD Passport product. This drive works very well and is much nicer looking and feeling than the older one. The slim format and brushed metal face make it a real beauty. And, it holds a ton of stuff. Sadly, I am once again running out of room so will be keeping an eye out for the 4T model down the road. A great product. I highly recommend it and the seller from which I bought it.

I use this to shuttle between work and home; I keep it synced with my music drive at work. Good USB 3.0 speed, small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. The downfall of any backup is having it in the same physical location as the system you're backing up: If the house burns down, you lose the computer as well as the backup drive. This, being portable, offers a good alternative to off-site backups. More space than a thumb drive, more speed than a thumb drive, yet still something that's very portable.

After having a laptop stolen in September and thinking my desktop had died on me this month, I decided I had learned the hard way one too many times and needed some better backup. This is my first experience with an external hard drive so I have nothing to compare it with. First of all it is so small. For some reason I thought these things were the size of my modem. Not as slim as I had imagined but like I said before, nothing to compare it to. It is as thick as the diameter of a penny. It really didn't come with any instructions so I was about to panic but the setup process popped up on its own and was simple and took care of itself. After I started the first back up we had to leave the house so I have no idea how long it took but when we returned (2hours later) it was finished. I went through to make sure it had saved everything I really cared about and that was easy to do and sort through for me. I bought the 2TB (actually 1.81TB) and after backing up my desktop (that is about 5 years old with tons of stuff on it), I had 1.71Tb remaining. I knew when I bought it that I would probably never use more than 1TB but it was my husband's call. We still need to backup his laptop too but from what I have read, we can use this hard drive for both computers. Plus his laptop is new and not used for much so I'm not worried about using up too much memory. So basically, this thing is great so far and if you are a first timer like myself, it is easy to use and most likely you only need 1TB.

I bought a couple of these recently instead of the WD Passport Ultras 2Tb maybe because of looks and metal enclosures as well as the price being pretty much the same. I also have a few of the WD My Passports 2Tb (Black) (USB3) from a couple of years ago when they were much more money (about 50% more). Side by side, these slims don't seem any different in size to me except for the weight. The slims seem heavier to me. I was kinda surprised that the slims don't have some kind of rubber feet or something to cause them to not slip or slide on my desk top. So they are not condusive, in my mind, to stacking them on top of each other. It's a nit-pick I suppose but I'm going to try to find something to place on the bottom for 'feet'. The thing is I have this demonic cat that likes to climb on to my desk and knock things on to the floor or carry things off in her mouth to places hard to find. And I had stacked these up and she knocked one on to the floor (carpeted). But It still works just fine. Overall I like this product, and have never had any trouble with these WD portable drives and are the only ones I will ever buy. They all (WD My Passports) seem very reliable and well made. I could have just as easily gone with the black Ultras as well as these. But these I'm using mainly for my photography and video camera backups.

Is a great product and price