Western Digital My Passport 4 TB Portable Hard Drive and Auto Backup Software for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 - Black

Review of the WD 4TB My Passport (2016) model. The photographs show the previous generation (left most in all pictures) beside this new generation of drive (rightmost drive). I'm a long time user of WD passport external usb hard drives. This is the first 4TB I've bought, used for a backup of a NAS.Capacity + Speeds:This is a USB3 hard drive, giving very fast speeds. Attached are screenshots from a benchmark utility, showing 116MB/s read 107MB/s write. For comparison, the previous generation (2TB) got 112MB/s read and 100MB/s write, so a slight improvement.The formatted capacity is 3.63 TB.The enclosure/case:The case is solid. It is a bit more fancy than previous WD My Passports, and a little bigger. Yet, it remains a solid construction and has a feeling of durability. The LED light on the back is now a horizontal slot which has a softer light compared to the previous generation drives.Comparing to the previous generation, the case is ever so slightly larger, but there really isn't much in it. See the photos. I prefer the new case as it allows multiple drives to be set on top of each other, whereas the previous generation was slightly rounded so they tended to slide off each other.Included in the box / software:The drive comes with a USB3 cable. You also get the WD Drive Utilities, Encryption software and Backup software. However, after checking the drive with the WD Utilities to ensure it survived transport safely, I wiped the drive for my own use. You can always grab a copy of the software from WD's homepage in the future.Overall, this seems like a great drive. Only time will tell how reliable it is, but it does come with a 2 year warranty as standard. This can be extended by a year if you purchase WD Care.

Bought this and split into 4 partitions, one for time machine (mas os sierra) to backup my macbook pro and the other partitions for other stuff. I generally do not recommend using a drive in this manner, by this i mean using it as a backup drive for important data and for other general stuff, however i do have another hard drive purely for backups. It looks good, feels good to hold although it's a fingerprint magnet and i find it quiet which is nice considering it's a mechanical hdd. I do not take mine out so cannot comment on how well it would withstand being knocked about in a back pack or something similar although one should buy a decent case if taking out anyway considering it will hold you're data on it.I cannot comment on the software that's included as i just format and partition my hard drives and never use the included software. Bear in mind the cable is very short so some may wish to order a longer cable when purchasing and maybe a case.I've never tested the hard drive read and write speeds when i received it but it backs up my mac very quickly and copying to and from the hdd is quick enough for me so not needed to. It has a USB 3.0 port which incase you are not sure is backward compatible with USB 2.0, just remember if you only have a USB 2.0 port you will be restricted to USB 2.0 speeds.Hopefully it will last as not had the best experience with portable HDDs from various companies including WD, i don't take them out, they only get plugged in generally when backing up so they don't get used much at all, however i do recommend this portable hdd as so far it's been very good.

OK, some background. I have a PlayStation Pro and was going to upgrade the 1Tb HDD to 2Tb seeing as there was no support for external storage drives. Then along came the 4.50 system software update with support for external drives up to 8Tb. The only 'catch' as such being that they need to be USB 3.0 and, according to some who were on the Beta at any rate, not have additional USB ports for some reason. Not one to take a chance with such things, and seeing as the cost difference between 8Tb and 4Tb external HDDs isn't exactly minimal, I opted for a 4Tb. My thinking being that, to be honest, when you add to internal 1Tb (which will still be used for game saves and assorted data that doesn't get stored to the external HDD) a total of 5Tb with 4Tb reserved for game installs will be plenty. Then it was a matter of which drive, and personal experience leads me towards WD (with a three year warranty) rather than Seagate. So how did the install go? Literally took less than a minute including finding the USB at the rear of the PlayStation Pro to plug it in and for the console to identify the drive and reformat it. Works like a charm. Silent in operation, tucked away out of sight behind the console and doesn't even get particularly warm either. Would I recommend this drive to anyone wanting to upgrade the storage capacity of a PlayStation 4 or Pro? Hell yes...

I bought this disk as a backup for photographs and data. A couple of weeks after copying my files, the disk would not mount properly and I was unable to see the disk at all other than in Disk Utility, which said the disk had failed. I returned it to WD, who without question offered a replacement, which I accepted. The loss of data wasn't a problem to me as I was only using it as backup and still had the original files safe. The replacement arrived promptly, and apart from being a disgusting luminous orange, was an exact replacement. I have reduced it to 3 stars because of the fault, but added a star back for their customer support. I have to report that as of today (May 2018), the replacement is running well.