WD 5TB My Passport, Portable External Hard Drive, Black, backup software with defense against ransomware, and password protection, USB 3.1/USB 3.0 compatible – WDBPKJ0050BBK-WESN by WD

Extremely satisfied with this product. A very affordable way to beef up my storage capacity. Works great… haven’t had any issues whatsoever.

You can’t go wrong with Western Digital. Very small package for huge storage. Plug and Play – connected the USB cable, (included) and my computer immediately recognized it. The portable drive is larger than the drive on my laptop, so I partitioned it into 2 virtual drives. One partition for an Image/Backup and a second partition for file backup & storage. The partitioning process was flawless and now my computer recognizes two separate drives. I am super happy with the WD SSD portable drive. I would highly recommend to anyone wanting a portable drive. I’m even thinking about buying another larger drive and partitioning into more virtual drives for backup of other computers.

My only complaint and major disappointment with WD, is that the free “WD Backup” software is no longer supported by WD and hasn’t been for a few years. They offer a free version of Acronis, which doesn’t work. Installed the Acronis software, created a bootable disk on a USB Flash (thumb) drive, then rebooted the computer from the thumb drive and created a full backup/ disk image to the new WD drive. The software seemed to run perfectly, and said the backup was successfully created. I felt really good that I had a full backup of my 2015 laptop, in case I ever need to replace the mechanical HDD. But it was a false peace of mind.

Only 2 weeks after using the Acronis backup software, my computer was crashing shortly after bootup, which it had never done before. So I thought I would test the new drive and backup. After rebooting with the Acronis USB Boot drive, it asked for the location of the image file. The computer recognized the WD drive with all of the Acronis backup folders. But then the Acronis software said all of the folders were empty and there was No Image found. WTF?! Acronis said it successfully made a full disk copy. But then the software could not find its own image.

DO NOT USE the ACRONIS software.

I was fortunately able to fix the boot/crash problem using other software. But if my hard drive had completely failed, I would not have a usable backup copy to restore to a new drive. I would have been screwed. It would have been better if I never attempting to create a backup. At least I would known that I didn’t have a backup copy to rely on, rather than falsely thinking I was protected.

In addition, the “free” software isn’t really free. It’s only a 30 day free Trial version. So if you make a full backup within 30 days, and later have a critical problem, you will be forced to purchase the full version to perform the restore. The backup file versions are propitiatory, so you can’t use another brand of software to do the restore. They’ve got you! You can make a free backup/copy (if you can even get the software to work properly). But then you have to pay for the software to actually use the Backup in order to Restore. This is akin Ransomware.

I have since purchased other backup/imaging software and made a full (working) backup to my new WD drive. I’m very happy about that.

Does what it has to do.

The WD 5TB My Passport is an excellent portable hard drive. It’s compact, lightweight, and easy to carry, yet offers a huge amount of storage. I really like the built-in backup software with protection against ransomware, as well as the password protection for added security. It connects quickly with USB 3.1/3.0 and transfers files fast and smoothly. A reliable and trustworthy drive for backups, photos, videos, and more. Very happy with this purchase!

Needed something reliable to back up years of photos, videos, and random chaos—this 5TB WD My Passport totally delivered! Super compact and lightweight!
The transfer speeds have been solid (nothing to complain about unless you’re expecting SSD speeds