Western Digital My Passport for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - WDBBXV0010BBK-NESN

I own many WD external hard drives, including TWO of these. As you can read by the other reviews, it eventually starts having problems. The PORT for the wire goes bad after a while. At first, I had to plug it in over and over multiple times before the computer would recognize (none of my other external hard drives do this ever). Then, it gets worse and worse until eventually you can't get access to your hard drive at all. Now, it is TOO LATE to retrieve your data. This happened with BOTH of the ones I own after about 1 year.

The HARD DRIVE itself is fine - but the port is bad. I had to go to RADIO SHACK to get adapters to get access to my data and transfer it to another hard drive.

Before you buy this, go GOOGLE "Western Digital Hard Drive External Hard Drive For MAC." You will see how many people have this problem.

Every other WD Hard Drive I own is great - even the ones with USB 2.0 ports. However, THIS PARTICULAR MODEL, which is SILVER and made... Read more

At first I wanted to delete all the applications that it came with as I do with all portable hard drives, but they were drag and drop apps so I used the security one since the drive has hardware encryption.

I didn't know what hardware encryption meant, I really wanted to know if taking the case apart would allow someone to access my data.

Western Digital website was no help at all.

Looking at online forums, I found out that if something happens to the casing (USB port etc) it's almost impossible to recover the data (I think it encrypts whether you have a password or not). So you really should have a copy of the data somewhere else.

To me, this was great news because I don't want to worry about my data being accessible if I forget the hard drive somewhere. So it's really important to have another copy of the data.

The drive itself is fast and the encrypted drive shows up normally (there is a setting so you don't need a password if... Read more

If you're looking for a rock solid drive with tons of space on it, this is the one. This makes the second drive from Western Digital I've purchased in this form factor (the previous one was a 500 gb), and I plan on continuing to buy them.

I use this one for three purposes, (1) it records live sessions directly from an Allen and Heath soundboard, (2) Time Machine backups of my mobile workstation, and (3) secondary partition for storage and transfers. It does all three like a champ.

Pros:
- Solid case: the plastic is very ridged and sturdy.
- Single cable design: one USB cable supplies data and power connectivity.
- Designed to compliment a Mac: I'm just being a nerd here. The white activity light is a nice touch, and break away from the typical green activity light.
- Time Machine gets alone with it very well.
- Speedy transfer times. Keep in mind this is a platter drive, not solid state, and it spins at 5400 rpm, so don't expect too much... Read more