Muttley—April 13, 2015
There is not much to say about this external hard drive. I bought it for using as a Time machine backup device in my macbook pro. For that purpose it works okay. I needed to reformat it for mac for that purpose but before that I tried it on my pc and it is ready to go with no need for reformatting or setting up The USB 3.0 capability is a plus (but it is also backward compatible with USB2.0 as well). I have seen a data transfer rate of upto 80.6 mb/sec and an average of 70-75mb/sec while transferring a 2.2gb video file into the drive. When I transferred the same file from the drive back to my laptop the maximum transfer rate was 101mb/sec and the average was 80-90mb/sec. Of course these values depend on the file as well but I measured similar values with different files so I can say it is consistently fast.. It comes with an approximately 18.5 inches long transfer cable and through this cable it transfers both data and power. Other than that it does not offer a case or anything else. The device has limited warranty but, to me it is very difficult to make a warranty claim for an external hard drive since the warranty only covers none user mediated errors and most drives do fail either due to dropping or not safely removing neither of which are covered by this limited warranty. However, This hard drive is UL certified and that is a plus in terms of electrical safety (yet it does not guarantee it won't ever fail). WD is a reliable brand in external hard drive market and in addition to this 1gb WD element, I also have a WD passport ultra which I use for backing up my PC. The main difference between these two exactly same size (3.2 X 4.3X 0.5 inches) devices is that the ultra comes with the full version of the WDsmartware software which automatically backs up the PC when the device is connected. This cheaper model has only the trial version of that software but honestly, if you are buying it for mac's you don't ever need it anyways (time machine does the same thing for free). Currently (april 2015) this is one of the cheapest (among well known brands) 1tb device in amazon market place so I can easily recommend this as a backup drive to whoever is looking for one... Read more
Just Some Guy—July 16, 2015
I bought this for my wife so she could back up her computer. I thought this was all she would need. One terabyte. That is such a badass sounding number. 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. That's enough to store my entire library of books scanned as PDF files; my stacks of vinyl records and CDs FLAC and MP3 format; scans of my shoeboxes full of negatives and backups of all my digital pictures I've taken over the last 10 years (most of them in RAW + the JPG edits), not to mention scanned bills, birth certificates and scanned appliance manuals. No, I mean this drive is FANTASTIC! It's not even a 2T drive and it is already everything I could want for digital storage. Well It doesn't really work as expected, or rather, it doesn't work as I expected. When I ordered this, it made it to my house quickly. Shipping was super fast. The missus needed it to back up a few years of our family documents and real estate records. This drive itself is the perfect size to fit in a fire-resistant lock box inside a safe. When the time came for my wife's computer to eat it's internal drive, I thought: "Oh man, we can just get a new computer and just put our data back and just press on with life!" It's formatted so that we can use it on a Macintosh so I could possibly justify getting her that MacBook Pro she's been ogling! Sweet! We're not stuck using this thing with just one platform. So, when I asked her for the drive she told me it was in the guest room closet. When I found it, it was tucked away neatly on the shelf, where it fit perfectly. I noticed the packaging was very tidy, small and easy to open. Even though when I opened it it was the first time the drive had been taken out of the box. Hmm. Turns out that motivational pamphlets explaining the importance of backing up your computer's data aren't included. And, if they were they might not even get read but that hardly warrants knocking a star off of the rating. Would I buy this again? Yes. Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes, and they have purchased their own too. Would I take the time later and help my wife back up her data? Yes. I will take the time to set up Time Machine on her new Mac for her so all she would have to do is plug it the drive and forget about it. ---[20160809]--- This little thing is still chugging along. I might buy another while the price is this low. Read more
