Customers highly value the ample storage, ease of use, and performance of the My Passport Ultra 4TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive. Its compact size and USB-C compatibility are also frequently praised, along with its reasonable price. While some users experienced minor issues with the included software and cable length, the positive feedback on other features outweighs these concerns.
This summary was generated by AI based on customer reviews.
The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.
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Pros mentioned:
Ease of use, Performance
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Running good with 4K editing.
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Posted . Owned for 1 month when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Its easy and it does not having me problems yet. Im editing in 4K and i have my doubts about this HD because is old, but everything goes well with Davinci Resolve and 4K without proxys. So, well done.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
I bought this for Time Machine on my wife's iMac. Since it's her business machine, backup is vital. It must be reformatted for the time machine back up, but that's quick and easy enough. Almost automatic, but not quite. I gave her 3TB for Time Machine and 1TB for project storage. The "Mac experts" recommend three times the HD space for time Machine backups. So again, being her business machine that's what I did, just to be sure.
So far, it's great. It's silent and small, its powered by USB C, so it just sits out of the way doing its vital job. WD has always been a good brand, and the passport a good product to my experience with them. Recommended.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
So easy to use. Light weight considering the size, yet handy, manual, and simple. Solid product. Still pending to buy a case!
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Size
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Good size and heav, comes with cable C,
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Posted . Owned for 2 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
So far works good, for the beginning I had a problem to figuring out how to connect to the computer. Then I just decided to use old fashion way and just transfer ill my file myself. It has good size memory and defining lot of different functions, such as you can add the passcode on it also you can connect to the company and it will automatically back up everything whats in it.
Good size and heav, comes with cable C, as well as USB
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
This portable hard drive works fine with my new Dell computer. I have had and still have other Western Digital portable hard drives over the years and found them highly reliable to store my documents and data on over the past twenty years.
Posted . Owned for less than 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
I purchased My Passport Ultra Blue portable external hard drive recently and this was the best purchase I’ve made in a long time. I’ve been using flash drives to store all of my data and this one device replace all of them. Download speeds are exceptional and storage space is amazing. Would highly recommend.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Size, Speed
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Attractive design; fast read/write; mucho space.
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Good looking accessory on my desk. I use it for backups only and will probably never need a bigger one. Backs up very fast.
Fast, Quiet, Highly Portable Drive with USB Type C
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
==== Summary ====
The WD My Passport Ultra is an excellent portable hard drive and a winner from Western Digital. It looks good, it's light, setup and operation are simple, and file transfer speeds are fast and reliable. With a long 3-year warranty and WD's excellent reputation for durability and reliability, the Passport Ultra surely sits nearly at the very top tier of portable hard drives. I'm very happy & satisfied with it.
*Pros:
-Slick & modern design finished in anodized metal.
-Light and easy to grip.
-Ample storage (4TB).
-USB Type C cable comes with a Type C to Type A adapter.
-Supports up to 10 Gb/s transfer speed (USB 3.1 Gen 2).
-Simple Plug-n-Play installation and setup.
-Useful features: auto-backup, password protection, drive diagnosis, & hardware encryption.
-Quiet operation.
-3-Year Warranty.
*Cons:
-None.
==== Design ====
The WD My Passport Ultra is a slick and contemporary-looking portable hard drive updated for modern computers (USB Type C, USB 3.1 Gen 2) outfitted in a compact & lightweight design. The anodized aluminum silver faceplate with its grooved and dimpled lines look cool and the black rim and bottom cover offer a nice contrast. The unit looks premium and the build quality is excellent as is the fit-and-finish. Taking this thing out at school, work, or at a coffee shop definitely won't cause any embarrassments and it will look great sitting next to your laptop or PC. Placing the 2018 Passport Ultra next to my older 2016 plastic model made me appreciate the great strides in design that Western Digital has progressed.
On the bottom of the casing, at each of the four corners, are some rubber feet that offer secure grip on any surface.
The front of the Passport Ultra includes an LED indicator light for power & activity status as well as a USB Type C port. The included cable has USB Type C connector types on both ends, which is perfect for modern desktops and laptops. Should your PC support only a USB Type A connection, that is no problem as Western Digital included a small USB Type C to A adapter. Brilliant and thoughtful.
Another noteworthy thing about the Ultra was its near-silent operation. Even during long file transfers, I could barely hear the drive as it quietly performed its duties in the background. WD did a fantastic job with the sound control and dampening.
To sum it up, I give the Passport Ultra a 10 out of 10 in terms of design & build quality!
==== Setup, Usability and the Extras ====
Using the Passport Ultra couldn't have been any easier. To get it up and running on my Windows 10 laptop, all I did was plug the USB Type C cable into the drive then plug the other end into a Type C port on my laptop. Windows 10 recognized and installed all the necessary drivers silently in the background and it was ready to go in a couple minutes.
Out of the box, 3.63 TB of space (pre-formatted as NTFS) was available with just 2 files preloaded onto the drive - a "Install Discovery for Mac.dmg" file and a "Install Discovery for Widows.exe" file. Launching the file for Windows with an active Internet connection started the downloading of the WD Discovery application plus a few more apps.
Through the Discovery app, one can perform device registration, sign in to the WD "My Cloud Home" account, view Notifications about new app updates, install updated apps directly, import data from cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon, OneDrive) or a social media account (Facebook, Instagram), set a device password, control the LED light behavior, and launch other WD apps such as WD Drive Utilities, WD Security, and WD Backup.
The "WD Drive Utilities" app has 3 main functions - diagnosis (check status, scan for performance issues), drive behavior (sleep timer, LED control), and drive erase.
The "WD Security" app allows you to set a drive password with an option to auto-unlock it when the drive is connected to a trusted computer.
The "WD Backup" app, as its name suggests, is used to backup and restore your data. Initiating the backup routine will give you an option to backup your data to either the Passport Ultra or to your Dropbox cloud account. Once you've made your choice, you then set up a backup schedule (Hourly, Daily, or Monthly -> Week of the month -> Day of the Week -> Time of Day) and select the files and folders you want backed up. Setting up an automated backup schedule couldn't be any easier.
The fast and clean UI interface design of all the WD apps made all operations super simple and easy to use.
It's another 10 out of 10 for the Passport Ultra.
==== Performance ====
Fortunately, the Passport Ultra backs up its good looks & lean software with great performance. Moving 26.9 GB of 4K 60 FPS drone footage from my laptop to the Passport via a USB Type C Thunderbolt connector only took about 4 minutes with an average transfer speed of 120 MB/s.
When I transferred 180 GB of data (9551 files, 53 folders, 153 GB in videos, 27 GB in photos, 654 video files, 8897 photos), it took 29 minutes over a USB Type 3.0 Gen1 (5 Gbps) Type A connection on my desktop PC.
For a portable storage system with a spinning drive inside, these speeds are quite good. If you require even faster transfer rates, then you would need to get an SSD portable drive which costs A LOT more (e.g., 1TB Samsung T5 SSD is $228 & 2TB Samsung T5 SSD is $398). For most people, I think the Passport Ultra will be more than adequately fast for their transfer and storage needs.
I, for one, am very happy and content with the performance of the Passport Ultra.
==== Closing Thoughts ====
As expected from WD, it has produced another fantastic portable hard drive product. The My Passport Ultra looks great with its metal design & clean lines, it is light & portable, compact, very performant, and arrives with modern interface technology (USB Type C, USB 3.1 Gen 2). It is also a great value at about $0.03 per gigabyte. It's an absolute Win & I can easily recommend this for anyone looking for ample and reliable storage.
Posted . Owned for less than 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
good capacity storage, I bought it for my ps4. However, transfer speeds are super slow. Took 25 minutes to transfer 100gb of games. I read that ssd is much better since it is faster. For the price I taught it will be much faster. The design looks good and looks durable.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance, Speed, Storage
Cons mentioned:
Cable length
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Small, Fast, and USB C...very portable 4TB drive
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
4Tb of portable storage in the smallest of enclosures with a cable that can go either way. No more fumbling with the proper direction of the cable.
I used this drive on my desktop transferring movies, pictures, and video game backups. The speed is very fast, about as fast as a spinning hard drive can be.
The drive is super silent. I don't feel any heat either while in use. has rubber pads at the bottom to keep it in place.
No separate power cord needed. Unit comes with usb adapter for those who don't yet have type c ports.
I am not sure what type of drive it has in it but based on the size it is a smaller laptop drive so don't think anyone will be shucking it.
I used crystal disk mark 6 to check out drive benchmarks. pretty solid and solid in real world transfers (see pic in review for numbers).
Also with other 1000 pictures in a folder it quickly thumbnailed the pics.
The cable provided is a little on the short side measuring about 18 inches end to end. Cable a little thicker and stiffer than my other externals cabling. But the cable looks solid.
The enclosure looks good and no rattling when bumped.
I really like the performance this drive offers. Will use it as a back up of a backup of a backup for family photos.
I haven't had any hiccups and the access time is very short. It does have a blue LED light that shows operation.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
The size alone makes this a great drive. 4TB can pretty much hold all my music/photos/docs with plenty of room to spare. Size wise, it's spot on easily fits in my work bag. Speed is pretty good. I don't have speed metrics to provide but files copy over fairly quickly so no complaints there.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
It's a very neat little hard drive that is easy to take anywhere you go with your laptop. USB-C connectivity is future proof, and it also comes with a little USB-C to USB-A type adapter just in case you ever need to plug it into the older system. Included USB-C cable is about 1' long.
Hard drive is labeled as 4Tb but the exact capacity is 4,000,750,497,792 byes or about 3.63Tb as it came in from the factory (NTFS formatted). Hard drive works fine with either Mac and PC, performance is about 115Mb/s writes, 120Mb/s reads.
Hard drive comes with a Wester Digital Discovery tool that has software for drive diagnostic. Activity LED light on the drive itself could be disabled in the software if needed.
Overall - it performed real well in all my tests and I would recommend it to anyone needing some extra portable storage.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
So far Im loving this incased laptop 4gb hard drive from WD. I this connected to my Linksys routers usb 3.0 port and using it as a NAS.
Easy to share pictures, videos, and movies accross your network. This drive was plug n play, no software to install. Just plug it into a compatible router or laptop pc, and your good to go.
The usb-C connector makes for faster transfer and read speeds for sure. Luckily I had a 6ft long usb C cable laying around, as the included cable is about 18" long.