Western Digital 4TB Blue My Passport Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - Western DigitalBYFT0040BBL-WESN

I've used WD passports in the past and at least the ones I owned have been fairly reliable...so far so good with WD external drives. I moved to My Books as the passports didn't go past a few TBs and the WD My Book's larger drive size was also cheaper per TB but since then as with all technology things change and the My Passport now comes in a 4TB size that's only about $10 more than the 4TB My Book at the writing of this review. I'll also be moving to cloud services soon as a secondary backup as I've lost pictures when my laptop crashed so I don't want to solely depend on external drives anymore even if WDs have been reliable in the past as things can happen. I chose the blue color to start and plan to order more in other colors so I can tell the drives apart. I love the size and portability. While the My Book can potentially provide more drive space it isn't as small or portable and the Passport so I've missed this little guy. It was basically plug and play on Windows 10 and so far it is working seamlessly with Windows 10. In fact I just moved a bunch of folders in Adobe Lightroom onto it and there were no problems. Link to 8TB My Book if you're interested: WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBBGB0080HBK-NESNI have a USB hub and with the My Books if I plugged more than one in at the same time it wouldn't read them at the same time, only one drive at a time could be recognized. With the passport it reads it separately from the My Book drives I have so I can transfer files back and forth and as they're USB 3 transfer is pretty good which is great for my workflow! I've just received my drive so I will update this review if I have anything to add or run into any problems.I snapped a few pics of the box and the drive. The box isn't anything fancy if you're looking to store the drive in it. It measures around 4.5"x6.25" The box came in a sleeve to show the color of the drive inside. The drive and connection cord was in a brown insert that reminded me of those brown grey paper egg cartons. The cord looks to be around 15 to 16 inches and the drive itself around 4.25x3.25 inches. The housing is blue plastic and came protected in clear wrap which was easy to remove. I seem to remember my first Passport had a metal and plastic housing but I guess all plastic perhaps is a bit lighter. There was a multi language insert for the warranty and tech support info and a paper insert that just had the website for help. There's a pic of the bottom showing it has small square rubber feet at the corners to help protect whatever surface you put it on. The plug and on light are on the bottom side of the drive. Hopes this helps potential purchasers.

The value and performance of this hard drive is beyond anything I'm used to for a 2.5" hard drive. I bought the 4 TB for around $30/terabyte - half that of high end 3.5" external performance hard drives. This drive consistently achieves 105-110 MB/second reads and ~80 MB/second writes in everyday use, even when nearly full - VERY impressive for a 2.5" hard drive.I would have given 5 stars, but I feel the 4 TB version is pushing the notion of "bus powered" to a dangerous degree: On my 2015 Retina Macbook Pro, I can only read the drive from 1 of my 2 USB 3.0 ports! Should the second USB 3.0 port fail, I suddenly lose access to my data (I already have almost 3 TB on it.) This drive doesn't include a Y cable for extra power, but I may try that option, since this drive does not have the option for an external power source.This is the first ever "low cost" hard drive I've purchased, and I think it does admirably well when compared to a 12 TB, $600 external RAID-0 dual bay 3.5" hard drive setup. Of course it's nothing like an SSD, but it's 1/10th the cost - over $1,000 less than a 4 TB SSD! It's a pity more laptops don't provide space for a 15mm 2.5" second drive - it's awesome for archival storage - I mainly use this for video, and it's generally fast enough for FULL-HD streaming.I will update this review later to report on the longevity of the drive.UPDATE: A year later, I'm ECSTATIC! I bought this drive because my newer laptop only had half the hard drive size of my older laptop, so no room for movies. The solution - I bought this 4 TB drive, filled it with movies, and left it in my car. Let me emphasize here - I live in AUSTIN TEXAS, where we get months of 110F weather. My wife always said this will never possibly work - the first hot day will melt that drive.A year later, and this drive still admirably does its job, letting my daughter watch movies in the car! Not only has it endured incredible heat and cold, but many hard drops onto the street. It still takes variable lengths of time to appear on the computer, and sometimes we have to try different USB ports, but if anything it's working better now than it did a year ago. I didn't think a drive this durable was possible! Hence I've added a star.As mentioned, this is NOT a performance oriented drive, but for archival style uses like a video cache, I can't recommend this enough.