Western Digital Updates 'My Passport' Hard Drive Line With Up to 5TB Storage

Great! Now I can have 5TBs of data get lost forever when the drive invariably dies on me after a month, instead of just 2TBs!

Bring larger external portable SSD with 4, 8 & 16 TB (no RAID 0 inside!). Once you try SSD, you do not want mechanical rotational disks, even for free!

Great! Now I have 5TBs of data get lost forever when the drive invariably dies on me after a month, instead of just 2TBs!

I went back to strictly 5.25 drives for safety. The USB bus on my 13" MBP cannot handle the power requirements of these little boogers. I've tried to work with the small 3.5s and the Mac just surreptitiously ejects them and 3rd party software like Amphetamine will not prevent it from happening. I noticed this behavior in Sierra (I had a 27" iMac at the time) and every OS that followed up to and including Catalina. Using strictly 5.25s for Time Machine, data, movies, and TV shows and my drives don't eject when I plug in my phone or simply because the Mac tosses them. I can use ONE 3.5 for files on-the-go and that's it. I can safely back-up my drives now. I never lost any data thanks to my back-up plan but I've lost at least 8 of the 3.5s over time (half were back-ups) and I realized it was because of power draw on the bus. 5.25s just use data. I bet this doesn't happen on PC hardware with Windows. Did I write that out loud?
[doublepost=1567590298][/doublepost]...and when I can afford to go that route, I'm definitely going to hop aboard the SSD train for externals. I know Apple wants me to use iCloud. Oh sure...in 20 years maybe, when the Cloud is available on-demand and it doesn't take 2 weeks for my photos to upload...

I actually had TWO WD Drives for backing up my Mac – one 1TB Pocket Drive to back up the Mac and another 2TB Desktop Drive to back up the Pocket Drive, just in case – and they both failed within about a week of each other! Luckily my Mac has been running fine, so no data lost. I've now taken to backing up everything online instead. Bit more expensive, slightly more hassle, but so much more worth it.

I disagree.

It has a USB-C connector, just on one side of the cable. It's just not a pure USB-C cable.

USB Micro-B is a horrible connector. I would've much preferred USB-C connector on the drive itself. WD could've bundled USB-C to USB-A cable for PCs.

I see some negative comments above about the WD My Passport line.

I'll add my 2 cents. I've had nothing but bad luck with their reliability. Now I know to stay away from them.

The My Passport for Mac option, which is formatted for macOS Mojave and features a USB-C connector, comes in a Midnight Blue color option. Mac users who have a USB-C machine and are looking at WD hard drives will want the Mac version so it will work out of the box without an adapter.

According to the product spec (https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-my-passport-for-mac-usb-3-0-hdd#WDBA2F0050BBL-WESN):

* Portable hard drive
* USB-C to USB Micro-B cable
* USB-A to USB Micro-B cable
* WD Discovery™ software
* Quick install guide

I don't think the Mac version has USB-C connector. It's USB Micro-B like almost all portable hard disks.

Yes, Nutmac is correct; the micro-B to USB-C cables will work just fine in your machine with Thunderbolt 3, as the connector is actually a USB-C connector, which serves both USB-C and Thunderbolt 3. I have done exactly what Nutmac describes and that is how I connect my older external HDDs, which is much easier than fooling with adapters and such. Only if you have a Thunderbolt 3 device to connect to your Thunderbolt 3 port is it necessary to have a Thunderbolt 3 cable. The Samsung X5, for example, comes with a Thunderbolt 3 cable. The Samsung T5 external SSDs come with two cables: a USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-C to USB-A cable and that way those devices work in either machines with USB-C or USB-A ports.

My WD passport for MAC always show preparing for backup forever even there is more than enough space. Won’t buy any WD hard disk anymore.

Wonderful, thanks for the guidance both of you.