WD 5TB My Passport for Mac portable external storage, USB 3.0, Mac Compatible external hard drive, software for device management, backup and password protection, Time Machine Ready, Midnight Blue

Review from a non expert here. Difficult to know which to buy if you don't know anyone who knows about these things. This was my fourth one of these and mostly great. One of them stopped working with the motor going after a few years so I would always have backup copies and probably replace every few years. That being said, I've just purchased 2 more

As a photography storage is a huge must for me and this portable hard drive is fantastic.- It’s compact and easy to travel with and store away- Extremely simple is to us- Came with both a usb-c (Mac compatible) cables and a usb cable so I can easily use it on both my Macbook and and older Mac desktop- Looks good with a simple design- The 4tb storage is huge and will hold hundreds of thousands of raw photo files.- It both downloads and uploads quickly.- it’s great value for moneyOverall I couldn’t by happier with this item and would definitely recommend it!

The product itself is excellent, but I had substantial issues getting it to work correctly. In my experience (others may find differently) it was not Time Machine Ready out of the box and required a significant amount of research and experimentation to get it to work.When first connected it backed up 2 or 3 times, then said 'back-up failed'. Googling and experimentation ensued. I downloaded the more comprehensive WD Utilities software and used it to ensure the sleep function was not the cause of the failure. It would then back up once after restarting, and the next backup would fail as the first one still said 'in progress'. Restarting meant it would again back up once, then fail the second time.Further Googling found instructions posted by someone allegedly from Apple Support to use Apple's First Aid function after restarting the computer in Recovery Mode, the object of which was to ensure both drives were in the same state, and fix minor issues in one or other of the drives. The drive was then deleted. I did this twice as it did not work the first time, and the second time I did all the drives on my computer including the WD backup.The problem notification changed to something else, I forget the exact wording, but it still failed after the first backup. Then yet more Googling suggested removing all the WD Utilities (which I downloaded separately as part of problem-solving) and WD Discovery (came pre-installed) software. I searched my hard drive and deleted all WD software. Then restarted the laptop and it backed up flawlessly. It has functioned perfectly ever since, backing up as regular as clockwork.As I said, it's working great now, but it took more than two weeks to sort. I contacted Amazon support and they promptly offered to replace it (great service from Amazon), and that was the point at which I got it working.All in all it is fine now, but the key issue for me is it says 'Time Machine ready' (which is why I bought it) meaning in my book it should be plug and play. In my experience it was not. Still, a happy ending overall.EDIT: after a further two months of working flawlessly the problem returned. I returned it and got a refund.

I bought this to replace my old WD external drive which I use to back-up my Mac via Time Machine (it died after a long and faithful service - sad times). All previous drives had to be formatted or some kind of hardware wizardry performed which was always above my pay grade and understanding - this little thing was literally plug in and go, Time Machine-ready and none of that pesky formatting. Also good amount of space.

I bought this to go with my new IMAC that has a SS HDrive which is only 1TB. I needed to expand the capacity of the computer and this seemed to fit the bill.So, how did it do?Set up was as simple as plugging it in and deciding if I needed to create partitions or not, I decided not to.I’ve now downloaded my music collection to it and “pointed” my iTunes to it thus freeing up my SS hard drive to manage my photos. I can see me buying another one for iPhoto but I’m unsure how to point that software at it.In conclusion, it’s very easy to set up and has been working flawlessly since I bought it over 6 months ago now.

This external hard drive no longer functions properly with my Macbook Air. I understand that is because Microsoft have blocked its functionality unless Apple pays, and Apple refuse to pay. When I bought it, I checked that it was compatible, but it's now "read only". It's too late to return it, but don't buy this device if you have an Apple laptop.

No problems connecting it to my Mac, data transfer rates very fast.

I have an Apple iMac computer and use the auto back up time machine. My old hard drive which had served me well for many years was starting to play up so began my research for a replacement. I constantly found that the WD drives were highly recommended and although there are cheaper drives about I decided to buy this drive which was Apple ready. I connected it to my machine and was told it needed to format to be ready for time machine as the disc had data pre loaded, I clicked OK and it was ready in seconds. I then had it make a full back up of my computer about 300 GB which it did amazingly in about an hour!! It has been working perfectly ever since.I am extremely pleased with my purchase which was about £95 on Amazon compared to £145 on several well known sites. Yes I recommend this hard drive.