[Amazon.ca] WD 5TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive, Black – WDBPKJ0050BBK-WESN: $140

Link:

https://www.amazon.ca/Passport-Portable … B07VP5X239

Price:

$140

Discount:

$20 off

Retailer:

Amazon.ca

Amazon product: WD 5TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive, Black – WDBPKJ0050BBK-WESN
Customer Reviews:
I have not had any problems. Reliable, sturdy, speed ok. | Important points about the WD My Passport Portable Hard Drive that could affect your decision to purchase or not: | – This drive CAN WORK under Windows XP. | – 256-bit AES hardware encryption | Windows XP | The drive is partitioned using GPT. Windows XP and older have no clue what that is – they understand MBR partitioning. If you have Windows XP or Windows 7 and hunt down WD_Quick_Formatter_Win_1_2_0_10 software from Western Digital it will re-partition to MBR and reformat. This also holds true if you buy a My Passport over the 2TB limit (3TB, 4TB, etc). Trying to buy a portable external hard drive for older operating systems is a challenge these days. Note this works only for Western Digital, NOT other brands. I reformat all my WD Passport drives to be backwards compatible. Read up on WD’s Quick formatter if you are interested. Which version of the software depends on whether you intend to use Windows XP or Windows 7 to do the job. | 256-bit AES hardware encryption | Did you know that WD Mybook and Passport drives encrypt files at the hardware level? I did not. I might not have purchased them if I had read more carefully. It does not matter if you set a password or not. Every file on the drive will be encrypted. I doubt the speed overhead for files moved on or off is severely impacted. | So long as there is no issue with the PCB board the hard drive is attached to and or you do not take out the hard drive to put in another enclosure (external, internal) you will not notice a problem. If the PCB board develops an issue, your data is cooked. Your only option would be to extract the drive and place it in another my passport enclosure for the same drive size with the same PCB board revision and then move your data off to another drive. If you also used a password on the drive I can not tell you what this means in conjunction with the 256-bit AES hardware encryption. | If you intend to store ‘one and only’ files on the WD My Passport drive, spend a little time to reflect on the double edged sword of hardware encryption and whether or not you are prepared to live with it and potential data consequences down the road. It has a three year warranty, the enclosure is very sturdy, the usb cable might be short but is the same color as the drive which is nice, even cute. | These drives are not expensive. They are even more attractive when Amazon puts them on sale. If you want or wanted to store one and only files? I would advise you on a “double do”. Buy two of them and whatever you put on one, put on the other. You will most likely have the insurance of both having the same PCB board revision expecially if you buy in the same color. | Final Thoughts | I like the portable WD Passport drives. I especially like the fact that while they don’t advertise with drums and trumpets they still provide access to software that can convert from GPT to MBR for XP orphans – even in a clever way for drives larger than 2TB (the limit for XP systems). I like the 3 year warranty, for me an indication of their confidence level in the product (not much more). | I don’t like the 256-bit AES hardware encryption being foisted upon me. I doubt the average consumer truely understands the potential pitfalls. But to be fair to Amazon it is now in the product decription front and center. But consumer eyes are glued to price, capacity size and of course the very attractive colors. | So XP yippie and 256-bit AES hardware encryption booooooo for WD Passport Drives.


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Link:

https://www.amazon.ca/Passport-Portable … B07VP5X239