WD 5TB Portable External Hard Drive, Navy – WDBA2F0050BBL-WESN

As expected

This was used as a Macbook M1 Pro backup (Time Machine) disk. Never moved about – just sat on shelf in a Macbook used as a desktop replacement. Judging by other reviews, it’s a shoddy product with a high probability of wasting your time and money. Mine is no longer even recognized – impossible to access, erase, test, etc.

To add: speaking of wasting time and money – I contacted Western Digital 12 days ago. Their warranty insists I return the drive to them (paying the shipping costs myself) after erasing my confidential data. How does one erase data from a drive that won’t mount? Nearly two weeks ago, they had me take pictures, provide a receipt etc. and promised to get back. Haven’t heard a peep, despite emailing back. No wonder the Japanese, Koreans, etc. are kicking our tails in this technology . . . terrible design, shoddy QA, equally poor warranty support.

Update: 23 days later Western Digital has finally gotten back to me. They insist the only way they will honor their warranty is if they get the drive and platter back intact (they declined my offer to send the drive back, with the platter damaged). It’s one thing to imagine Western Digital has a policy not to steal confidential data. Something else to imagine every one of their employees would honor it. Bottom line – the Western Digital warranty is essentially worthless for anyone who stores confidential data (either their own or their customers’) on one of their drives – and then finds the drive won’t even mount in order to erase the contents before returning it.

I usually hate to hear that some lawyer has started a class action lawsuit. Western Digital’s 5TB drives – and their stonewalling of customers who’ve lost time, money, and sensitive data – might be the exception.

This drive fits the bill at 5 TB. It’s a fast drive and works great for storing my photos for Lightroom and Photoshop. My only complaint is with Apple. I get an error that is reported to Apple after I shutdown as Apple needs to update the OS. But that’s not the drives issue.

When i saw this promo i had to have it as you can never have enough transportable storage. It’s sleak and looks great and is (super) fast. Off course it’s not an SSD but it shure is big (not in size but i space to store data)

I highly recommend the model

This hard drive is head and shoulders above the last one I purchased just a few years ago. It doesn’t slow my computer down, even when doing a full backup. It is unbelievably small and portable. You don’t have to plug it into the wall (just your computer) which is a major convenience, making it much easier to plug in a go without thinking about it. It’s super quiet and doesn’t over-heat. It comes with its own adapter for USB-C so I can plug it in to my Mac without worrying about finding my adapter. Tech support wasn’t rated because I’ve never needed any support – it’s always worked with no issues whatsoever. Highly recommend!

I used LaCie back-up drives for a couple of decades. I was disappointed in the last one that didn’t last and I had trouble getting some files off it. I read the reviews and a lot of people liked this drive so I thought I’d give it a try. I’ve had it a while and it seems to be working well. I use Mac’s Time Machine software for the back-up and it does the job. Some back-ups seem to take much longer than others which is weird, but I haven’t bothered to investigate why. I’m happy that my files are backed-up and except for some lengthy back-ups it seems to work with my Mac just fine.