Select the drive and press go, and it will transfer all that data over to the portable hard drive. In its default configuration, this copies over all your user documents, save games, pictures, shared movies, and such, from the typical Windows-based locations. Its primary purpose is to perform automated backups of your local storage.

The SmartWare is probably the most useful feature aspect, even if it is somewhat limited in its functionality. It’s very basic and simple to use, but useful if you have nothing else to hand. You can set the sleep timer and perform secure formatting too.

The WD Drive Utilities is just a health check, as it performs a SMART analysis, surface check (chkdsk), and a quick integrity check. The other major focus is the bundled software that comes with the drives, which we’ll focus on in a little bit. Sporting a delightful range of colors and metal finishes, these new My Passport Ultra drives at least attempt some personalization rather than generic black or gray.

The 2.5-inch form factor for hard drives is a bit crowded, with little more than price and density being the deciding factor for most people when it comes to purchase decisions. Although, we have reviewed the wireless model too, since. The last WD My Passport Ultra we reviewed was the 1TB version back in 2013. These new drives go by the ‘Ultra’ tag, but this means little anymore (originally it meant the pro version of the software plus an extra accessory), but it appears that’s just a name now. Starting at 1TB and going up to 3TB, we have the middle-range 2TB under review. WD has upped its storage densities on its new range of high-end portable hard drives. When you want to share this data with someone, portable hard drives save the day. While storage densities increase, so too does our desire to fill it up. Just when you thought you were safe for a while, along comes a new movie format, a change in work-flow, the sudden desire for lossless compression, and a relative with a trigger-happy finger on a camera – sometimes all on the same day.

Wd smartware mac disk image