Review on WD 5TB My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive: USB-C, USB-A Compatible, Blue by Brendan Thorpe

Full disclosure: I bought this to use with a Windows computer (there were no other models available), not a Mac. Aside from the "for Mac" markings on the box and the back of the case, I think this is exactly the same physical product as the "regular" My Passport drive. Good news if you want to use this with another operating system or want to use a non-Mac with a Mac. Apparently there is also software on the drive, which in this case is clearly intended for Mac. I'm not interested in it no matter what OS I'm using, so I just ran the CLEAN command on DISKPART (remember this is Windows), then repartitioned and finally did a full format. The full format took about 14.5 hours (5TB model). No problem. The full format may not be required, but I'm always happy to run it on a fresh disk. I bought three of these to use in a rotational backup scheme. Haven't used them long but so far they seem really solid and well built and work perfectly with no sign of failure. I think the full format plus my initial sync and subsequent review of 1TB of existing data provided a good preliminary stress test. I understood my passport (Mac or not, since it is formatted the same on Windows) before I bought it. All of these My Passport drives come with built-in hardware-level encryption, which at first glance seems like a good thing. However, this encryption is always enabled, even if you don't use it. So while the hard drive appears to the operating system in clear text, all underlying sectors on the hard drive are encrypted. As long as the disk is working properly, it doesn't really matter in practice, since plain text comes in and plain text comes out. However, if you ever have to send that device in for data recovery, it will complicate the process, add to the cost and time involved, and quite frankly probably greatly increase the likelihood that nothing can be recovered. The scheme involves rotating two encrypted drives (using software-based disk encryption by the operating system, i.e. Bitlocker) off-site and storing one unencrypted drive on-site in a physically secure location. This is a problem for me because a text-only copy is the last line of defense in a major disaster recovery and I want a data recovery specialist to be able to recover the data from the hard drive if it comes to that. I know how to protect my own data and I don't need WD to force me to use any type of encryption that I don't want or require.