I'm 72 yrs old and a still-active newsstand magazine publisher, freelance web designer, and pro photographer and videographer. Trust this: In terms of computers and drives, I've seen and been through it all. I've been using external drives large and portable since the late 1980s, my first being SeatGate, then La iCe (the worst0, and many others. I cannot tell you how angry I was when I lost hundreds of precious family photos that can NEVER be replaced on that SeaGate. I swore I'd never use them again, and I haven't, or those 8 La Cie's I got from the Apple Store (still sitting in a back room for the last 30 years, awaiting the day I can get to them and have the data and photos recovered, if possible). I learned one thing critical to all drives: Back Up, Back Up, ... MoreI'm 72 yrs old and a still-active newsstand magazine publisher, freelance web designer, and pro photographer and videographer. Trust this: In terms of computers and drives, I've seen and been through it all. I've been using external drives large and portable since the late 1980s, my first being SeatGate, then La iCe (the worst0, and many others. I cannot tell you how angry I was when I lost hundreds of precious family photos that can NEVER be replaced on that SeaGate. I swore I'd never use them again, and I haven't, or those 8 La Cie's I got from the Apple Store (still sitting in a back room for the last 30 years, awaiting the day I can get to them and have the data and photos recovered, if possible). I learned one thing critical to all drives: Back Up, Back Up, Back Up. There is no workaround to that. Here's what you may not know and sellers sure as heck don't tell you: Expect your drive (any drive) to last 2-3 yrs, if you're lucky. Maybe 4. Next, if it is, say, a 1-TB drive, if you load it with over 70-75%, it can cause your drive to malfunction at the loss of all your data. And this may not occur immediately. To avoid total loss of your data, ALWAYS buy 2 identical drives so you have everything backed up as I do, especially my precious family photos. Here's what I did 6 years ago when I started with Western Digital. Every week (or right then and there) I would load my latest information and data onto my newly purchased drives (Drive A) and back it all up onto the second drive (Drive B). Every 6 months I would buy 2 new drives (C & D) and put personal and family photos from drives A and B onto the new drives (C & D). Note: I keep all business data and projects on separate drives. To accommodate the growing size of my data/photos, I increase the size of my drives as I need them. With WD, I've gone from their 1TB to now their 5TB portable drives (BTW, the "...for Mac" models are no different, no matter what they tell you, than the significantly cheaper ones used for PCs, you just have to reformat them which is easily done) to store my personal stuff. I also back up ALL this unto two large (18 TB) G-Force desktop drives. So, the lesson here is that ALL drives fail, usually much sooner than later with typically no more than a few years of longevity. Whether a month old or 5 years old, they can go out on you for any number of reasons, including bumping or dropping them or smacking them down on your table unless they are SSDs, but even they can die on you too. If you're backed up to another drive, you're good. If you haven't done that, you're....well, you know. They can also die on you for no apparent reason at all even if you've handle and treated them like a newborn baby. And remember, you can be working on a report, term paper or thesis, website, editing photos, whatever, and have backed up two days earlier. Although you'll be safe with all that back-up date on the second drive, you'll have lost all the stuff you've been working on for the last 2 days that you hadn't backed up if your computer goes out! BACK UP every 30 minutes or so if you're working on very critical "ABSOLUTELY CAN'T LOSE THIS STUFF) data, photos, web projects, etc.). My 27-inch Mac Pro is sitting at a computer repair shop as I write this. The video card went out while I was working on a complex website design project and I hadn't backed up that day yet. Fortunately, the loss of the video card didn't cause the los of my work on the computer. But my work over the last few days is sitting in folders on that computers and I need to continue working. So, I'm taking a brand new Western Digital 5-TB portable drive over to them now to put all my folders sitting on my desktop onto that drive and I'll back up all that to a second drive and continue working but on my laptop. REMEMBER, always buy 2 drives, NOT one. And, to Western Digital's credit, since I started using their products 6 years ago, only a big external drive died on me. I have 16 (8 plus their back ups) of their portable drives and ALL of them still work, even the first two I purchased over 6 years ago. Forgive the length of my message but I hope it will help anyone buying external drives for the first time and remind others what you already know. Back Up, Back Up, Back Up. Western Digital cannot replace the data you lost (don't throw away those drives, have the data recovered by a trusted, professional data recovery service) but you can prevent losing your data and precious memories by BACKING UP your data and buying 2 new external drives every 6 months and transfer data from the old drives to the new ones and keep the olds ones (with their data) too.

Worst customer service. My drive arrived with the ‘tamper evident’ tape sliced open and the contents visible. Not acceptable. I attempted to obtain a Return Authorization but the (AI?) chatbot refused, despite my compliance with their request for multiple photos of the box and items. Seriously, what’s the point of using ‘tamper evident’ tape if you’re not listening to customers reporting opened boxes? I’ve been a WD drive buyer for 20+ years, but this experience taught me 1) WD doesn’t care and 2) WD has zero customer service. Will not buy from them again and will tell anyone who will listen not to use them either. Such a waste of my time.

So far the drive itself has been flawless. I used it to back up 2TB of video projects I have for long term storage. This should last a while with 3TB to spare. The only thing I didn't care for was the cable setup.It has a weird cable connection to the drive itself, which I've seen before a couple of times on other devices, but I don't know what the interface is called. On the other end of the cable is a USB A connection which I hate, because it's USB you have to look at which way the cable goes and is generally incompatible with anything else, and kind of introduces an oddball cable into the ecosystem. USB A also rules out the possibility of thunderbolt, but then again I think this is a spinning platter drive so thunderbolt was never going to matter ... MoreSo far the drive itself has been flawless. I used it to back up 2TB of video projects I have for long term storage. This should last a while with 3TB to spare. The only thing I didn't care for was the cable setup.It has a weird cable connection to the drive itself, which I've seen before a couple of times on other devices, but I don't know what the interface is called. On the other end of the cable is a USB A connection which I hate, because it's USB you have to look at which way the cable goes and is generally incompatible with anything else, and kind of introduces an oddball cable into the ecosystem. USB A also rules out the possibility of thunderbolt, but then again I think this is a spinning platter drive so thunderbolt was never going to matter anyway.However an adapter dongle is supplied in the package that converts the USB A to USB C for the last inch to the computer. I just leave it attached to the oddball cable. The setup should be USB C to USB C, Like The Lacie drives I have, but my guess is that these are older designs that they don't want to change for cost reasons. It reminds me of something out of the early 2000's or late 90's as far as the data connection to the computer goes.So bottom line is it works. The drive Backed up 2TB in under 10 minutes, and the price is good. You Could probably even work a project directly off this drive without too much slowdown.I would have given it 5 stars if it weren't for the cable interface which isn't compatible with anything else I have, unless I buy another one of these drives.