WD My Passport Ultra or Seagate Expansion Falcun

[Rohit176]

Hey guys,

I wish to buy an external hard disk for storing movies & photos. The above two mentioned HDDs fit my budget. I want the drive to be secure as it would contain my personal info.

What would you recommend?

Thanks for your help.

 

[phis6]

I want the drive to be secure as it would contain my personal info.

If you prefer a secure external drive then you might just go with the
WD My Passport Ultra as it has a built-in drive encryption and a drive password protection to keep your stored files private.

 

[G73S]

After owning a few WD drives, I'd never buy one again.

I initially bought my WD My Passport Ultra, the speed was great, after I did a firmware update, the drive starts to connect/disconnect randomly... the speeds became horrible

I contacted their technical support asking for a firmware downgrade but nope, WD doesn't offer that. what's worse, is they won't release a new firmware to fix it for more than 6 months now

just have a quick look at the kinds of problems their users face on their forums and you wouldn't touch a WD drive even if it was given to you for free:

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-Portable-Drives/bd-p/BoardExample2

 

[phis6]

I contacted their technical support asking for a firmware downgrade but nope, WD doesn't offer that. what's worse, is they won't release a new firmware to fix it for more than 6 months now

Yeah, there are some locations where WD's product supports are poor. But I have heard WD support from where the OP is located is not that bad.

 

[Berryracer]

Yeah, there are some locations where WD's product supports are poor. But I have heard WD support from where the OP is located is not that bad.

I was talking about their global support, they do not offer firmware downgrades, they messed up 2 drives I bought with the firmware update, the WD My Book 3TB and the WD My Passpoart 2TB both became slow as heck after the firmware update. and they haven't released a firmware to fix it since 1 year...

I contacted both their forums and technical support....all they tell you to do is to run the drive health tools to check SMART / bad sectors which always come out fine...it's their firmwares which is the big issue

If one has to buy a WD drive, make sure you do not update the firmware, they run very nice before the update. I thought things are gonna improve with the firmware update so like an idiot I updated TWICE..... didn't learn from my mistake the first time

 

[Rohit176]

Thanks for your responses guys, but still inconclusive.

Please help.

 

[mikeymikec]

On both occasions that I've encountered WD's "drive encryption", I noticed how quickly it managed to decrypt an amount of data that was at least >1GB instantaneously when I told it to remove the password, ergo, the data wasn't encrypted.

OP, what would you like the drive to be secured against?

 

[Rohit176]

Any unauthorized viewing of it.

 

[mikeymikec]

Any unauthorized viewing of it.

You could get a lower cost drive and use encryption software. Presumably this drive is taken with you travelling from x to y, if not, why not consider a lower tech solution like locking it in a secure enough container / hiding it?

How much protection do you want against unauthorised viewing, what is the likely technical proficiency / budget of people you're wanting to protect it against?

 

[Rohit176]

Well these could be friends, or family not limited to a low-level hacker. So, basically I wish to keep my personal files and movies in it. So, I want it to be secure. Can you suggest alternative disks having good security? Thanks.

 

[mikeymikec]

I don't have anything more to contribute to this thread as I don't trust drive manufacturers talking about their "encryption".