The hard drive drive worked fine throughout it's use. I only quit using it because it was getting full and it was also the beginning of a new year January 2016, so I just started using a new drive. Then 5 months later, my son was graduating and I was making a slideshow, and went to get pics off the drive and it was dead. No warning, no indication of a malfunction, worked fine, and nothing indicating a secondary encryption motherboard. That's all. I only wanted people to know that "secure" is not suitable for everyone and the problems that arose from that. I am new, I do not want to step on anyone's toes!

I just wanted people to be aware of this specific problem I had with a WD hard drive, so it does not happen to other people, especially those of us who are photo enthusiasts. There was nothing on the box to indicate it encrypted data, so when I read the word "secure" I say no thank you! Great if you have a business and you need your data encrypted, but not so much for photo use. As it was external, I uploaded the photos directly from the cards after each event (I do a lot of sports photos) then left it alone until the next event, so it wasn't even an every day type use for me. This may become the industry norm, I don't know.

Hi, I am new here, so maybe my opinion doesn't count, but here it is! I avoid anything WD that says "secure" I do not and will not ever buy another WD hard drive, internal, external, or portable. WD hard drives have a small separate motherboard stashed inside it's casing that encrypts your data, and if that individual motherboard goes bad? It has encrypted all your data, all your photos, and unless you find an identical motherboard for that drive, you cannot unencrypt your photos or even try to recover all data/photos. Had this happen to me. It was an external 500gig backup drive for all my photos. I only quit using it because it was almost full. Then when I needed to find baby photos for a graduation slideshow, it was dead. Sent off to recovery specialist, they could not recover, but they were at least able to tell us it was the encryption motherboard that was bad. Luckily for me, my husband is an IT guy. He did happen to find the exact motherboard that had encrypted the data, installed it, and we immediately got all our photos off the drive and have never bought another WD drive! That was a close call. I did lose some photos, like my son's 1st birthday, but...at least I didn't lose 500 gig worth of photos. They are family photos, sports photos, graduations... they do not need to be encrypted! So now, when we are considering purchasing an external drive for photos, WD isn't even in the running, and we look for key words like "secure" We did not even know WD did this until we had a problem. The drive was only about 2 years old. Imagine if it had been 10 years later, what are the odds of finding that identical motherboard? Just sayin...