WD 4TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN,Black

I now have two of the 3 TB drives and one of the 4 TB drives (Ive had the 4 TB drive for a little over a year now). I have not had any issues with any of them. I have an external drive that is a bit faster, but for the price point these are good drives and hard to beat. I can generally maintain 105+ MB/sec write speed over the USB 3.0. For approximately $50 more I could have gotten an external drive that is significantly faster, but for writing once then reading as necessary these drive fit what I need them to do without my feeling that the writing time is excessive even when transferring fairly large files. Note: If you are using Windows, then you must go to the device manager and apply the setting for this drive to where it is set for better performance in order to get maximum Write speeds. There is also an option to turn off the power saver mode to keep it from constantly having to start back up between writes if there is going to be significant time between writes, and if you are more interested in speed than power consumption and possible drive wear. If you dont do those things, then you will not get the best write/read performance due to the drive powering up at the start of the read/write and/or Windows treating the drive as a USB quick release drive. Both of these settings change how quickly files will be written to the drive but for different reasons. As always, how you choose to apply these settings are up to you as the user. Personally, I attach these drives to one computer and rarely move them afterwards. So, I have no need of being able to unplug them from the system without using the windows disconnect USB device option first. Ill take that extra step on the odd occasion when I might need to move one of the drives for the added speed the rest of the time. I turn off the energy saver because I dont like waiting 10 sec or more for the drive to start writing after I try to move something there. I dont worry as much about extra wear from it being on as I get tired of the wait. That is how I like to use them. You should do what works best for you.

This is not a difficult item to review. Its storage. I mean, to take one approach, what can I say about it that is special? Oh, I just love the formatting on sectors 16385 - 24576. They store my backups really well. I could read/write on those sectors for hours! Now that I got that out of the way, I CAN tell you that I ran diagnostics on the drive, and all tests were passed. The device is simple and intuitive to use. It comes with extra utility software that, honestly, I havent tried out, but for people who dont roll their own when it comes to backup schema, it was very good of Western Digital to include it. I am a bit disappointed that the driver DVD was not included, and that the utility software was pre-installed on the drive. This made for an interesting situation, because the driver was copied to it. So, I had a Catch-22 situation of a sort. My Windows Vista Ultimate OS couldnt mount the drive for absence of the driver, but the driver was on the disk, which I could not mount. Because the vendor and I tried to run down the problem, and concluded that there is no DVD that is shipped with the device, I fault WD for this, but not enough to take away from the five-star rating. I just went to the WD web site to resolve the problem. In fact, WD tech support was kind enough to not only identify the correct URL for the driver, but they pointed me to their in-house diagnostic software, which was very useful. I commend my vendor as well - Gold Fever. They were timely, professional, and helpful in their communication with me as I tried to resolve the issues above, and I would purchase from them again if I had a choice.

Just replaced 3T Seagate. I use a Mac with Yellowstone OS. Main problem is that Hard Drive is too noisy during stand-by mode. HD has 3 modes: idle (quiet), stand-by (should be quiet, but is not), and active (soft sound while drive accessed). When computer actively used, HD idles and is quiet. If I read/write information to HD activity is reasonably quiet and brief, and then returns to quiet idle mode. When the computer goes to sleep, however, the HD inexplicably becomes very noisy, with constant oscillating between a quiet sound followed by a high-pitch sound; back-and-forth continually for hours until HD called back into action with computer use. I called WD support, which claimed stand-by mode should be quiet and this is a malfunction and possibly a sign of failure. But this is a new drive and the flashing LED light correctly followed the blinking code assigned by the user manual between idle/stand-by/active. Whether a sign of a defect or by design, noise is intolerable. I am returning this drive. A subsidiary and minor issue is that HD works for mac but is not optimized for mac. Drive was recognized by mac when plugged in, with user manual and applications immediately readable. However, I could not write information to the new drive. I attempted to formatted with the disc utility but it did not take. I had to call WD support and they explained a strange (for me) way to write to the disk--you dont format but you go to the partition section to format the WD drive. As noted, I am having issues with the stand-by mode. Before returning HD I tried out the WD application that came with the drive. It is an older version of the program that apparently has an update. I downloaded the update but it never takes: when you re-run the program, it remains the old version and again prompts you to download the current version (~.12, which never takes). I will give credit to the support network. They were accessible even on a Sunday. Reference for support 122015-10605966

BE VERY CAREFUL WITH BUYING THIS PRODUCT. They sell it like a one stop shop, you back up, youre good to go, but unless youre pretty tech savvy, this could end up being a terrible buy for you. My story: Ive owned this drive for 32 days (so Im just outside the return window). My C (with my operating system) broke, so I put in a new one with Windows 10 installed. However, after re-installing the software for my WD Mybook, while attempting to RESTORE data, the software indicated I had no backups created. Odd, since I had 1.3TB of data backed up already. So I called WD, and they showed me how to access the files that are saved. They also explained that what I was experiencing is a fairly COMMON issue that all Windows 10 users are experiencing, and that it has to do with MICROSOFT and that they suggest I reach out to a MICROSOFT technician to fix. So I repeatedly asked WD what THEY are doing to fix this problem, given that this is occurring with THEIR product. They again indicated that this is a Microsoft firewall issue and I should reach out to Microsoft. So I asked my last question: is it correct that he (and all of WD) is advising customers to reach out to Microsoft for a common issue rather than have their technicians reach out to Microsoft, figure out a solution and then send that solution to their customers. He said yes and once again let me know that this is a Microsoft problem. Funny, because how I see it is, this is a WD product and its WDs job to make it work on Windows 10, rather than Microsoft making it work. WD would rather have all their customers waste more time by reaching out to Microsoft rather than finding a solution on their own. Another kicker, they have no plans to notify their customers once a fix is in place. So all in all, just beware. WD does not offer TRUE technical support. I reached this guy pretty easily on this Sunday morning, but it was a waste of time and right now, my opinion of WD tech support is as low as it gets. This backup hard drive is supposed to make backing up and restoring easy. If you havent tried to restore yet and have given it 5 stars, please reconsider and try out the restore function first. Just because it seems easy to use from the get go doesnt mean it will actually BE easy to use once you run into a problem.

$115 for a USB 3.0 4TB drive that is well made, sleek, and comes with everything you need. While it is a green drive (cheapest they make), its decently fast (USB 3.0) so that you can fill it (4tb) reasonably fast. Dont expect this to be a performance thing. This is just mass storage for archiving, or large media files. Dont get this for every day small file use. You get this to store large files. USB 3.0 works great. I get sustained 70MBps transfers with it on my setup on large 1Gb files, so I was able to transfer 2Tb at a reasonable time frame to a portable, external drive. On USB2.0 this would have taken days (literally two days). USB3.0 makes it fast enough to be functional. It would be nice if they used Red/Black/Blue drives instead of Green. But you have to consider its $115. I opted to go this route instead of a self-enclosure and a good Red or Seagate NAS drive, because my experience so far with self-enclosures is that they sometimes cause issues and if you lose index on the drive, the data is toast, unless you pay for recovery or get software to do it yourself. Either way, tedious and costly. I like it to just work. I use double backups, so this drive is serving as a massive backup of another backup of large files that I keep (videos).

Bought this specifically for the Xbox One. Excellent product! Tons of storage, runs very quiet and is quick. Takes up very little room, which is always a plus. Highlights that I do not believe were outlined in other reviews being used for the Xbox One. There is a cool white LED light on the front of this drive which is used for visual that it is on and working. There is NO on/off button however. The LED on the front remains constant while the console is on, only blinking quickly as the HDD is working, and simply flashes every 2-3 seconds when the console is off. In Stand-By mode, the drive remains active, but still flashes like every 1-2 seconds. Once this HDD is plugged up to your Xbox One you can not only choose what you would like to move to it, but also whether to make the external drive the default drive for new game/app downloads or leave the internal HDD of the Xbox One as default. You can change this option any time you wish by going into settings. I noticed that with games downloaded to the ext HDD, they booted up a good bit quicker than when they were installed on the internal drive. The best part about this drive is that once you have all of your games downloaded to it, you can simply unplug it and plug it in a friends console, or any other Xbox One console, and you can play any of your games. Pretty cool! Well worth the price for something that should have been internal on the Xbox One.....4TB HDD.

So I purchased the WD 4TB My Book External Hard Drive about 8 1/2 months ago. I bought it to expand the memory of my Xbox One gaming system. Keep in mind, that this needs an outlet to power it, not through a USB port. I hooked it up when it arrived, and everything worked swimmingly. I had ZERO issues with this hard drive. I have worked in the gaming industry for about 15 years now and I am not a novice with electronics. Basically, I know how to take care of my stuff. The hard drive was set up and used with no issues up until about a month ago. All of a sudden it stopped working. I have it hooked into top end surge strip, and had no power issues or anything like that. The HD powered on fine but was no longer recognizable from my Xbox or even my PC. I figured that maybe it was the data cable that came with it, so I replaced that and nothing. The HD has NEVER been moved, knocked over, or abused in any way, shape or form. It has sat on an open-aired shelf since I had it. It was not even used a lot because I didnt need it 24/7. Anyways, I knew the product had a 2-year warranty through WD, so I followed the necessary steps to get it shipped to them so I can figure out what is wrong with it. At this point, I just assumed it was just a bad Hard Drive itself. I left a note in the box stating the steps I took to try to figure out the issue(s). Basically, just to help them eliminate possibilities of defect. I received the Hard Drive back a few weeks later with a note stating internal damage and it was not covered under their warranty. How in the hell is there internal damage on a hard drive that was sitting on a shelf (minimally used)?? When I shipped the item back to them, I used more than enough packing material to avoid shipping damage from UPS. Now I am out $100+ because... why? There was nothing else listed as to what kind of internal damage, just that they wouldnt swap it for me. This is the worst customer service I have had since the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death issues (if you know what I am talking about). I will NEVER buy another Western Digital product again.

I purchased this 4TB My Book to use as the primary storage for my Xbox One S. You could not ask for an easier setup, just plug it into power, connect to the Xbox One S via the USB 3.0 cable provided and then turn on the Xbox One S and it will guide you through the few quick steps which is basically just answering a few questions about how you want to use the My Book and giving it a name. I moved all of my installed games and apps over to this hard drive and I will say that it did take some time, 1 hour and 45 minutes to be exact, but that was 18 games totaling 289.2GB of data so I would say that is still pretty fast. I have been using the Xbox and I would say that loading times have probably slightly improved but not so much that it is obvious. I now have 35 games and 25 apps and I am still sitting at only 14% of space used which is why I got the 4TB, I dont ever want to have to worry about space. I would highly recommend this hard drive to anyone who is wanting to add an external storage to their Xbox One.

Everyones computer setup is different, so plugging in an external HD will yield different results for some. My initial experience with WD backup drives have mostly been with their Passport line, and I didnt like their old automatic backup software. It took up a lot of computer resources (especiallly on my laptop), and it was really confusing to specify custom directory backups. The MyBook 4TB is serving as a backup to another backup (which is a Seagate 2TB external HD). Installation was pretty simple and I like that they included the USB 3.0 cable. I like the automatic backup software that comes with the MyBook. Its easy to understand, and also it shows you a visual representation of the categories of files you are backing up (I.e.- documents, photos, videos, etc). The Mybook is also relatively quiet compared to the Seagate 2TB that I have. It comes with password encryption, but I decided not to utilize that feature in case I forget the password. I also havent used the optional cloud feature using Dropbox, even though I have an account with Dropbox. I dont think I will use it for my desktop use. Honestly, some of the reviews I read prior to purchasing made me think twice about getting the WD, but I think a lot of the issues people have with their WD might simply be due to their specific computer setup. I had a good experience with the Mybook, and would purchase another one. I was also considering the new Mycloud by WD, but after reading some conflicting reviews about connectivity issues, I decided to go with a non-cloud backup solution and got the MyBook. Considering the pricepoints of the 2-3-or 4TB, I decided to go with the largest capacity. The price-per-TB was cheaper to get the 4TB model. Hard drive capacities are constantly getting larger and larger as the physical footprints are getting smaller, so you might as well go big while the memory is cheap.

Ive had two external HD from Western Digital before. My first 2TB hard drives master boot record became corrupted. Through some tinkering some family and I were able to connect it to another computer to copy the data to another HD. Unfortunately, I only had another small (160G) HD in which to transfer data to my new laptop and another smaller HD. Dilema. So, I found this, which was exactly what I needed. When it arrived I connected it to the laptop with the fault, yet somewhat frazzled 2TB HD, and began to copy segmented amounts of data. Once all was done, I was able to format the older 2TB drive which is now in a new enclosure. So far this WD HD has performed perfectly. Ive split the data into different HDs to decrease the chance if this happens again. Ive never had any problems with any Western Digital product. When plugged in, if not in use, it will go into Idle mode. If you click on it to use it again, it may be slow to respond or may say Not responding briefly. This is normal because even though it is ON, it has gone to SLEEP. Saves power and wear.