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

If I could give this product a 4.5 star rating, I would. Pros -very reasonably priced -high capacity -fast read/write -uses USB 3.0 -compatible with Many devices -mostly quiet -stays cool -easy on the eyes Cons -sometimes loud -annoying light -sometimes turns on for no reason Overall my complaints are few, and mostly nitpicking. I use this hard drive for my xbox one, and I keep all of my games, and every app I can on this hard drive. I am glad to report that it is very comparable to the internal, if not slightly faster. I have the 4 terabytes version, and have been using it for around 4-5 months. It still works like a charm and runs perfectly. It seems pretty durable, but as with most electronics I would be careful with it. My only complaints are the status light, which can be a bit annoying in the dark, but overall, is not a big deal, as it is rather dim. Sometimes it turns on and starts running while my xbox is in standby, though I have a suspicion that it is my xbox doing passive updates and whatnot, so it shouldnt be an issue for the majority of users. It is very quiet most of the time, but it sometimes sounds like a miniature jet turbine powering up during loading. This does not happen every time you load a game or app, but it does happen sometimes. 4 terabytes is more than enough. (Note: a terabyte according to their measurement is 1000 gigabytes, and so on down the line to bytes. An actual terabyte is 1024 gigabytes, and so on down the line. This is why your device shows less available space than the advertiser, it is not 600 gigabytes of formatting, but a small amount of formatting, and a large amount of inaccurate, due to the different measurement standards) after formatting you will have around 3.4 terabytes of actual, usable space. Overall, I would definitely recommend this hard drive to anyone seeking a reasonably priced, high capacity external hard drive. Stay away from seagate, as in countless studies they have proven to be the least reliable brand of hard drive. Dont skimp on price, and end up with a broken hard drive a while later.

UPDATE - 01/06/2015 ------ This is an update on my impressions of the extracted

I plugged in the AC adapter and connected the drive to an existing Western Digital My Cloud network drive using the included USB 3.0 cable. It was automatically detected and a shared drive folder with the name “My Book” appeared in the My Cloud program screen. Following the instructions in the My Cloud manual, I also mapped the My Book as the “G” drive on my laptop. The software installation files were already loaded on the My Book drive, so using the “G” drive, I installed them on my laptop by double-clicking “WD Apps Setup.exe”, which installed the Drive Utilities, Security, and SmartWare programs. The Drive Utilities included Diagnostics, Sleep Timer, Drive Erase, and Product Registration. When I tried to run the utilities, a “No drives attached” message was displayed because the software did not recognize the mapped drive. The same was true of the included security program. The SmartWare did not display an error message, but it also did not show the new disk in its list of potential backup destinations, so My Book attached to the My Cloud cannot be used for the automatic SmartWare backups. I had to connect the My Book USB cable directly to my computer to run the utilities and security apps. I ran the first two utilities, SMART Status and Quick Drive Test, which gave positive results, but I did not run the Complete Drive Test because it normally run only if there is a problem and since I did not have one I did not tie up my computer for the “several hours” the diagnostic screen stated was the likely runtime. And, standard Windows tools can be used to check the disk for errors, accomplishing the same thing. After running the utilities, I re-connected the My Book to the My Cloud. Then I tried to run the Acronis True Image software, which was listed on the box as being included with hard drive, but in fact was not already loaded on the disk. I finally found it on the WD support site under “downloads” and installed it. This is not a full version of the Acronis software, but it still has some very useful tools including the capability to create a cloned image of your computer’s hard drive that loads like a real disk drive on any Windows computer. This will allow you to boot from the cloned image if the original is damaged or if you want to connect to it to manually restore files. Unfortunately, the cloned image backup is going very slowly over my Gigabit Ethernet network. It has been running for 2 hours and is only 5% complete and displayed message says I still have 1 day 2 hours and 5 minutes left. Update: it crashed about 4 hours later, after only completing 30%. I restarted it to run overnight and it completed successfully in about 7 hours. The SmartWare software also includes the ability to back-up to cloud services, specifically DropBox. But, since DropBox only includes 4 GB of space for free, in order to use it fully, a monthly fee would be required to utilize it fully for even an average PC which would be 250 GB or more. So, my intended use for this device is to back-up my PCs on my network, all to a single drive. Using the equipment in this manner, my needs are met, so the cloud accessibility is not of primary importance. Maybe connecting the 4 TB My Book to the My Cloud device was an unfair test. All of the problems with the software and slowness were caused by the connection method used by the My Cloud. I thought since the two drives came from the same manufacturer and the My Cloud used the Linux operating system, that they would automatically integrate the additional drive more tightly and that the software would recognize the My Book as if it were locally connected to my PC. Perhaps these actions will occur with updates in the future. My rating will not reflect these deficiencies because the My Book is marketed as a desktop extension, not a network drive. When connected directly to my laptop using the supplied USB 3.0 cable, everything worked well and was quite fast. The Image backup, for example, took about 45 minutes and finished without any error messages. So, based on the flawless operation when connected directly to the PC, I am pleased with the performance of the 4 GB My Book with software.

I bought this hard drive to add storage to my XBOX ONE, which was hovering around 98.3% space utilized. This hard drive has the space and performance you will need to add much needed space to your PC or entertainment device. I set it up within my collection of DVDs and it blends in nicely with the surroundings so it doesnt stand out. It is very quiet unless youre right next to it, and it functions perfectly with the XBOX ONE. I simply set up the hard drive, turned it on, turned on my XBOX ONE and it was immediately recognized and I had the formatting option. One star deducted because I paid for 4TB of storage but no hard drive really displays the correct storage size. Not severe enough for me to file a class action suit for false advertising, but it is very disappointing not to have the full capacity utilized when all I want to do is load game and save files into it. My XBOX ONE is hovering around 11.5% space utilized now. It will take a long time and a lot of games to fill this thing up - happy with my purchase.

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.

I bought this to enable the time machine features on my Mac computers. I have the new Airport Extreme, and I was looking at the Time Capsule from Apple, but I was hesitant at how much money they cost, and the fact that you cant upgrade their storage capabilities. So, I did some reading to find that you can add a USB hard drive to the Airport and get the same features. I limited my search to USB3.0 because many of my machines are connected with 1Gbps wired Ethernet, and I want the backups to be fast. Well, I am not disappointed. If I backup with WIFI it is actually not that bad, except the first backup, which is many GB in size. Otherwise the incremental backups are pretty quick, wired or not. So, this is a single 4TB hard drive in an external case. I cant believe this costs less than $150. It is amazing. Anyway, connected to my Airport the drive powers down when it is not in use, so that I know it will last a long time. It takes a few seconds to power up when I am ready, but this causes no real issues. The installation was a breeze. I plugged it into my Airport, opened the app. Went to the File Sharing and Disks tab, and added the disk. That was it. From the Mac I went to time machine and picked the shared disk as my backup, and it even recognizes it as a Time Capsule. I also use it as a network drive. Why not, it is HUGE, right? It is really quick, and has never caused me a problem. As a result, I get incremental backups on a near hourly basis. I can get the state of a file from days or weeks ago. I feel really safe with this. My old MacBook died, and I got the new MacBook Pro Retina, and I followed the restore from backup option, told it to not mess with the OS, just the apps and the saved files, and when it was done I had everything back. What more could you ask for. For under $150, the piece of mind I get for having 4TB worth of incremental backups is huge. I got the same drive and setup my parents to backup both of their computers on it. It is plenty big for this, too. They are thrilled. [...]

Based on the drive itself and the backup software, I would have given this product 5 stars--it is very quiet in operation, quiet enough to be left running full time on your desk. The easy-to-use included backup software can continually backup files each time there is a change or you add a new one (or you can choose to do periodic backups), and even automatically can keep up to 25 earlier versions of files that youve modified (you set the number archived). Why then only 3 stars? Because the drive comes with drive utility software that has a glitch. After installing the drive, before doing anything else, I ran the drive diagnostics; it passed the SMART Status and Quick Drive tests (both very quick to run), but about 30% of the way through failed the Complete Drive Test, which takes hours to run. I ran all the tests again, got identical results, then called WD tech support. Based on my results, they said the drive was defective, and that I should return it to Amazon, which I did. Amazon quickly sent a replacement--which again failed the Complete Drive Test at around 30%. Another call to WD tech support, this time with someone more competent, and I learned that yes, the diagnostic software that is packaged with the drive is defective. He then had me download the utility software they use in-house and use it run a complete test. 16 hours later (Im using USB 2.0, which probably runs slower than if using 3.0) the drive passed, and in actual use since then seems to be working just fine. So because WD is packaging the drive with glitchy utility software I had to spend hours running diagnostics, talking twice with tech support, and returning what was likely a perfectly good drive to Amazon. Ridiculous! One would think WD would test and de-bug their software before packaging it with a brand new drive. Bottom line: The hardware is good, but dont use the included diagnostic utility, it will give erroneous results (unless theyve fixed it--and yes, I did check for updates before running it). Instead, if you want to check the drive integrity, download the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic program from the WD site (I used Windows version, didnt check to see if there is a Mac version) and run that.

This was purchased as an extra hard drive for the Wii U. 2TB is the maximum size that the Wii U will take - and I think that will be plenty! I was torn between this and a 2TB Seagate drive, but after reading reviews comparing the two, I decided to go with WD - which Nintendo suggests as one of the drives that works well with their Wii U anyway. The first one arrived, and before I even opened the box - I could hear a loose plastic piece moving around. When I hooked up the hard drive, the included USB cord would not stay connected to the back of the drive and the drive would not power up. I immediately called Amazon and they shipped out a new one, while supplying me with a label for the faulty drive. The new one works great! No loose plastic pieces within the drive, USB cord hooks up properly, the drive powers up, and we now have lots of room for the Wii U games! The black color of the drive blends right in with the rest of the equipment on our entertainment stand - so that is another bonus! Thank you Amazon for standing behind your product, and WD for making a pretty good hard drive!!

The WD My Book 3 TB is a fast and capable storage solution for backups, archive files, and other data. I plan to use it to store my Adobe LightRoom archives and working copies. Western Digital is, by common agreement, the most reliable and powerful brand of hard drive on the market to day, and this device continues their tradition of delivering the best. Although Im giving a rating of five stars, Id like to point out a limitation of this drive thats due to operating systems rather than the drive itself. If you plan to use this drive only with Windows, then you can allocate all 3 TB as a single primary partition. If, however, you want to be able to use the drive with Windows and with OS X, then youll have to use 2 partitions. The reason is that the Windows NTFS file system supports 3 TB partitions, but the multi-platform exFAT file system that works with both Windows and OS X only supports 2 TB. If you use exFat to use the drive with both OSes, then youll have to split the drive into two partitions. You do have the choice of making the two partitions equal sizes.

This lil drive has been a great resource at home. We have it plugged-into our Linksys WRT1900ACS home router for family sharing as network storage. Was easy to setup with this router by creating folders, sharing by a convenient share-name and then setting user permissions for ea share. Since SSD storage devices can lose a lot of speed if more than like 70% space is used, we have off-loaded large files and regained a bit of PC performance here. No more emailing large files to ea other, no more downloading large files when we can share them locally. No more re-downloading when you have to reload your crappy MS Windows OS (due to its typical super Cool BUT buggy and non-safe/non-secure nature) but even our updates, service packs and normally installed software is now kept locally, on this device. Does not take up much space. Has just enough weight from the hard drive and case plus rubber feet on the bottom to allow it to stand up like a real book on a book case without the power cable or network cable pulling it overboard. We can also share MP3s and other media. Lastly, makes a nice backup. All key local files are also stored on this drive and updated as often we dont want to lose something ; )