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

Backing up your files and pictures is critical and I am very paranoid about doing it regularly and right. I am an advanced amateur photographer and audiophile and I have terabytes of data (TB). Finding a good reliable external hard drive is a must. At home, I back up my files to another disk on my main computer (so thats Backup No. 1) and I backup to a RAID 5 NAS (Backup No. 2). But, what happens if the house burns down? Then my careful backups are all gone. So, I also back things up to the WD My Book and take it to the office (Backup No. 3). So, things to look for. First, this is a USB 3.0 Hard Drive. This is really important if you have a lot of data because 4TB of data on a USB 2.0 port will take you days to copy. I get 70 MB/S copy rates from my internal hard disk to the USB WD My Book 4 TB. Speed of transfer is a very important factor for me because if it is slow, I wont want to back up. Second, this is a large 4 TB disk which is great since internal drives are rapidly becoming very large (6 TB and higher in some cases). I use one to back up photos and second to back up my audio recordings. Finally, I think the price is good so you have no excuse not to back up. Some of you may be asking about cloud storage. I use that as well (Backup No. 4). Everyones experience is different but I have found that backing up 3-4TB to the cloud to be a very painful process that takes a long time. Also, some cable providers limit you to 250G/month so watch out. I just started using a new cloud backup provider a month ago and I think I finally got everything in cloud storage. 30 days!. At least now it should be easier since it will be just incremental material.

I was scared at 1st because of all the reviews were a bit mixed. Therefore I took a chance on a device that could have my Steam games run on and I have to say I am not the least bit upset. I think people are running into the issue they expect the 3.0 USB to work on a 2.0 with indicates that most of the reviews that say this is slow are false. This runs at the same speed as my native drive and uploads and downloads just as fast. I have 2 3.0 USB ports on my custom PC. If you want a external HDD that has 4TB and is fast this is the one to have. I like this too because when I visit my family on the East Coast I can just bring this and not have to worry about installing the games on their computer and can just open my account. A+ 10/10 CPU Specs: H8-1450 Custom BIOS v8.10 Processor AMD FX(tm)-6120 (6 CPUs), ~3.5GHz 12 Gigs Ram 2TB HD drive 3.0 USB WD External Book 4TB DirectX 11.2 30 SSD OS Runner Win 8.1 64 Bit 600 GIG Backup drive from my old CPU 550 Watt bronze cert. Power Supply Dual-X R9 270 Sapphire 2GIG GDDR5 OC Beats Audio

I bought this specific model because I had been using WDs Smartware Pro for quite sometime and liked it. The MBBG WD series will NOT work with the Smartware Pro software. My local computer store ...I found out only carried the MBBG series (and other WD models that soes not work with Smartware Pro) and I was desperate to replace my current 4TB drive as it was running out of space (I do photography and digital artwork as a hobby). Amazon had this specific model in stock at a fair price and after applying my Prime Membership discount (includes free 2 day shipping too) plus my CCs reward points (conveniently presented at checkout time) I ended up paying an amount no competitor website can ever match. The product arrived as promised (a few hour earlier too). Pros: The same day it arrived it just took me less than an hour to connect and do my much needed backup. This model still has the led light in the front panel which I find very useful in doing a quick visual check if my Continuous Backup setting is functioning well. The drive is quite and my older same model 4TB drive that Im replacing worked well with no known glitches at all. This model will works well for those who use WDs Smartware Pro and Acronis (I have not had a chance of bench testing the latter software). Cons: I would have given a 5 star rating for this order except when I registered the SN in the WD website it only gave me a few months for the warranty. I had been quite busy lately so I had not had a chance of contacting WD to correct the warranty period issue.

Having some issues with the drive disconnecting and reconnecting, and it does not like to work with Windows Backup. I guess theres a fix to reformatting it in such a way that Windows backup will be able to work properly with it. Ive actually reformatted it twice, and I still cant get a restore image to save successfully, although it does create the image, and other backups through Windows backup seem intact, but I dont like to see errors. Ive got several backup drives, so I use my 2TB Seagate Free Agent, and that one doesnt have any issues. I think its the 3TB thing. I do a lot of WinZip Pro backups, instead. Otherwise, its ok. Speed is more limited by drive speed than USB 3.0. Where the USB 3.0 helps the most I think is when deciding which files need to be updated. The first full backups took quite a while, but I have A LOT of stuff to backup. BTW - a little tip to everyone - put your backup drives on notebook coolers! I used to burn one up every year or two. Since I started doing this, I havent lost a drive!

Ive had good experiences with portable WD HDs before, so I picked this up mostly to save disk images of the computers in my house. This drive comes with software loaded on it for you to install: a utility to test and diagnose the drive, as well as a back up software solution; there is also a driver for this drive, but Im not clear what it is suppose to accomplish since Windows recognized the My Books full capacity without it. The utility is useful, but I didnt use the back up software -- rather I downloaded the Acronis True Image WD Edition software from WDs website. In fact, I installed Acronis, created a bootable Acronis disc, then uninstalled Acronis. I made an ISO copy of the bootable Acronis disc backup software. Acronis WD edition only works with WD drives attached to your computer. To test this portable drive I did a full erase filling the disc with zeroes (I used the Acronis bootable disc for this). What this accomplishes is that if there is a problem the software will tell me, and any defects will be replaced by good sectors through the SMART function of the drive. This took about a day and a half. I then tried to format the drive in Windows, I could not. Windows saw the My Book as two 2TB discs -- kind of strange. (Could a RAID 0 of two 2TB discs be inside what appears to be a single HDD?) Anyway, I zeroed the drive again using the supplied Windows WD utility and it only took a moment. That reset the drive so that it was viewed as one, blank 4TB drive in Windows. I then formatted the drive as NTFS with Windows. That took about a day and a half. So, there doesnt seem to be any defects. The drive works like regular drives, no funny business, and the drive is backward compatible with USB 2.0. This is a very solid and sturdy piece of equipment. Now, WD is known to supply back doors to the NSA. Im suspicious by nature, but dont have delusions of grandeur so as to think the NSA actually wants to spy on me. I wonder why my firewall is telling me the WD utility is trying to call out several thousands times a day. (I have my firewall block this.) So my advice is to test the drive to your content offline if youre using the WD software and only use WD software when youre offline -- otherwise firewall block it or uninstall it. The Acronis bootable disc doesnt call home and is used offline.

I have used WD external hard drives for several years because they have never failed me horribly. Of course, I have ones that are over 7 years old and yes, they do die eventually but they have always let me know they were on their way out (working slowly, error messages when trying to open a file). I have never had one just up and die with no warning so Ive always had time to get a replacement and decommission the dying one. This 6TD hard drive is no different. It is working beautifully. Yes, it does take time to transfer files (my files are HUGE art files) but I just grab a bunch and set them to copy overnight so it doesnt interfere with my day. All my WD My Book drives (I have 5 of them now - 2 are deceased) work as designed and are perfect security for me to back up my files. I use my 3 TB drive on a daily basis and I use this 6 TD to back up my 3 TB drive and my computers (3 of them). I do not use the software to back up files (Ive read bad things about it) so I just back up manually. Love WD My Books and would probably never switch to another brand.

Thinking about one? No, dont think, just buy it. Just do it. Plug it in and youre done. ►APPEARANCE: Small and rather unnoticeable. ►WHY I BOUGHT IT I already owned a WD 1 TB external. This just increases my storage space to 3 TB. My 500 GB hard drive is only used to hold desktop wallpaper. It maintains, & runs programs needed programs. ►SECURITY Ever think about a crash? This prevents important or private files from deletion. You can also backup your computer to a WD external instead of the default D drive. Also remember that nothing says no to a hacker better than an unplugged WD external drive. This will fit into your banks safety deposit lock boxes for a lot less per year. ►USES Why pay yearly for access to a cloud? Worried about a lot of sensitive files? Have a lot of family photos or ancestral information? Do you have complicated taxes? Run a small web company as I do for select people? Old email youd like to pull up? Do you play an instrument and save tracks? Vacation videos not yet put on DVD? If you have something that is so prized that you dare not lose. Put it on a WD external, a DVD storage disk, and flash drive. Triple security. ►I just thought of this. Fonts are memory thieves. You and I know that there are fonts you dont use often or maybe at all but do not want to delete them. Keep the ones you absolutely need and that the system needs... and house the rest on an external drive. Also, music files can be placed in there and accessed as if on your pc or laptops C drive (main drive). Get a good 5GB transfer rate multi-port USB hub and go. I have these two externals plus a 32 GB and a 16 GB thumb or flash drives all plugged in all of the time while Im using my laptop. Sorry. There are no cons for this product.

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.

Super Quiet. Very Fast. Runs way cooler than I expected. In the past 22 years of computing, Ive had just about every brand of drive available. I can honestly say that most drive brands are pretty reliable but WD still tops my list of the most reliable drives. Ive only had one WD quit and even that was after four years of service. In the past 6-7-8 years or so, I have had several back up drives in service, most of them Seagates. The choice to go with Seagate was nothing other than price at the time that I needed another drive. However, even though the Seagate drives have been reliable so far ( I did have two quit though) they seem to not run as smooth as the WD drives. I can hear the Seagate drives spinning and I can feel my desk (ever so slightly) vibrate. I have a 27 iMac that makes no noise and does not have even the slightest bit of machine vibration emitting from it. So this week when I decided it was time for another drive, I decided even before checking prices that I was going to go with a WD drive this time. I was pleasantly surprised to find not only this drive, but at the price Amazon had it for. I really wanted the 4TB just for future expansion but decided that the price difference was too great so I opted for the 3TB. I got it yesterday. As soon as I plugged it in I had to check to see that it was running. Dead silence and zero spin vibration. AWESOME! I reformatted it to work with my Macs and transferred 1.3 GB of back up data in no time. I verified the backup and the data was correctly transferred error free. I obviously cant tell you how reliable this drive is but hopefully, as with all of my other WD drives, internal and external, I expect it to be working years from now as well. I will give this a month and see if I still feel this way about it. I suspect I will.

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.