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

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.

I purchased this drive largely based upon a specific need for a USB 3.0 product with 4TB of storage. Ive owned many WD internal and external HD products over time and have not had any drive failures to date over many years. I purchased this drive specifically as a backup storage drive attached to a Synology 1813+ NAS unit. This required a reformat to EXT4 as the drive comes natively formated in NTFS. The Synology NAS schedules backup to this drive of selected folder shares using the Time Backup software available from Synology. Im not utilizing any of the software included from WD with this drive (backup, cloud, etc.) as the Synology NAS has its own software for each of these purposes. The drive itself is similar in size to other My Book drives. The plastic casing is certainly not as nice as the aluminum finish on the WD My Book drives that I have for my Macs, but it is similar to the black of the Synology unit and overall looks good. The power adapter is reasonably sized (not a brick), and the unit comes with a USB 3.0 cord for use with its single USB 3.0/2.0 port. WD provides a 2-year warranty with this product. There are cheaper drives with similar specs available from other companies. However, having had drive failures with Seagate over the years, Im unwilling to take chances with other options. Its important to backup your valued files, and WD drives have played a major role in my backup solutions over time. If I have issues with this drive, Ill update my review. This seems to be another winner from WD! Edit/Addendum: Following my review, another Amazon user asked me an excellent question, Does the USB connection to the drive feel flimsy? This is a very appropriate question given concerns raised with the prior generation of this same My Book device. While I dont own the previous My Book version in question, I did check the USB connector on my device. The supplied USB 3.0 cable seems to be stable in its connection to the rear port of the My Book case. I cant physically make it move horizontally or vertically with any significance - unless I were to apply excessive force. Modest attempts at movement of the USB cable did not disrupt the connection. I dont plan to move this My Book from one place to another (its connected to my NAS), so I suppose that I wont be able to comment well on wear-and-tear issues with respect to the USB connector. Other My Book devices that I own are the Mac Firewire/USB 2.0 version. Those have never struck me as flimsy. Update 1/18/14: Since writing my original review, Ive purchased a 2nd unit which I reformatted for Mac OS X and use for time machine backup. Both drives are functioning well and have had no issues. Im still very pleased with the quality and function of the drives. Reading through a number of the questions regarding this drive, its clear that the term cloud backup as assigned by WD to this drive is a bit of a marketing stretch. As has been noted by others, the cloud backup option is not intrinsic to the drive, but an add-on service provided by Dropbox and facilitated by WD software that a user may choose to run on an attached computer (I dont personally use or recommend that others use WD software). These drives are nothing more than a WD drive, in an enclosure, with a single USB 3.0 connection. If you are looking for cloud capability, other product options do exist. I do hope that WD changes its description of drives such as this in future marketing.

5 stars out of the box for copy and paste back up. Id never had an auto backup that worked well enough to use it. After almost giving up, I can now say that the scheduled hourly back up works fantastic without having any impact on the performance of my i5 4GB computer. I now give the SmartWare backup software 5 stars for the file based hourly scheduled backup. Here is what might cause others to rate it lower: 1) I think that it has to be on-line when you initially set it up. I kept getting an RPC server is unavailable error even when I tried the back up immediately option and I think that it even happened once I was on-line - so Im a little confused here, 2) I e-mailed Western Digital and went to bed, 3) the next morning, I was severely disappointed with the generic answer which was a duplicate of all of their not helpful on-line help data base, 4) while reading their garbage reply, I got a pop up that said that there was an update to their Smart Ware available, I jumped on that before the pop up got away from me never to be seen again, 5) PRESTO, SHIZAM, EVERYTHING WORKED PERFECTLY and still does 6) I praised the Lord. :-)

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.

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 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. [...]

WOW!?Im a Amz prime member&was really getting tired of deleting games off my XBx1,so i have been comparing price points since last yr to get a nice Fat monster Tb Hdd!And then I saw this Juiced up monster 4Tb drive.I couldnt pass it up/as I said before:TIRED OF DELETING games lol.It gets old really fast going back&forth on re-downloading things.I like the price for this drive as its pretty much the price of many 2&3Tb drives so you cant go wrong snatching one up for your Xbx1!It was no hassle hooking it up&formatting it.Xbx1 basically takes care of everything itself.you have to moveany games you want on it to the 4Tb hdd manually*&Do NOT forget to set this Hdd as yourdefaultHdd ok?Its noticebly FASTER-than the internal Xbx1 hdd!Xbx1 speed is roughly 3 gbps speed&this drive is around 5gbps speed!so it loads a bit faster people!&that def comes in handy when you just want to game instead of sitting on your Toilet waiting for that GTA5 game to load up lol.&OMG,is this drive very quiet?!Geez you really have to get close to hear it.Its supposedly on Western Digitals floating drivehmmm oookkk.whatever it works well.I say all you guys looking for reasonable priced 4Tb drive,get this one.This will take forever to fill up-plus I noticed you CANT download movies to your Xbx1 at all as you can on the 360!So thats saving you tons of storage space just for games only etc.You will really appreciate the faster loading Ill say!Plus this blends in behind your console or wherever you decide to tuck this sucker into.Its just one white led light on the bottom/front,so you can tell its on&its flashes fast while copying games and slower during other times accesssing info.Hopefully this drive last many years to come.(The warranty is 2yrs I believe*)ps:when you format this drive you can only use it for Xbx1 games ok?So if you need it for a Pc//Mac pc you will need to re-format it again.So yes this drive is XBOX1 COMPATIBLE GUYS!So dont worry like @Bobby Graham said in his review on amazon it works!His review pushed me to buy this one also!lol

I bought the portable hard drive to do backups on my WIN7 computers. I found that while I could copy files to the My Book and could backup up files OK, I could not do an image backup. I got Windows error messages when I tried to do an image backup. It turns out that a lot of folks are having this problem, but solutions are not easy to find. Microsoft says that their backup programs only work with a sector size of 512 bits, but that new drives larger than 2.5 Tb come formatted with a sector size if 4096 bits. MS offered no solution. I spent some time searching forums with no luck. Finally deep into a WD forum I found a reference to a WD Quick Formatting Tool. That tool would format a disk with physical sectors of 4096, but report out a 512 sector size. A warning that formatting in that manor would not work on Win XP was included. It took more digging to actually find that tool. That tool was not included in the set of programs than was on the My Book. When I used that tool the drive ran fine and I could do image backups. I am very peeved that this problem was not mentioned in the specs. When I looked at the specs for this drive there was only one set of specs for the My Book, regardless of the drive size. If I had clicked on 1.0 or 2.0 size when I place the order all would have been fine. Since I clicked on a size greater than 2.5, the drive did not work as expected. The specs should make clear that larger drives are different than smaller ones, and the program to fix the problem should be included on the drive!

I bought this drive in January of 2015 and I was very happy with it until this past summer. One day my it stopped registering on my computer. I would plug it in and no icon would appear. I thought it may be my computer, but I tried everything the Western Digital site said to troubleshoot and nothing worked. The light on the drive would just blink at me like it had made some super funny joke that I was not in on. Well, I sent it back to Western Digital (thankfully it was still under warranty) and they sent me a new one. The new drive worked fantastic until two days ago. Then the exact same situation occurred. The drive would not register. Now luckily I have a second backup drive for all of my music and data. But without that backup I would be totally out of luck. Now I get that external drives fail on occasion. But two of the exact same drives in a one-and-a-half year period is just unacceptable. I will not be purchasing any further Western Digital products. ****Update as of 03/28/16**** I plugged my drive in yesterday just to see if it would work (see explanation above) and to my extreme surprise, the icon appeared on my laptop screen and all of my previous backups were available. I had already bought another 4 TB portable drive to replace it so now I have 3 backup drives and one 2TB drive full of all my music. I added two stars to my review and I will update again if the drive begins acting out.

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.