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

I purchased this drive largely based upon a specific need for a USB 3.0 product with 4TB of storage. I've 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. I'm 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, I'm unwilling to take chances with other options. It's 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, I'll 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 don't 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 can't 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 don't plan to move this My Book from one place to another (it's connected to my NAS), so I suppose that I won't 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, I've 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. I'm still very pleased with the quality and function of the drives. Reading through a number of the questions regarding this drive, it's 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 don't 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.

I've 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 I'm not clear what it is suppose to accomplish since Windows recognized the My Book's full capacity without it. The utility is useful, but I didn't use the back up software -- rather I downloaded the "Acronis True Image WD Edition" software from WD's 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 doesn't 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. I'm suspicious by nature, but don't 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 you're using the WD software and only use WD software when you're offline -- otherwise firewall block it or uninstall it. The Acronis bootable disc doesn't call home and is used offline.

I like this product so much I bought a second one. The first I use for storing feature films, concerts etc. in my home theater room. You can store several hundred feature films in the highest quality on this product with 6TB of memory and it connects to my DVR and provides three times the memory of the DVR itself. I use a second for all music files, photos, etc. and connect that one to a MINIX media player in my home theater room. While all of these files for films, music, etc. can fit on one box for now, I am anticipating the time when I will need to split them up and since I connect them to separate devices, it made sense to divide things up and prepare for the future. The WB My Book is very effective for storage and yes, you can use it to back up computer files too. It is quick for storing and retrieving, quiet, and offers a large amount of storage. This device is normally "on" at all times since it doesn't have an on-off switch. However if you connect it to a DVR, media player, or computer via a USB cable, and shut that device off for the night, you will turn this unit off at the same time.

I bought this specifically to use it as an external storage option for my Xbox One, which was down to less than 10% available when they released the update that allowed external storage in early June 2014. If you are considering this drive as an external drive for your Xbox One system, I can assure you it handles the task quite nicely! When I plugged the drive into an available USB 3.0 slot on the back of the Xbox One, the Xbox One immediately recognized it as an external storage device, and asked if I would like to format the drive. Formatting was very straight forward and very quick. The Xbox One OS also gives you the opportunity to name the drive, which I kept at the default "External" so you can tell internal storage from external storage. Another nice feature is that the Xbox One gives you the option to always install new content to the external drive until it is full. If you select this option, then anything that is installed from this point forward will be installed to the external drive, as long as it is connected. It's a great drive, very quiet, very quick, and I have no issues playing games off of it rather than the internal drive. Again, if you are considering this for an external storage option for your Xbox One, do it!

Basically I purchased this drive to make a backup of data on my original wd my book live duo which is running RAID. Basically the data on the drive is not data that needs to be updated on a regular basis, It's just videos, pictures and some music. The drive maybe connected for about a week or two to do a backup and then disconnected and put away in the event I need the backup. Once I copy all data to this drive I then verify the data by re-copying the files to a different location to make sure that I can get my data back. I've had one of those wd my book live duo with RAID go bad and had to return the entire unit. After I received the replacement, I recopied the data from the usb drive that I kept in a safe place onto the replacement wd duo drive. The process of backing up and restoring my data went by pretty simple. Unfortunately the original USB drive (Seagate) died after four months and was sent back for repairs/replacement. I have no idea when I'm going to get that replacement back! Anyway, I'm using Windows 8.1 with a system with usb 3.0 ports, I had a problem connecting the drive cable to the actual drive. The connector on the drive arrived bent and I had to pry the connector on the drive a little wider so that the cable would fit in it. Before I give any speed info on the 4TB WD My Book USB 3.0 let me give you and idea of my system and network configuration first. Intel i7 3770 3.4GHz Intel DH77DF ITX Motherboard Crucial Ballistik 16Gb DDR3 PC3-12800 Memory Intel 335 SSD 240Gb Hard Drive 6Gbs Antec ITX Vesa-110 Case Windows 8 64bit Upgraded to Win 8.1 Onboard Intel Pro Gigabit Ethernet Cisco/Linksys E3200 a/b/g/n Gigabit WiFi Router Belkin 5-port Gigabit Switch Cat 6 Cables 3 - 4Tb My Book Live Duo Running In RAID (Gigabit Connection) 4 - WD Live Media Hub 1TB (Gigabit Connection) The info is based upon the speed shown under the Win 8.1 file copy details. The files are approx. 500mb up to 8Gb in size and everything is copied to and from the WD 4TB USB 3.0 external hard drive. (The test was done using 200Gb of the same video files for each test). I noticed the speed would drop a little as it started to copy the next file in the queue but it would regain full speed after a couple of seconds. Reading data to and from the 4tb wd usb 3.0 drive was basically the same for each port or internal drive tested. Here are the reading I got: Using Gigabit Ethernet to the WD 4tb connected to USB 2.0 Port Min - 24 MB/s Max - 38 MB/s Using Gigabit Ethernet to WD 4TB connected to USB 3.0 Port Min - 43 MB/s Max - 68 MB/s Using Internal SSD 6GBs Hard Drive to WD 4TB connected to USB 3.0 Port Min - 59 MB/s Max - 76 MB/s Basically reading and writing from the WD 4TB USB 3.0 gave me pretty much the same results. In my opinion; for an external drive it seems to transfer files pretty fast and I'm able to move 2TB of video files over Ethernet to this external drive in approx. 7-Hours, Usually when I use a USB 2.0 port it takes almost 15 Hours. The only problem I found was the USB 3.0 port on the hard drive needed a small screw driver to force open the metal connector that was not allowing the cable to connect to the drive. This was a real bummer if you're not a DIY or careful type of person then chances are you'll be returning the drive since one false move and the inside plastic connector of the USB female end on the drive could end up broken voiding the warranty. The next thing I found is that the drive may takes a couple of seconds to spin up from sleep mode which it seems to enter quite frequently, maybe some folks may or may not find this annoying. Some folks may say the are having trouble waking the drive as a share when it goes to sleep as a network drive but I've not experienced this problem on mine so far. It may take a little while to respond from sleep mode but it does come up after a few annoying seconds later. I hope this helps you understand what you're getting if you're planning on purchasing one of these drives. In closing, I'd say this is a pretty decent drive although it could be a bit cheaper on the price in regards to the Seagate central 4TB USB 3.0 but I've already given up on the reliability of the Seagate drives to even consider them.

The last Western Digital Mybook I had was a 1TB that my father handed down to me. He bought it in 2007 and it lasted until 2011. That is pretty amazing. Though I might add it was used as a backup drive for his mac. Regardless, the drive was always plugged in and would do 1 hour backups 24/7. So while massive amounts of data were not being transferred 24/7, the discs would be spinning constantly. I used his MyBook for my own mac. For my uses, I transferred movies onto it and filled it to capacity. We had a scare when it stopped working in 2010, and I decided to try taking out the hard drive from the enclosure and putting it in one of my hot-swappable external hard drive bays. Turns out the connection ports on the MyBook fried or the soldering just cracked and lost connection. So I always check now when a drive "dies" before drilling 1/4" holes into it and tossing it in the trash, to always test it in an external drive bay to see if it was bad/aging soldering first. To get a better idea of what an external bay is, here is the one I bought Plugable USB 3.0 SuperSpeed SATA III Lay-Flat Hard Drive Docking Station (ASMedia ASM1053E SATA III to USB Chipset, UASP and 6TB+ Drive Support) . Anyway, from that moment on I've been a fan of WD and bought many an internal hard drives from them since. Now, this black friday I wanted to buy a huge capacity hard drive to store my uncompressed blu-ray movie libray in. First run though was going to be with my anime collection. I was torn between several factors: 1) should I go external or internal? * 5/10 years ago it made sense to buy a huge internal hard drive and put it into a docking bay for a fraction of the price of a portable drive. Portability (without a power supply) was a luxury few could afford. Now the portable drives are slightly cheaper than buying the bare bones hard drive and already include an enclosure! 2) If I went internal, WD offers several different drive types (Green, Blue, Red, Purple, Black, etc.). All with supposedly different features (durability, energy consumption, quietness, speed, etc.). Was it all bologna or was it a significant difference among each other? Would playback of my Hi Def movies be bottle-necked in any way if I chose the "wrong" drive type? 3) Of all external HDD size options (and constantly decreasing $/GB value) what size external hdd should I get? * With many external hdd prices, the higher the capacity, the less you will spend per gigabyte of storage space received (up to a certain point) 4) Of all the externals out there, should focus on value $/GB or brand reputation? Or a mixture of both? 5) Which externals seemed built to last/dissipate heat best? So all these questions plagued my mind for a good month, before the black friday deals kicked by butt into gear to take the plunge. I could buy a 5TB drive from Seagate that cost $129 - compared to a WD Mybook 3Tb for the same price. That's 2TB more!!! But...that's WD vs Seagate. Here are some things you should know that I read from many people's reviews. Firstly, Seagate gives you a warranty for your hard drive BUT only will replace your drive with a REFURBISHED hard drive. First of all, why do they have so many refurbished hard drives lying around? Exactly how reliable are those previously used drives? There's no carfax for hard drives. Would you buy a used car off craigslist with no history or record to entrust your life with? Then why would you entrust your valuable data, pictures and videos with a completely unknown used hard drive? Second, Seagate will charge you money to have their technicians look and try to restore your hard drive. Or they will charge you for software that will try to restore bad sectors of the hard drive. Does not sound like much of a warranty to me. I'll share a personal experience with you. I have a roommate who bought some big capacity Seagate external drives for his anime. The hard drive failed after 10 months and 3TB of data he had were lost because the policy with Seagate is: return the unopened/unaltered drive to use for a refurb or possible recovery of the drive. I told my friend to let me take the drive out and put it into my docking bay to see if its a soldering issue or if the drive is indeed dead. He elected to use Seagate's warranty and lost his info. FYI, NEVER give your hard drive to anyone. Whether they be Apple, Seagate, WD, etc. If it has files on it that you would never consider posting to the world wide web, don't let it leave your home. The right people can copy select information faster than someone at a restaurant can copy your credit card info and buy something from Willie's Hubcaps LLC. in Jamaica, NY! Just don't do it. Anyway, it happened to the refurb hard drive he received and after that, he went WD. I know I'm bashing Seagate right now, but I'm not completely endorsing WD either. I have a Seagate 320Gb portable since 2010 that is running to this day. But it is the model that is comparable to WD's passport series. So it's not a high capacity drive. I have seen many poor reviews for both Seagate and Western Digital so you cannot simply go for review counts alone. To be honest, the best drives I've used are the Hitachi drives in macbooks. They have lasted me almost a decade in every mac I've bought and I run them hard. But have not found a high capacity Hitachi for prices that I can get from WD or Seagate, so I have to go with one of the popular guys. I am supporting WD because every. single. drive I've bought from them has served me 3-6 years and I have not been displeased in the least. Every hard drive has a lifetime. And I buy new hard drives to replace the aging ones. Just a part of life. So with that said, my personal recommendation is to steer clear of Seagate if anything for their warranty policy and customer service. I'd choose a Toshiba over them. But I digress. After all the headache of comparing WD internals vs externals, etc. etc. I pulled the trigger on the 2TB capacity. 1TB you're just losing money. 6Tb you're paying also way too much. 2TB-4TB is the sweet spot for the WD MyBooks. *** As of 12/05/14, the price of the 2TB drive is $96.99. I DO NOT suggest buying this at the current price. Yes, it's a good price compared to 5 years ago, but I paid $89 for mine. Besides, the WD Elements Portable 2Tb drive is $87 (I personally don't like the WD Elements line though, stay away). I'll let you in on a well known secret, the price of storage in the 2000s was $14-9/GB. In 2005, $1.15/GB. In 2010, $.07/GB. Now, it's about $.03/GB. Pennies on the dollar. It will continue to decrease. There is NO REASON (short of an emergency drive failing on you) that you should buy an external drive between Black Friday and Christmas. Wait for the holidays and then take advantage of the deals. Most of all, during Black Friday the hard drive I got was not even a featured deal! It wasn't even advertised widely as some other products on amazon. So I'm lead to believe $89 is the best/most accurate price you can get the 2TB WD MyBook for. By Christmas I'll wager it decreases to $75. Anyway, this drive performs very very quietly. It does not get hot. Transfers are about 25MB/s when connected to my usb 2.0 computer. But I know they will be faster when connected to a usb 3.0 port. It runs on mac and windows without installing any additional software. I would not recommend installing the software that it comes with unless you want to use it exclusively as a backup drive to your main computer. If you have mac, all you need is time machine (don't install anything). Regardless of OS, install the universal firmware updater. Firmware updates are good for hardware and you should make it a habit of checking for updates released periodically. For windows, install the WD Smartware. For some reason, when plugging into my Win 7, it does not show me an option to eject the external drive. So I downloaded and installed the WD Smartware and when the program opens, I right-click on the picture of the WD MyBook and then can select eject. But only within that program. You do not want to yank out the cable or shut down the computer and yank it out. You always should find a way to specifically tell the computer to stop communicating with the device and eject it. **** Tips I always use for Storage Mediums ****** Once you get your WD MyBook, I highly recommend reformatting it before you install anything. Reformat it to exFAT. This way you can OPEN and SAVE files of ANY SIZE onto the hard drive whether you are plugged into a mac or windows computer! I never thought I'd use windows until I had to and I was in deep doo doo. Better to be safe than sorry. Fat32 is universal too but means you cannot save files larger than 4GB. NTSC means you can OPEN files on your mac but can't save to them while you can OPEN and SAVE files while on windows. It's technical I know. Sorry. On Windows, choose an allocation unit size depending on your use for the hard drive. **Allocation size can be confusing but I'll try to explain it as clear as I can: Imagine you are moving to a new house. The condition: 1) Everything you own must be packaged in a box of the same size. The sizes are iPod, Teddy Bear, Bicycle, Refrigerator, and Grand Piano. You can choose only one of these. 2) No matter how big (or small), it must be disassembled to fit inside those boxes 3) Each box can only have ONE item in it You have a nearly unlimited supply of boxes. Let's say you choose iPod-size boxes. All your small items will be able to fit snugly in each box. But bigger things like your grand piano would have to be chopped up into so many pieces that it may take 20,000 of these boxes alone to package the musical instrument! While each box is filled to the fullest, you will have to unpack 20,000+ boxes when you get home! Let's say you choose Grand Piano-size boxes. Your piano can fit in it and utilize 100% of the box, but what about your salt shaker, iphod, shoes, and basil plant? They will each require their own box- the size of a grand piano!! You will have less boxes to unpack but have only 5% of the box utilized. So unless you live in a piano warehouse or ipod factory, you will something in between. The Bicycle Boxes for packing. It is a happy medium between better space management and less boxes to unpack when you get home. I live in the piano warehouse (I save 50GB movie files only!) So I choose the LARGEST allocation size possible. If you just want to backup your computer, you have 1 grand piano and 1 ipod, among other things. You choose MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD size. If you transfer only your photos & music, word documents, and other tiny files, you live in an iPod Factory! You want the SMALLEST allocation size possible. I have a mac but I run Win7 via bootcamp. So I formatted by WD MyBook to exFAT. On the same windows I selected an "allocation size" of the largest possible size allowable (for the capacity of the external hard drive). I forgot what I chose, but if you are on Windows, then select the option at the very top. The further down you go, I believe the size [of the imaginary boxes] will get bigger. Overall this drive is quiet, does not make weird noises, and stays cool to the touch all the time. Those Seagate externals are extremely flawed design wise. The new line they released offers improved airflow, however the vents are at the bottom of the external enlosure! Heat travels upward, the vents should be on top! (Like this product) The Seagate Backup Plus 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (STDT5000100) not only has a bad airflow design but the corners are extremely sharp many reviewers are saying (keep away if you have children and animals in the house?).

NOTE: THIS REVIEW WILL COVER USE ON THE XBOX ONE ONLY. As X1 owners will understand, the internal hard drive isn't anywhere large enough to hold many games, now hitting the 30GB range. Just by installing 3 games, over 30% of my space was used. Not good, so an alternative was necessary. I chose the My Book line over the My Passport because I wanted the unit to stand as it's shown in the picture, which is necessary due to my setup. The My Book stands about 2x higher than the console vertically, but can also be laid atop horizontally, if one chooses. The unit requires additional power, so be prepared to find another outlet. The built-in transformer makes for a larger plug, so if you intend to plug into a surge protector, you will need to be aware this may not fit among other plugs due to its size. I've only had this unit for about 2 days, but so far, it's working perfectly. For XBox One owners, here's some basic information: -When you connect the drive and turn on the console, you will need to go into Settings - Manage Storage to prepare the unit. The console will automatically detect the new USB drive. -You will need to format the drive before you can use it. Start the process. The console will ask you to name the device, if you wish to do so (I named mine Pipboy 3000). The format takes less than one minute. -The final question will ask you if you want to use the device as the primary drive. I recommend this option since every download and save will go to the external drive rather than the internal drive. You can always change this option at a later time. Transferring (moving) games from the hard drive to the ext drive is pretty easy and straightforward. Ryse was the only game that took a while, but that's because it's 30GB in size. Despite the size, it still moved in less than 4 minutes. It's important to note the drive speed is irrelevant here. The 5400 RPM isn't going to be used to its maximum since the USB 3.0 is what will control the speed of data transfer. That said, I did not notice any additional time being added to loading screens (Assassin's Creed IV). If you're looking for additional space, I recommend this unit. Remember: this is only valid for the XBox One through experience. PS4 owners should do more reading to ensure the drive will perform as expected. Thanks for reading and have a great day.

This hard drive is a ok NOW after I FIGURED IT OUT MYSELF... but the issue I have is with the company of Western Digital. SERIOUSLY BAD CUSTOMER SUPPORT. I have the newest 2013 Mac Pro (the black cylinder) So I got this hard drive since I need a lot of storage and all my other older USB3 western digital HDs work fine with my computer. I was hoping to get a super fast drive, but I know it's a fairly ok model but not the fastest for doing all the massive graphics work I do - but it states very clearly on the site WILL WORK WITH MAC as long as you format the drive (I know what I am doing on that front). Anyway I received the product and right out of the box it didn't work! Frustrating as heck since I needed it immediately and all my other hard drives plug and play instantly with no issues. I tried it in my other computer and still no response. I was hoping I didn't need to call customer support but I had to in the end to see what was wrong. First of all let me explain how bad you can be as a company to offer hard drives that state they work with Mac and APPLE computers but NOT HAVE A DAMN CLUE on the most recent Apple computer. Seriously!? So the tech didn't even know what the newest Mac Pro computer was...I was dumbfounded, but besides the point, he didn't even try to call in a Mac expert in their department, or they don't even have any people on staff who know what a Mac is. So after trying literally everything we BOTH could think of he told me to download the latest USB drivers and install it on my Mac. I did and guess what happened? MY MAC WOULDN'T START UP AGAIN! My computer stopped working. He basically said he would call their Tier 2 level support and that no one was available to help me that day....HA! What kind of company offers support but when you have a real issue basically hangs up on you?! Oh and after wiping my computer clean and reinstalling MAC OS it finally came back to life and thank God I had a time machine backup. Then the next day as a last resort I swapped the USB cable that it came with with another cord I had and all of a sudden it worked fine! I admit I should have tried that sooner, but more importantly WHY DIDN'T THE TECH SUPPORT GUY TELL ME TO TRY THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?! Seems like it should be standard procedure to tell you to swap a cord to test to see if the piece of junk USB cord it came with is crap. Just bad. Long story short their support NEVER called me back even after they hung up on me basically and promised to get back to me first thing in the AM. Still to this day they have not called me. Then they had the nerve to send me a customer survey after the fact! AMAZING. So yes the drive works now but I WILL NEVER buy from these guys again after such a bad experience! I recommend not getting anything from these guys even if they are a huge company!