Western Digital 4TB USB 3.0 My Book for Mac

Overall, everything was really good. The only problem is that the WalMart online website very often does not provide enough information about the products they sell. For example, there was no information about what computer operating systems were compatible with this product. I did not discover that information until I opened the product box and read the info sheet. I've encountered this problem with a lot of WalMart online products. This has, on several occasions, prompted me to purchase the product from other stores that provided full information about the product. It would seem to me that it would be easy to include that info if the person uploading the product on the WalMart website simply pretended to be the prospective buyer and asked themselves what info they ... MoreOverall, everything was really good. The only problem is that the WalMart online website very often does not provide enough information about the products they sell. For example, there was no information about what computer operating systems were compatible with this product. I did not discover that information until I opened the product box and read the info sheet. I've encountered this problem with a lot of WalMart online products. This has, on several occasions, prompted me to purchase the product from other stores that provided full information about the product. It would seem to me that it would be easy to include that info if the person uploading the product on the WalMart website simply pretended to be the prospective buyer and asked themselves what info they would need to know before deciding to buy the product. I know there are buyers in the real world that can come up with some strange questions. But most buyers know what info about a product they need.

A waste of money

This product lasted all of 45 minutes. It was plugged into a Mac, formatted, and then used to back up customer and project data. I then plugged it into a second device to archive more data only for the device to start clicking and whirring its inevitable demise. Try as I might, it wouldn't start again. I am now left with a $280 dollar brick that I cannot return to the seller for repairs or a replacement as it contains customer data that cannot be shared for legal reasons. And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with my devices, or the USB ports I am using. This is not the first time a WD product has failed on me. But I can say with confidence it is the very last time I buy a WD product.

Fast and Quiet

Excellent WD external drive. Quiet and fast.Some people have mentioned that it is loud, but I can't get mine to make any loud noises. Now-- every now and then it will do something like calibrate the heads or whatever and it does make a small "chunking" sound, but it makes this sound rarely and it muffled.Transfer speeds are limited to your USB port. This is a USB3 device, so you can expect about 5 mbps when using a USB3 port on your computer. USB2 will be slower.I'm using this to back up several computers in the house as well as storage space to duplicate photos and other stuff.I am very happy with this-- especially for the price.

Great Drive With A High Temperature

This is a great little drive: It has a massive amount of storage at a very reasonable price (if you can catch it on sale), in a relatively small and attractive package, was plug and play and thoroughly easy to use even without installing the Western Digital software that came with the drive (I also did not have to format it out of the box, although on a Mac you will assuming you don't have an NTFS driver installed on your Mac). I gave it four stars because of one major problem I encountered. Please read on to learn more:PLEASE NOTE: The read and write speeds and temperature readings demonstrated below were not achieved with 'laboratory software'; these were real world values that someone copying or moving large HD or UHD video files (or other similarly large ... MoreThis is a great little drive: It has a massive amount of storage at a very reasonable price (if you can catch it on sale), in a relatively small and attractive package, was plug and play and thoroughly easy to use even without installing the Western Digital software that came with the drive (I also did not have to format it out of the box, although on a Mac you will assuming you don't have an NTFS driver installed on your Mac). I gave it four stars because of one major problem I encountered. Please read on to learn more:PLEASE NOTE: The read and write speeds and temperature readings demonstrated below were not achieved with 'laboratory software'; these were real world values that someone copying or moving large HD or UHD video files (or other similarly large files) to the drive may experience.The write speeds on this drive are quite good. Not great, but quite good. The easystore 12TB WD hard drive bests its 16TB brother in the write category, on the same USB hub on a different port, by holding an average of 198-220 MBs Windows write performance while its 16TB brother only pulled around a Windows write average of 123 MBs under load (i.e., large file transfers of +10GB or bigger). And I may actually be able to squeeze a bit more performance out of it out of it by connecting it directly to my PC, but I haven't tried that yet as the performance is satisfactory for my needs. All-In-All, quite good for a mechanical hard drive.Read performance is stellar: Windows average of around 300 MBs to an internal SSD across the same USB 3.0 hub. Not much to bring up on the read side of things.The one star I knocked off was because of how hot this drive can get. And this drive can get HOT! Very hot. Particularly under load. Small file copies are not a problem... I saw no discernable temperature increase when copying small files, even large numbers of small files, but when larger files (i.e., +10 GB or greater) are being copied or moved, the temperature climbs rapidly. When I first started moving files to the drive from my internal SSD, the temp readings on the WD drive shot from a balmy 32c to a whopping 56c in about six minutes and continued to climb from there. It got so hot, in fact, that I was afraid the drive was going to cook itself before I could find a way to cool it down (ultimately I had to stop the file move until I found a way to cool the drive). The problem was easy enough solved: I placed it on top of a table fan next to its big brother. This forced copious amounts of air through the hard drive case and that brought the temperatures back into a much more normal range of 32c-35c. So if you are planning on getting this drive, get some form of active cooling with it if you're going to be putting it under heavy load (a fan to sit on top of or underneath it, something to force large amounts of air through the case to sink the heat away from the drive) because it will heat up very quickly to a point that hard drives should not heat up to.Curiously, I had the exact same heat issues with the WD 16TB easystore drive (actually the heating was a little faster and a little more extreme on the 16TB easystore) along with the speed issues I noted earlier. I'm not sure if the heating is a design flaw in the drives themselves, or just poor ventilation in the cases with no internal heat sinks. Either way, again, an active cooling apparatus is your best bet to keep this drive, and I suspect as other easystore Drives (certainly the 16TB which I've also personally work with), from overheating.All-In-All, even despite the heat issues, I'm very pleased with this drive. Again, large capacity, easy on the wallet (on sale), and hey it fits with the black decor of my rig. The only thing it's missing are a few RGB accents and it would be practically perfect. So, if you catch it while it's reduced, get it while the getting is good (with an active cooling solution, of course).

Great hardware, poor software

As usual with WD drives, the hardware is solid. I just hate the archaic lock software on PC. You have no easy way to toggle different computers to auto unlock without password. It's been YEARS and still doesn't work right. You have to remove the password and can only autounlock 1 computer, usually. It should be a simple toggle after typing in the password, and then possible ask for the password again or some second measure per computer. The software needs to be updated. I NEVER buy a WD drive without hardware encryption, but the software behind it lacks, always. WD, HIRE some good people to refresh this and make more options and make it user friendly.

I love it - It’s the fourth one I have.

It’s sexy on my desk. Reliable, I’ve never had an issue with anything from WD, and specifically this particular model. My desk and tech are all black, with the charcoal look of my Mac. And it all looks great. I have four of them, as I use one up I buy another to back up the essentials.Each time I buy one it’s larger storage and it’s great.They stopped supporting an app that came supported on the three I had before this one. It allowed you to change the password and customize how it unlocks when used on your Mac, so that sucks. But the drive itself is fantastic and reliable.Western Digital seems to never disappoint at least not yet.

It can GAME with it's 200MB/s transfer speed!

Pros:1. There is tremendous amount of space on this drive2. The transfer speed is amazing. Around 200MB/s which can even rival some earlier low end sata ssd with speed.3. It's very much possible to play games from it with a very nice reduction to the loading time.4. Very portableCons:1. power supply needed, so cannot be used without an outlet nearby. problem can be resolved with a usb c to 12v barrel connector (5.5x2.5mm) and a powerbank2. makes some noise, but that is actually good thing, as it implies that this is helium filled enterprise hard drive.overall this is wonderful value, compared to those so called gaming hard drives, because it provides the same performance with a fraction of their price.

Lots of Storage, duplicates data with each backup

Easy to plug in and operate. Has it's own ac power source, so no drain on computer. However, I didn't realize, that every time I did a back up, it duplicated data , rather than only saving new data. Bummer. The external HDD filled up faster than expected. Then, one day, in the middle of a back up, it just stopped working. I had a chat with a tech on the WD website who suggested a new USB cord. That didn't help. Then I tried The scan diagnostics software that came with the HDD. It failed the first scan which meant the HDD was garbage. I checked in disc management, and the entire HDD disc was full. After speaking with a tech at a computer store, he suggested this was most likely the reason the HDD failed. I plan on checking to be sure that the next external HDD I buy ... MoreEasy to plug in and operate. Has it's own ac power source, so no drain on computer. However, I didn't realize, that every time I did a back up, it duplicated data , rather than only saving new data. Bummer. The external HDD filled up faster than expected. Then, one day, in the middle of a back up, it just stopped working. I had a chat with a tech on the WD website who suggested a new USB cord. That didn't help. Then I tried The scan diagnostics software that came with the HDD. It failed the first scan which meant the HDD was garbage. I checked in disc management, and the entire HDD disc was full. After speaking with a tech at a computer store, he suggested this was most likely the reason the HDD failed. I plan on checking to be sure that the next external HDD I buy does not duplicate data every time I back up my computer!

They're fast, affordable, and reliable.

I have 4x 8TB WD EasyStores that I "shucked" and mounted in my Dell Precision T7910 workstation as a RAID 10 volume. Plus I have external 4TB, 5TB, 10TB, 14TB, and 16TB EasyStores. I've never had one fail. They're fast, affordable, and reliable.Speaking as a 40 year IT professional - you should always have disconnected backups both on-site and off-site. The more the better.There's something colloquially called "bit rot" where bits get flipped and it affects the integrity of a file, or files if it happens to the file system directory. There are several reasons why bits are flipped or dropped, but the earth is continuously bombarded by rays from the sun and elsewhere in the galaxy."Cosmic rays attract great interest practically, due to the damage they inflict on ... MoreI have 4x 8TB WD EasyStores that I "shucked" and mounted in my Dell Precision T7910 workstation as a RAID 10 volume. Plus I have external 4TB, 5TB, 10TB, 14TB, and 16TB EasyStores. I've never had one fail. They're fast, affordable, and reliable.Speaking as a 40 year IT professional - you should always have disconnected backups both on-site and off-site. The more the better.There's something colloquially called "bit rot" where bits get flipped and it affects the integrity of a file, or files if it happens to the file system directory. There are several reasons why bits are flipped or dropped, but the earth is continuously bombarded by rays from the sun and elsewhere in the galaxy."Cosmic rays attract great interest practically, due to the damage they inflict on microelectronics and life outside the protection of an atmosphere and magnetic field".So having more backups of critical files gives you the best possibility to have a good copy.

great for price & storage size

i bought the 18tb one. it works very well for the price.it does have some issues, but they're all mitigated by the relatively inexpensive price and huge storage size.the main issue is a 'clicking' noise that occurs every few seconds. at first i thought the unit was defective, but after some research it seems it's a normal noise for this hdd.this hdd transfers large files (ie raw video) decently fast for an hdd - averaging about 170-180MB/s.it still uses a usb3 port which is significantly less convenient than a usb-c port, but that does not affect performance at all.overall, for the price and storage size it is a great external hdd!