WD 4TB My Book external hard drive, Desktop HDD with Password Protection, USB 3.0, SuperSpeed USB, software for device management, backup, hardware encryption, Black

Easy install and format on my iMac as a backup drive. To me its silent as I can barely hear it. Copied all by files, movies and photos to their own folders. Created a750mb partition for Time Machine to limit it's size. Scheduled Time Machine via Time Machine App and the rest via Carbon Copy Clone for weekly updates. everythings works fine with no problems.One thing to note and I've had this before on WD and Mac is that some operations like formatting or setting up a partition can take 2-3 attempts after failures but then goes like a train. So dont think the first failure is a problem.It's not and it will workUpdate: Box failed twice in a week after a RAID 1 error with 2nd drive offline. Rebuilt once which took 18 hours and it was OK for a week then happened again. Box replaced by Amazon so will keep an eye on it

Having read dozens of reviews of these WD MyBook Duo drives, the conclusion I had come to was that they are very loud, but otherwise ok. I found a 'used' one on the Amazon Warehouse at a vastly reduced price, so I was happy to give it a go for myself. I was chiefly interested in using it in RAID 1 (mirrored mode) as an expansion for my QNAP T451 NAS although I decided to also try it directly connected via USB to my Macbook.Dealing with the 'noise' issue first, I'm not sure if I've been exceptionally lucky, but other that when it first switches on (you get a brief flurry from the fan, just to prove it works) it is basically silent (other than a little bit of clicking of the HDD heads getting in the right position). There's no audible fan noise and it seems to run pretty cool. I wasn't worried about noise as it was going to live in a cupboard with my NAS, but I'm glad it's very quiet in case plans change and it moves out of it's under-stairs home. When testing via USB, it was tucked away on a bookshelf behind the sofa with a long USB3 lead and noise was not an issue.Speed is very good plugged into my Macbook. As you can see from my screenshot, in RAID 1 (mirror) mode it achieves ~100MB/s Write and ~135MB/s Read over USB 3.When plugged into my macbook, it takes a little while to be recognised, but once it is, it responds quickly and seems very solid. It comes up formatted as a single drive using the capacity of both drives with data striped across them both (RAID 0). This is a terrifying proposition (to me at least) as if one of the drives fails, you lose all the data on both. Luckily you have the opportunity to install an app (Windows or Mac, download from the WD website) that can change the formatting of the drive. You thereby have 2 alternatives:RAID 1 - only gives you half the capacity but if a drive fails, all of the data is safely on the other driveJBOD - which treats each disk like a separate drive, so if one fails, you only lose the data on that drive - data on the other is safe.The big advantage of how it comes set up is you get one nice big drive, and it works faster than either of the other 2 options. Fine for a backup as it's unlikely both your main disk and the backup would go at the same time. Whether it's worth the risk as a storage drive is up to you...The drives inside are WD Reds, which are designed for NAS use, and regarded as some of the more reliable drives you can buy, so you should get many many hours of use without any issues.One annoying thing on the Mac is that when you wake your Mac from sleep with the drive plugged in, the WD software will frequently alert you that there is a RAID error. There is no error, it's a false alarm. The best way to deal with this is to simply uninstall the WD software after you've configured the drive to your requirements. It has very few functions, aside from changing RAID modes and giving annoying alerts! You can always reinstall should you need to change the RAID mode (which will also wipe out all of your data).

I bought this drive as the previous WD drive I use for system/data backups threw a wobbly after a power cut. Straight out of the box I connected it up and fired up the iMac backup software. After choosing this drive as the backup target the system formatted it and I ran the first backup. My backups come out at just under 2gb so this 4gb drive will have ample space for the process. It just sits thee doing it’s thing until I need to recover a file. These drives are reliable and last for a good time the last one for five years until a rogue heater dropped out our RCD and caused an issue with it. I am able to read from it so will still have nearly six months of previous backups to hand if needs be. I would recommend this drive especially at its current price point.

Purchased on 17th June 2019 for £87.49.I’ve been waiting for the right moment to add some storage to my PC so when this 6TB hard drive went on offer I went for it.I already have a 5TB Western Digital Elements external hard drive but it’s been really low on space for quite a while so it was time to get another one.The hard drive arrived well packaged with plenty of protection. It came complete with a UK power adapter and USB 3.0 cable.I love the look of this hard drive, the mixture of glossy and matte panels works really well and the rectangular design with the ridges looks very stylish. I actually prefer this design to the rounded design of my Elements hard drive.I literally plugged it in and it was good to go, it already had the latest firmware and was pre-formatted so I could see it on my PC.I ran the CrystalDiskMark v6 hard drive benchmark utility and as you can see from my pictures it scores an impressive sequential read/write score of over 190MB/s which is pretty impressive for a mechanical hard drive.The usable space on my Windows PC shows up as 5.45TB which is down to the conversion of the units and is perfectly normal and the same for all hard drives.Overall, this was a great buy at a great price and I would throughly recommend it if your looking to add some additional space to your PC.

Excellent.Fast file transfer. Delighted with the purchase and very prompt delivery

Hi I am an avid collector of tv series , films and especially documentaries, well my collection has grown to over 50tb using 3, & 6TB back up hard drives so now I wanted to use larger drives to cut down the number of units attached to my computer ( at 1 stage I had 12 attached at once) also to give me extra storage and to enable me to achieve back up of my collection. Well I bought the 10tb drive which arrived very quickly and well packaged ( the 10tb drive only gives about 9.25tb storage ) once I formatted the drive it worked perfectly 1st time and on that drive alone I managed to store all my documentaries' with room to spare . I will buy more drives in the future after I saved some money , I am a pensioner and this drive is not cheap but well worth it's value. thank you very much.