WD - easystore 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black

I have a few of these and they all work very well for my purposes. I have one as a backup drive for Windows 10 File History and the others I use to archive video from my security camera system. Very quiet and they just work. You also have the option to turn off the LED light on the front of the enclosure (some people find the light annoying, so being able to turn it off might be a plus).

If anyone is thinking about buying these to shuck, I got one in the mail yesterday! They're still putting Red NAS drives in these. Hecuva deal for a Red NAS drive!

I needed additional storage for my OTA TV recordings. I added 4-GB of external storage to my PC to free up space on my DVR. Best Buy had a great price and in stock. Pick up at the store. The WD external drive with its USB-3 port is fast and reliable. Awesome and seamless video streaming in HD. I trust Western Digital.

These are Western Digital Reds with a normal SATA connector when taken apart. The USB "proprietary" connector the other reviewer is talking about is *NOT* this drive (he / she is referring to the 2.5 inch portable drive with the same name). I bought a total of 5 (three from one store, and two from another - due to best buy's non-business purchase limitations) and they all turned out to be Western Digital Reds. The bare drive does show it has a 2 year warranty, but it's description is "WD easystore Desktop" with a model number of "WDBCKA0040HBK" when you do a warranty check on the WD website. All of mine are model: WD40EFRX & have NASware 3.0, with a mfg. date of March 2nd, 2017.

If this device is plugged up directly to your home internet router you can access the storage device wirelessly. I recommend encrypting the storage device tho at some point preferably before you connect it to your router unless you are okay with people connected to your home network being able to see the drives contents. If not, you can partition the drive, and set encryption on each partition that will be password protected. This way each person can have a private "locker" for files and stuff on one drive. Im using this with a Nighthawk x6 AC3000 Router that has USB 3.0 and readySHARE features.

I have seen similar drives like this on Amazon but in this case, the WD - easystore® 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black is exclusive to Best Buy. I ordered it online and got free shipping. I have the drive formatted to ExFat so it's easily compatible with both Windows 10 (and previous Windows releases) and MacOS. Another advantage of ExFat is that I can store individual files larger than 4GB. I have movies, photos, and miscellaneous files that amount to roughly 3 Terabytes saved on this one drive. That's right Terabytes, not Gigabytes. Honestly, it might have been better to buy a NAS (Network Attached Storage) instead of this in my case for the amount of data that I store and have backed up. Oh well, I still have a thousand Gigabytes left free. With USB 3.0, the file transfer is fast and I can even play video files directly from the external drive. One gripe I have is that this thing needs external power to run through a wall outlet, so it's not good for travelling like using it when on a plane ride. I highly recommend this for people that need fast and large storage drives and stationary setups where having an extra power outlet is not an issue.

I've used this hard drive for a few weeks now and I'm quite happy with it. I use it to move around large files from my Mac to my Windows machine and vice versa. I also use it storage for old photos and videos. It reads fast and was an excellent price for the amount of memory. I will say that it had some sort of installer software on it -- completely unnecessary. Just format the drive as needed.

This external USB hard drive is a great deal of storage for the money. It's pretty much plug-n-play, but if you install the WD software, it'll keep everything backed up & running smoothy for you, so I highly recommend to do that. It's extremely quiet, in fact, i don't hear it at all. The previous external USB HD I had, got power via the USB port, but this one has it's own power cord. I don't mind this at all, but I thought it'd be important to note for those interested.