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

I previously bought a WD My Passport Ultra Metal Edition as a backup drive for my PS4. I had been using an old WD MyBook drive which was clunky and a bother to set up to get a backup and took a chance with the smaller drive. I loved it, so simple, so small, bus powered. It was perfect for my gaming system. When I decided to get a backup for my Mac I was shopping for the same My Passport but couldn't find it or couldn't find in the capacity needed. Browsing Best Buy I found this comparable one that seemed the same but differently named. I decided to try it. I have an internal drive in my Mac that does backups but I wanted something external with easy mobility. I've considered some time to have a secondary backup I keep off site in case of a catastrophe. For this purpose, and really any mobile use, this is a nice drive! I've had issues with WD drives in the past but both this and the MyPassport have done me well so far. Great capacity in a small package and I'm impressed with the speed (I cannot find any documentation on the actual speed of the drive inside). Using a Mac, I have to reformat the drive but it was simple, as always. It's also quiet, the click of the head maybe when it is ejected from the computer. So far, I don't have any negatives to point out. Two words: capacity, mobility. With laptops slimmed down these days with fast but limited SSD storage a drive like this is perfect if you want to take your entire music library with you, or videos on the go or, like me, want a easy way to backup any device you have and use.

First, the cost. I always watch for bargains on useful tech. I got this on sale as a Deal of the Day. Within three weeks it was again a Deal of the Day at a lower price, and Best Buy matched that price, making it an even better deal. However, this is a good deal, even if it is not on sale, if you need a lot of storage, in a compact portable enclosure, with good transfer speed, that is not hampered with an external power supply. We intend to use this for backups of our computers and for media storage. Movies, music, photos and mobile apps quickly filled the computer hard drives that we thought were going to meet all our needs. If the majority of your media is shared among family members, as ours is, one backup is called for, but a copy on every computer is a waste of drive space. USB 3 speed is almost a necessity now. We still have USB 2 drives and I still see them being sold, but transfer times are slow even for overnight backups. This is also great for Xbox One users. We got a 2 Tb USB 3 drive to expand our Xbox One storage, and it is about 50% full, twice the size of the 500 Gb standard Xbox One drive. A 4 Tb drive should hold all of your games, add-ons and game saves without any worries about ever running out of storage. With USB 3, we have had no degradation in gameplay. But, be mindful of the fact that once you format an external drive for Xbox One, it can only be used for Xbox One and can never be reformated for use with a pc. If plugged in to your pc, it will not even be recognized as a drive. If this drive was available when we expanded our Xbox One storage, we would have gotten two of these, one for backups and media storage and one for our Xbox One.

I purchased the 4TB model because my older 2TB WD My Passport is just about full. Rather than waiting until the last minute I decided to start transferring my data over now. I installed the drive on my Toshiba laptop and noticed the really cool app features. Including but not limited to the ability to transfer right from my WD Cloud device. I then connected my older WD external to the same laptop to start the transfer process. Before i could start transferring, I get a message stating there's a WD update i need to install. We've all seen this message before... No reason to be alarmed. Well... After allowing the update... My laptop states theres an error on the drive and needs to be fixed! So... I'm not panicking yet... I let it go through the motions and it then states it could not be fixed. So.. The drive seems to allow me access to it. I still see my files. So, I'm puzzled for a moment wondering what just happened. I reboot my laptop. Everything boots up just fine. Then I try to open one of the folders and NOTHING'S IN IT!! I open another folder and it appears to be fine. So I start opening folders to see whats affected. A few are empty. The rest appear to be fine. I know what you're thinking.. The same thing i thought VIRUS!! Well, I have Norton Security and its current on the virus definitions. So what else could it be!? Meanwhile, I get another pop up message telling me i need to run another scan to fix my drive. Again I allow the process, but now MORE FOLDERS ARE EMPTY. I try to do a Norton file recovery and it doesn't work!! The majority of my irreplaceable files are in limbo or worse.. Lost! So.. You know I'm SICK TO MY STOMACH RIGHT NOW!! Im not sure what happened. So i stopped to regroup and will contact WD for a possible solution. I wouldnt wish or recommend this on my worse enemy!! I'll come back to let you know what happened...

I knew I could trust WD from previous purchases used for backing up pc’s and also as a DVR for Dish Network. I was amazed at how simple the easystore is to use, and at the incredible price of $99.00 for 4 TB on the deal of the day from Best Buy, I recommend this drive to anyone looking to backup files from a Laptop or pc and for the photographer’s it’s a great drive to store pictures and videos. I had filled my laptop up with concert videos from my camera and GoPro and this little drive was the perfect one to purchase. When I first saw the size I was not so sure about it but the file transfer is fast and smooth with a great software package from Western Digital. I also like that it is powered through the USB cable and doesn’t need external power. I like it so much I am going to buy another one. Get one and you will be satisfied!

There are so many important documents, photos, etc., on my computer that the thought of losing them is very unsettling. Therefore, I back up my data on a regular basis. I've used many types of media for backups over the years, but things have become so much easier since external hard drives became available and affordable. I do temporary weekly and monthly backups (they are written over the next week or month) on external hard drives. I do semi-annual permanent backups on DVD. DVD's are a problem. Although I don't have a huge amount of data like some people do, I have accumulated enough that I'm now up to 8 DVD's for each backup, making it painful and time-consuming to do backups. Then, I have to store all of these DVD's. Now, I find that some of my oldest DVD's are going bad. Definitely time to change media. This 4T drive has solved my problem. I can keep many years worth of permanent backups on this drive and do away with the DVD's. It's simple to do a backup by simply dragging and dropping the folders I want to backup. Yes, I understand that hard drives can fail (been there, done that), so I do have a few archives in other places to protect my data. This is my 5th external hard drive, and they are all WD drives. I have never had a problem with any of them. Even though some of them are getting to be "long in the tooth", they still perform flawlessly. If you need a lot of storage space, I recommend this drive.

This is my review of WD - easystore® 4TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black. I was so pleased to get this during a daily deal sale. I use a WD 2TB and a Toshiba 1TB external portable hard drive and I love, love, love them both. I researched WD and was pleased with the high ratings on several independent sites...so I jumped on the chance to pick up this one. . I purchased it to keep on the shelf as a back-up to the back-up since no hard drive is going to last forever. But we've decided to use it now to back up video games, and I can still put it into service when my 6 year old WD eventually says "I'm done". The quick loading speed comes in very handy since I do frequent back-ups. I also recommend getting a good, sturdy zippered case to hold it if you are going to take it with you anywhere. I have 1 sturdy case and splurged on one waterproof sturdy case (Lacdo). Be aware where you 'put' them during uploads/downloads as these puppies do get very warm. So I wouldn't leave them zipped up inside the case with the cord sticking out for example (during data transfer, that is). The usb cord is very sturdy, too by the way.

Bottom line: 4TB of storage in a small form factor from a trusted manufacturer. Pros: attractive case, easy to use included software Cons: USB 3.0 transfer speed As a general rule of thumb, I always recommend buying the maximum amount of drive storage possible. You'll surely use it later, and you won't have to search multiple drives to find the files you want. Western Digital is a leading manufacturer of external hard drives, so if you're backing up important files buy a name you trust. WD's software is easy to use and the drive is formatted as NTFS out of the box. Mac users will need to reformat the drive, but it only can takes a minute or two. The casing on this drive is textured, which reduces the look of fingerprints and smudges. It shares the same form factor as WD's external portable drives and is about double the thickness of the 1TB WD drive I already own. The only downside is that, as hard drive storage increases, aging connection and transfer standards such as USB 3.0 start to feel slow. It took nearly two hours to copy 1.75GB of data from two other USB 3.0 external hard drives to this one. This isn't really a criticism of the drive, but if you have a newer computer you might look at USB-C drives as an alternative.

So far the hard drive has been working wonderfully. It is fast and integrated well with my new Macbook. I needed something to backup my computer using Time Machine. Time Machine would take up a lot of memory especially if you're backing up multiple times a month. Having the option to scroll back in time, I needed much more memory than my previous 1TB drive. Now onto my experience - there's two parts in my story and the best part comes first. When I unboxed the drive and plugged it into my machine it quickly recognized the disk and asked me to set it up for Time Machine. I clicked yes and it lead into an issue on reformatting. Now comes the second part where it gets a little ugly. I had to punch in a couple of commands in the terminal in order to force delete the information of the disk from my computer and forcibly reformat the disk to be optimized for my Mac. In the end, the drive works well and the only qualms is its compatibility with Mac's Time Machine. The box does not lie, it is compatible with the Mac - just a few steps to reformat the disk is necessary and some knowledge in the use of Mac's Terminal.