WD - My Book 6TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black

Work great on Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit and detect 5.45 TB capacity from 6 TB. I use program to check all surface test said no bad sectors found. That is great news! I don't need WD software for protection, that is for someone who had children like to mess up files. I'm very happy with 6 TB hard drive and it's really big capacity space should be great for tons of games, movies, videos, pictures, and other important files backup. I would buy again when it get on sale again. Western Digital (WD) is best ever in the world that is what I own every WD hard drives are still stronger and never fail on me so far. WD company is doing great! I'm heard this 6 TB will work fine with Xbox One and PS4. Come in ExFAT format type will work with Xbox One and PS4.

Prefer to also maintain copies of my data backups at home, physically. Bought the new generation WD My Book with 6TB, as I plan ahead for future capacity. Using best practices in cyber-hygiene, my backup drives are never connected to the internet during the backup process, or when accessing files. There is no power down switches or buttons on this drive (also no LEDs to indicate whether it's even on). This is a huge downside to this desktop solution; I read that previous iterations of My Book had power switches. Instead, what has to occur EVERY time I want to connect or disconnect this drive for my use case — I have to completely shut down my CPU, and physically plug both the USB and power cables into the back of the device. Then I turn on the CPU, do what I need to do — then shut down the computer AGAIN — AND AGAIN unplug the USB and power cables from the back. The software that comes with the device only allows you to set an amount of time before it goes to sleep, and, for Windows 10, since it recognizes the devices as a HDD (different from how it identifies the portable WD version; My Passport), you cannot disconnect the device; like you would for an SD card or USB drive. Horrid decision by the engineers to eliminate the power button; makes me wish I bought the previous version of My Book when it was still available in stores. Therefore, rated only at three (3) stars.

Western Digital is my go to for hard drives. I have had more problems over the last 3-4 years with other brands of drives. So far only Western Digital drive lost was my fault I dropped a bare drive and manage to mess up the connector. This unit is reliable and is being used as a storage device plugged in only occasionally to store backups of important files. It is plugged in to an already running PC and always starts up, periodically run disk check on it so far no bad sectors. SW indicates it runs cool has never hit the red zone even during large data transfers. No fan so it runs quiet. Would also be a great drive for more active use as well.

My experience with these books (all sizes) is to watch carefully the warranty period. I suggest you seriously consider replacing them about a 1-3 yrs out of warranty as they tend to start having glitches. Mind you some of mine are 6-7 yrs old and running fine but for serious backups of important data, buy a new one and transfer. These are great for mass storage of videos collections and they tend to be reliable for retrieval. Mine are powered up all the time but not necessarily running. I depend on these more than other brands for sure. All my slams were just precautionary advice for serious data.

I needed a larger drive for a big project and the reviews on this WD 6TB were good so it became one of three top choices. As luck would have it Best Buy chose to put this one on a really good sale just before I made up my mind. I wasn't expecting it to be as quiet and quick as it has been especially when compared to a two year old 4TB Seagate I had been using. No loud clicking & no seeming hesitation at large file drops like I had become accustomed to. So far this has been a really great drive.

I'll just echo the usual comments about both WD and Seagate. Their drives are okay. I bought this for the warranty, but I am frankly tiring of poorly engineered USB drives that don't last. I don't do anything that stresses them out; they are primarily for archiving media files and running backups. WD's software is atrocious. You get prompted to do firmware updates but you have to disconnect every single external device for the software to be able to find the drive that actually needs the update. SERIOUSLY! This is 2017. What kind of lazy, cruddy coding is that. If the drive lasts, I guess I'd recommend it, but who knows at this point. At least they have a decent warranty, but that's no good if your data is gone.

Unlike the seagate version, which uses an archive type drive, this one houses a WD blue, which is a desktop level drive with decent performance. Overall, write speeds on this one are more consistent than what you can get on the seagate 8tb drive, and average access time is also quicker. Overall, this is a much better although drive, especially when you are using it to access data frequently, and not just to offload some backups you likely won't access very often.

I bought this for the soul purpose of using it as an external HD for my Playstation 4 console and I couldn't be happier. The set up process was extremely fast and easy, it's durable, and it has a nice sleek design that looks good sitting next to my console on my entertainment stand. The only thing to keep in mind is that once it's set up for your PS4, you can't also use it for your PC at the same time. The HD is formatted to work for one or the other, so if you format it for your PS4, you'll have to reformat it for the PC if you want to use it there, and every time you reformat it; all data stored on it is wiped.