WD My Book 4TB External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 File Backup and Storage

Summary: Trusted brand with matured USB 3.0 technology gives us a solid drive that performs well. No negative surprises from opening the box to have it running in minutes. It feels good when you can buy something and it works as expected.

Review

It’s been a year since I last purchased backup devices. Two years ago I was on a shopping spree as I needed 3 backup drives for 3 different physical locations. As oppose to buying the same trusted brand, I bought 1 Verbatim, 1 Seagate and 1 Western Digital. All of them are 2TB. I am very disapponted to say that 2 of them are dead about 1 year ago (right after warranty expired too).

The last one standing was the one from Western Digital.

This time, I was working on a small project of my own to automate the backup process in semi-offline fashion. I did not even think of the other brands. I simply go out and grab the WB My Book 4TB drive.

Installation is simple. You just plug the device onto your computer and it is ready.

There are 2 things to remember though when you are working with these latest USB devices.

First, your computer’s specification matters. If it is an older computer with older USB controller, you will not get the speed specified on the box. I am not talking about very old computers. Just computers from 3 to 4 years ago cannot speak USB 3.0. They cannot do the top transfer speed. Thus if you need top hard disk speed to transfer large amount of data like me, you need a computer that is not that old. Something made 2011 and after should do fine.

Second, the damn USB cable matters. If you find that the USB 3.0 cable you have does not plug in tightly, you have a problem. I bought a longer USB 3 cable that is loose when plugged in. The speed dropped to below USB 2 specification. I ended up refunding the extra cable I bought and just use the one coming with the drive after rearranging my computer a bit to allow the drive to sit next to the computer.

One odd thing these new external USB drives do is that they auto power off themselves and depends on your computer OS to wake them up. It is the reason why I like to use them for scheduled backup. They are essentially turned off thus the actual hard disk inside is not spinning if it is not in use by the computer. That protects the data you have on the drive in the situation like power outage.

I am very satisfied with the drive. I recommend this drive for all backup purposes.

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