My Book drives are designed to look like a . I have WD 4TB its also stopped suddenly, I have full important data on it. Speed ? I will copy my multimedia files in it some of them are 60Gb movies with the intention of streaming them with Plex and Infuse, and see my movies on a Smart Tv with Apple TV 4K. Most of us need a large repository for our data files, including the tens of thousands or millions of pictures we've taken over the years, music files, and those downloaded movies we've been meaning to watch. Learn more about our affiliate and product review process, How to Back Up Files From My DirecTV HD DVR, How to Connect to the iPhone With a Mac USB. The 8TB version costs just 132.96 ($144.99) on Amazon, making it cheaper than the Western Digital offering in the UK by around 30, and even $5 less than in the US. The download library for each product includes all available software, firmware, drivers, and utilities for the device. Equipped with password protection and perfectly paired with backup software1, My Book desktop storage helps keep your files safe. That said, youre trading the flexibility of a portable hard drive for those upsides, which may be a deal breaker for you. The My Book($159.99 at Amazon) (Opens in a new window) shares its vertical orientation with older WD drives like the 2012 iteration of the My Book Duo (Opens in a new window), though its scalloped . Privacy Statement "Invalid Password" Message or Password Forgotten, Troubleshooting & Tips for Your External Hard Drive or Portable SSD, How to Backup, Copy or Move Data Between Drives on a Windows or macOS Computer, How to Install and Use WD Security and WD Drive Utilities Features, Instructions to Format a Drive for Use with Windows or macOS, Stay up-to-date with software offered by WD and WDpartners. {{productReferenceObj.minPricedSkuObj.prices.list.amountFormatted}} Get a Toshiba. 'Items'}}), {{productReferenceObj.minPricedSkuObj.prices.list.amountFormatted}}, {{productReferenceObj.minPricedSkuObj.prices.sale.amountFormatted}}, / The following products are Refurbished and given a Grade based on Physical Condition (Unless otherwise stated in product description). You dont have to run the installer if youre on Windows the drivers are preloaded but we recommend doing so if youre interested in Western Digitals utilities. Grade "B" - Fully functional, slight cosmetics scratches. Visit our corporate site. Not enough items available. You will find several positive reviews by desertcart customers on portals like Trustpilot, etc. Stay organized, connected, and productive at / Password protection with hardware encryption. Once static charged by the removal of the protection, dust is attracted to the My Book like wasps to a family picnic. Trusted desktop storage designed to complement your personal style with a massive amount of space to store your photos, videos, music, and documents. That said, for quickly reading data off of or taking movies on the go, there are much better options. Formatted HFS+ J to work out of the box with Mac OS X. This offer may not be combined with other offers and is subject to change. Our extended error checking, in which we ran the chkdsk utility on Windows and scanned the drive for errors, took just under 24 hours. In this Western Digital My Book review, were going to see if its among the best external hard drives or if you should go with another option. Mark is an expert on 3D printers, drones and phones. That said, the designers love of shiny black plastic that comes with clear plastic to be peeled off isnt without its issues. You can set a password for your drive, but that password is tied to your device. NY 10036. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. Let us know if you liked the post. Your form has been submitted successfully! Having a single drive storing potentially important data is always something of a gamble since physical mechanisms can, and do, go wrong. {{promotion.info.offerTextCtaLabel}}, {{item.prices.sale.amountFormatted}} / My Book is a series of external hard drives produced by Western Digital. Theres also an option to import data from a cloud backup. I know these drives can fail eventually so I came to read your review on the latest MyBook drives to determine if its as good as what Ive been using for the past seven years. There are nine series of My Book drives including the Essential Edition, Home Edition, Office Edition, Pro Edition, and World Edition. His background includes managing mobile, desktop and network infrastructure on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Western Digital products use drivers that are provided by the Windows and macOS operating systems. Time Machine vs Arq vs Duplicati vs Cloudberry Backup. The options are seemingly endless, which should be seen across external drives, especially when they get as large as the My Book drives do. No monthly storage fees. How do I fix the loose USB connection port? As outlined in the multilingual user manual in the box, the warranty covers defects relating to functionality or craftsmanship under normal use cases. There are currently nine series of My Book drives; Essential Edition, Home Edition, Office Edition, Mirror Edition, Studio Edition, Premium Edition, Elite Edition, Pro Edition, AV Dvr "Live Edition", and the World Edition . Click on the My Book icon underneath the "Devices" list on the left side of the Finder window. For the details, read our Western Digital My Book review. But many games take up much less space (between 500MB and 10GB), so you will likely be able to install many more. {{promotion.info.offerText}} By default, the My Book comes pre-formatted in exFAT enabling modern PC and Mac computers to read the contents directly, and on the drive is the WD Discovery suite for both platforms ready to install. He is responsible for overseeing PC Labs testing, as well as formulating new test methodologies for the PC Hardware team. If data recovery is needed, please contact one of our Data Recovery Partners. And, wed only recommend that action if the drive were outside warranty, and you suspected that the USB board or PSU had died, and not the physical drive. . Oops! Learn more and pick whether an SSD or hard drive is right for you. I use it primarily as a storage and daily back up drive. This capacity is made for the heavy downloader as well as the gamer who wants to put an external drive on their Xbox One($200.00 at eBay)(Opens in a new window), or later this year, their Sony PS4($799.95 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window). {{promotion.info.offerTextCtaLabel}}, {{item.prices.sale.amountFormatted}} / {{item.prices.sale.billingPlanName}} *, {{promotion.info.offerText}} Along with his team, Joel won the ASBPE Northeast Region Gold award of Excellence for Technical Articles in 2005. PCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. The My Book was available with between 80 GB and 1 TB of data storage. Open the "Start" menu and click on the "My Computer" icon. If the computer this is attached only has conventional hard drives, then this wont be an issue. Rather, the functionality is there to protect from others stealing your drive and trying to access data on a different machine. Compared to the Toshiba Canvio Basics and Seagate Portable hard drives, a My Book has more tools but isnt as easy to transport, especially considering it needs a dedicated power source (read our Toshiba Canvio Basics review and Seagate Portable review). Theyre mostly designed to be directly connected to a host PC or Mac, providing a place to offline files that are no longer required on the system, or to backup those that are on it. The primary opposition to the My Book is the Seagate Desktop 8 TB External Hard Drive (STGY8000400), a practically identical concept from another seasoned hard drive maker. Boost system performance, data redundancy, or both with RAID. For additional assistance with driver issues please refer to Answer ID 13977: How to Install WD Drivers for Windows and macOS for External Drives. My Book hard drives originally included vent holes at the top of the device that spelled out messages in Morse code. Graded Refurbished Products come with warranty stated in product description.Sold in perfect working order & have passed a thorough testing process. Most models feature a single 3.5 hard drive mounted in an enclosure that is not made to be user-accessible, although some of the dual drive models have allowed for drive replacements. While this My Book does come pre-formatted for Mac OS, it can be used with Windows via a simple drive reformat. Newer WD SES Drivers are not available for manual download from Western Digital and are only available through Windows and macOS updates. My Book drives are the star of Western Digitals lineup, and it shows. Password protection can be . Hardware encryption and password protection are separate, independent features. Only phone support is available outside of the warranty request form and there are set working hours. This feature is built into the device and is not user configurable. When Western Digital stopped trying to make the My Book series look like actual books, it heralded a vast improvement in aesthetics. With some of the larger console game downloads now approaching 40GB, an 8TB drive should be able to handle at least 200 games before filling up. On the support page, you can find numerous tools for troubleshooting your drive, including a version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (read our Acronis True Cyber Protect Home Office). It's quicker than the equivalent Seagate external drives, but neither is quick. But curiously, another choice comes from another line at Western Digital, the Elements Desktop Drive. Enter your account email address to receive an email to validate your account. Need drivers, software or firmware? We ran several synthetic tests on the My Book 8TB connected to a USB 3.0 port (USB 3.2 Gen 1), and they all pointed towards a plateau at around 190MB/s for reading and 180MB/s for writes. This hard drive is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 at speeds up to 480 Mb/s and comes pre-formatted as HFS+ Journaled for Mac OS X El Capitan and Yosemite. Theyve been around a while, in many iterations, and its easy to see why. Connect the My Book external hard drive to your PC computer using a USB cable. Western Digital reserves the right to change or discontinue this offer at any time without notice. He started writing in 1986 and has contributed to MicroMart, PC Format, 3D World, among others. Heres how it works. As is the case with all Western Digital drives, you arent hung out to dry if something goes awry. All rights reserved. Its priced slightly lower, has less attractive styling, and doesnt come with the software that the My Book line includes. Theyre fast, packed with features and come with a generous warranty, to boot. The My Book needs that feature adding, bundled with it, and not as a paid extra. It even detected a 64GB SD card we had plugged in through an adapter. Despite the modest price tag, the My Book range of external hard drives is impressive. Maximum of 1 coupon code per customer. The My Book external hard drives have varying capacities, depending on the edition and model. Setting up the drive is remarkably simple; its a matter of attaching the provided power pack and the USB cable to the computer. The space on Red drives is also much larger compared to Western Digital Blue and Western Digital Black drives, which top out much sooner than the network-attached storage counterparts. Enter your email and click Reset Password to continue. Joel is proof that you can escape the retail grind: he wore a yellow polo shirt early in his tech career. That said, youre trading form factor for functionality. WD 12TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0, External HDD with Password Protection and Auto Backup Software - WDBBGB0120HBK-NESN . Along the way Joel earned a BA in English Literature and an MBA in Information Technology from Rutgers University. View setup instructions. The warranty starts from the purchase date on your receipt and the stipulations are clear. Espaol | Franais | Italiano | Deutsch | | Portugus | | | | . Step 3 This unit is meant for desktop use, and therefore it was supplied with a good length USB cable that should reach from the desk to a floor-mounted computer easily. Its meant to live on your desktop, unlike the LaCie Rugged Mini, which can handle the most terrible of beatings (read our LaCie Rugged Mini review). Thats the only way we can improve. It's more versatile than the Innov8, the only other mainstream 8TB drive we've tested. My Books allow you to get a lot of storage for little money, outfitted with archival drives and a sleek exterior. WD does not sell replacement or empty enclosures for the models listed in this article. The My Book($159.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) shares its vertical orientation with older WD drives like the 2012 iteration of the My Book Duo( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window), though its scalloped black polycarbonate sides are more like those on the recently redesigned My Passport($194.95 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) drives. A line of external hard drives by Western Digital, styled after hardbound books. The self-help resources are so good, though, thats its easy to overlook the shortcomings in direct support. Products may go out of stock and delivery estimates may change at any time. And, in the UK the best value per TB is the 6TB and 14TB models, where stateside the 8TB and 14TB hold those honours. Error checking comes next, and for that, we started with CrystalDiskInfo. As part of a 3-2-1 backup solution, theyre great. 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Though the tool isnt made for error checking, its a good way for us to see if there are major problems, such as overheating, before doing our extended error check. Comes with Warranty stated in product description. It uses the universally accepted USB 3.0 Type-A connection, most owners will be operationally within minutes of unpacking the device, and ready to use the very ample storage capacity inside. If you want to secure a system very quickly, the My Book probably isnt the hardware that you need. Never buy WD backup again backed up everything here for last few years photos, docs, all sorts. Free standard shipping applies to purchases delivered within Canada. Your subscription has been confirmed. Is that normal? Something went wrong.