WD 8TB My Cloud EX4100 Expert Series 4-Bay Network Attached Storage - NAS - WDBWZE0080KBK-NESN

This is the first network attached storage device in our small office environment. It is taking me a while to learn how best to use it. The most important trick is to download SmartWare from the Western Digital website and install that software on all the attached computers. I'm now using this to automatically back up three different Windows-10 based desktop machines and to create a central shared file storage area for files everyone needs access to. I'm struggled a bit with the learning curve, but that is because this is all new to me.I installed this right next to the office router and we are getting great performance.

VERY disgusted with WD whom I always liked as a manufacturer. I have a couple of EX4100 boxes that are stuffed with exclusively WD drives, so as I said, I was a WD advocate. Suddenly oneof the boxes said the fan is not working and in about an hour it shuts down due to overheating. So I decide that I'll just call WD and order a replacement since the fan itself is made under agreement that it cannot be sold other than to WD.I open a WD ticket asking how to order this, and I am informed by them that WD has no interest in repair outside of warranty. either by themselves or assisting the customer fix their own! WHAT?!?! They said "WD drives are manufactured using non-serviceable parts inside. Hence the drives are not serviced." Just to be clear, the translation of this is "Our products are not worth repairing - so we won't waste time on them." WHY in the world would I want to buy hardware that the manufacturer makes efforts to stop me from repairing outside of warranty? THIS IS CRAZY TALK. I thought all the complaining people on the forums were just whackos but this event showed me that they are correct...WD makes great drives....but absolutely TERRIBLE NAS boxes. So bad in fact that they themselves not only refuse to repair (irritating but understandable) but they actually make contractual efforts to stop their own customers from protecting WD products. Completely unacceptable. Everyone knows WD is the bottom of the industry in customer support but this indicates the NAS boxes are also the bottom of the world in product quality.

Two issues people need to know about this product - neither are so significant that I wouldn't purchase the product. However, people need to know. You can only "map" a drive if the PC and the NAS are on the same network - you can't "map" a drive across the internet - so you can't use the data transparently - you need to download/upload files if the PC you are working on is not on the same network. Second, WD has a known issue with this product that if drive bays 3 & 4 are empty you will receive very concerning error messages "Event title:Drive Failed" - this can stop your heart! If you go to their web page and look for this you can find information that you are to just ignore it if you don't have drives in bays 3 & 4. However, this is a signifiant concern as I may miss a bay 1 or 2 failure because I see this message all the time and don't realize it's a bay 1 & 2 not 3 & 4. WD is way to big to not solve this issue. It's not a cheap product. They need to iron out the bugs in their software.

Warning!This will come configured with 2x 4TB drives. This means you can not run Raid 5. I specifically chose a 4 disc enclosure expecting to get 4x 2TB drives so I could run Raid 5.I settled for ordering 2 additional 4TB drives and Amazon made up the difference in price between the 8TB and 16TB and waived shipping.I would have preferred not to have to spend the extra $300 on "extra" storage. I suppose i just have to shoot more HD Video now.

Easy setup worked as expected. I purchased a additional 4g HD turning the unit into 12g then configured it with raid5 leaving me with 8g NAS. The media server app Twonky works fine with my Amazon Fire TV. I tried Plex but could not get it to work well. The WD backup software works fine I have 5 devices performing backups.

Well easy setup, that is if you have any drives installed, ordered an 8GB system and it was diskless, should of had 4 -2TB drives. However Amazon as good as they are shipped another ASAP, it was configured with 2-4TB drives which is OK except it limits me to RAID0,1. I was expecting 4-2TB drives in an 8TB configuration to support RAID5,10 which is much more reliable than JBOD, RAID0,1.What does that mean? I will have to spend the extra almost $300 for WD Red 4TB drives for RAID5,10 but well worth the expenditure if you value your data.Very nice interface with dual supply inputs, aggregated 1G ports and USB3.0 x3. For the home User DLNA and Cloud support is nice also multiple user account for remote synch or local synch via USB of mobile phone pics, movies and docs into their own private directories.Migrating from a Seagate GOFlex 2TB setup which served its purpose but is also super limited to backup/restore and DLNA ops.If your on the fence on what to get I would move up into the EX4100 series as it is expandable to 32TB if I remember correct, recommendation spend the extra cash and get something usable in todays home computing and mobile/tablet market. BUY!!!

I love this server. The WD App lets me access any file or picture on my phone. Super quiet I do not even hear it unless the 5 second fan burst on start up. Got it to replace my HP Windows Home Media Server and so happy with it. Run RAID 5 and added a WD My Book as a safety back up.

After updating to OS 5, it has become useless. It freezes and gets back to work only with unplugging the power cable and plugging it back and it works only for a few hours then goes frozen again.I have talked to tech support and they pretended like they have never had such issue and sent me some instruction which did not work at all. Then I searched internet and found out that this is an old issue going for years even for older OS and it depends how lucky you are to face this issue or not!So do not waste your money on this!