Statistics and limitations * Speed of transfer of a Movie over a router (10/100, non gigabit router) is 4-8MBps * Speed of transfer of a Movie when directly connected to laptop with a Ethernet cable (gigabit connection link) is 29-35 MBps * The NAS get hot as there is no Fan cooling mechanism for the 800MHZ cpu and the HDD on it. It needs to be shutdown and turned off for about an hour or so .. if I transferred anywhere over 100Gb of Data . * There is Twonky Media server (v5.0) which can server streaming media,( useful for TV/ ipad/ tablets or phones on home network ) but it will not support anything apart from mov, mp4 video formats * It takes a Dynamic IP address. so it may or may not change once rebooted over local network * may not be able to do bit torrent stuff * not sure if it is a good candidate for frequent data backups as the disk is non serviceable, and slow rate of transfer over LAN Good things =============== * Easy straight forward NAS setup * once data is transferred. it is comfortable to stream to laptop/ devices or TV on home network without carrying hard disks or thumb drives * Good for non tech savvy home users with light media consumption requirement * Small power consumption when compared to a full fledged laptop or desktop PC or a xbox/ps3 * cost of drive is about 1500 to 2000 more than a regular USB 2 drive (which is not that large) Other costs ============= * May also need to upgrade home routers to gigabit Ethernet and faster WIFI transfer routers ( not cheap)

I have been researching for a while for my home storage across multiple devices, with a good capacity and a reasonable price. Finally I zeroed in on WD NAS 3TB. Initial experience after a few days - I am satisfied with my decision "reasonably". First it's compact, easy to setup and works well as a storage space. I am able to share my music, video, photos across all my devices (primarily Windows and Android). The Android app also works fine. I did a review of the backup software provided by WD. All my review led me to the decision that it's prudent to avoid using that. Yes, it gives you realtime backup, 25 generations - well then that's not really the need I have. It has limitation on what it can backup et al (as per the review) and is always active because of real-time. Hence I dropped that as the backup software. I have Windows 7 Home Premium as my OS (on my machines). When I tried to use Windows Backup - it would not recognize the storage. My storage was setup on a wireless home network (it's presence was recognized by my machine - but backup would simply not work. The next 12 hours was a wild goose chase of research on the web, before I finally found that backup would not work on wireless network with Windows 7 Premium. (I was not amused). Finally I found out that I had to connect my desktop in a wired manner. Then I had to go thru the process of creating a virtual hard drive (a process where I learnt a lot more but definitely not one I had bargained for when I bought it). First VHD was small and the backup stopped due to lack of space. Then I learnt how to use VHD Sizer and increase the space, initialize the space and continued the backup. I finally succeeded in having a full Windows backup (including system image). Since then I have discovered a freeware backup software Macirium Reflect (yet to use it). As I see the reviews it should be able to do the backup over the network... So what I would say - good device so far from a storage perspective. Be ready to go thru a journey to do a full backup (I had never done it in the past - as it was in the order of 100 GB). Seems to work well with my Android smartphone. More as I use it over the next several weeks. If any of you have found a better solution for backup I would love to know that. I would have rated 5 Star - if the backup was not a journey.

I bought this hard drive in July 2013 and am writing this review in October 2014. Right away, I created a properly aligned partition on it and formatted it to the ext4 file system, for use with linux. I remember that I had noticed that the transfer speeds were much faster than my old USB 2.0 drive, and the USB 3.0 is definitely worth it. Fast forward fifteen months, and the drive is almost full now, with 19 GB of free space remaining right now. In this almost full state, I ran a few benchmarks, the results are as follows. ==================== Sequential write of multiple GBs using f3write: Average speed was around 50MB/s (400mbps). Sequential read using f3read: Average read speed was around 75MB/s (600mbps) ==================== Random read and write of 100 samples of 10 MiB each: Average read rate (100 samples): 110 MB/s (880mbps) Average write rate (100 samples): 140 MB/s (1120mbps) Average access time (1000 samples): 19.72 msec. ==================== I am pretty happy with the hard drive. It has survived several power cuts while connected to a laptop, has seen temperatures in excess of 45 degrees C, and still is running fine. (Fingers crossed, knocks on wood) BUY IT.

I'm quickly running out of space though I'm continuously purchasing HDs. But after receiving this 4TB, I felt so relieved as if I'm having an infinite drive. In the description, it shows that it has only 2 years limited warranty. But actually, they are giving 3 years of warranty. Hope Flipkart will update it and won't confuse customers who might give this product a second preference just because of that limited warranty(as I myself checked it in other websites, where it was metioned correctly). If it only had 2 years warranty, I would've preferred Seagate as it comes with 3 years. I'm my opinion, the warranty period shows the confidence of a maker on their products based on several tests which they do before releasing. My 4TB drive is 60% full and the reading time is almost negligible. I'm also using it as a Time Machine backup with a seperate partition. I don't find any issues with two different partitions(Mac Extended Journal for Time Machine and NTFS for Windows). I never ever had any problem with my Hard Discs(5 Seagates and 2 WD, both internal and external) and few of them are almost 9 years old and still working like a charm. I guess I'm just a lucky guy. I'm really satisfied with WD as the time taken to suspend the disk, when there is no read/write process and resuming it is lesser than that of Seagate's HDDs. I hope that this will be my last external HD as I'm planning to move my entire backups into Bitcasa Infinite Drive as soon as they release a stable version. Though the broadband speed in India is still in the dark ages, cloud storage reduces the burden of having duplicates on two different HDDs.

Pros: -Plug and play storage, that is easy to use. -Includes Security and Backup software with optional hardware encryption. -Contains a 3.5" high performance desktop drive, faster than 2.5" portable drives. -Promises greater speed on USB 3.0 (Tested 60MB/s~100MB/s). -MBR/GPT Basic disk system tested. Cons: -Requires 12V external power. -Dynamic Disk system is not supported. Best Use: -High performance stand-alone backup. -Personal Files (Optional password and hardware-encryption ensures better security) -Portable but operate when stationary, and with external power. Overall: A buy worth it's value.

Okk....so where should I start?...continuous 77 mbps speed or no heating at all or very handy & petite or complete hasslefree plug & play or 3.63 TB of space or 3 years international seller warranty?....This is the product that should have come way before 2 tb & 3 tb....Just Awesome!!!....SImply no COmplains!!!!