WD 24TB My Cloud EX4100 Expert Series 4-Bay Network Attached Storage - NAS - WDBWZE0240KBK-NESN

Well, I bought this from amazon first, but it didn't let me read or write to it. So returned it. Went ahead and got one from WD themselves. Wasn't going to remove a star for a bad unit. This unit runs flawlessly! I have been reading and writing data to it for almost 2 months straight. I have over 5TB of movies and TV shows, and 2 TB of music. So I have been building my iTunes library on it to stream with my appleTV. No hickups, no crashes, the only time you hear the fan, is when you power it up. Other than that, it is quiet as a mouse! Never runs hot, if I didn't put my ear close to it, I wouldn't know it was on. I owned the previous model of 16TB my cloud 4 EX, and it ran hot a lot. Crashed when to much data was being transferred to it. But this one, no complaints, its going to serve my purposes for a long time. Some put it in mairroring mode, I am not going to waste half my storage to backup files, when that backup could fail also. Plus I have external USB drives for this purpose. But yes, this device is the best I have used from western digital, and I have been using there products since 2008. Good job WD, you finally got it right!

This is an upgrade from my 8TB MyCloud, which I love.1. RAID5 design will make sure your data stays safe, even if a drive fails (note that this feature will cost you 6TB but its worth it)2. Great access time, streams media flawlessly. Comes with a bunch of applications built-in that will get you streaming in no time at all.3. Fast, responsive transfer rates.4. Whisper quiet. I can't hear the thing at all.5. Nifty LCD display -- check up on your basic stats without having to log in.6. Easy installation and operation -- even if you barely can use Windows, you'll have this thing up and running in no time.

I bought the EX4100 seeking a NAS device for media hosting and backups. I wanted an array for redundancy and capacity but I also wanted a device that could be left on 24/7 without noisy fans. It turns out that the EX4100 fits this need to perfection.I have owned NAS devices before -- I have a 6-drive NetGear ReadyNAS -- but they tend to be noisy and run the drives constantly even when power saving mode is enabled. The ReadyNAS spins up its drives in response to routine activity by other devices on the network so it's effectively always on. The array's cooling fans are loud enough to prevent the enjoyment of music or movies in the same room, particularly as they cycle up to maximum speed for 10 minutes or so out of every hour.In addition to the noise (and attendant power consumption), the ReadyNAS is slow, as are most of the consumer NAS drives I've tried (e.g., WD My Cloud Mirror). Copying files to and from the NAS is only about half as fast as copying between PCs, usually about 40MB/s on Windows's speed indicator. I've experimented with many different settings trying to get more performance but never succeeded.The EX4100 solves these issues in spades. When the array is active, the only sound you hear is the whirring of the drives and the occasional "rumble" as the heads seek. No fan noise. When the array goes into standby mode, it's totally silent, and it stays in standby mode unless you specifically make use of it. Waking the device from standby takes between 10 and 15 seconds so it's no hardship.Even better, the EX4100 is fast. An totally unscientific test -- copying some media files -- moved 23GB onto the array in 3min 41sec (6GB/min, 106MB/s) with a reported Windows speed of over 100MB/s. I don't notice a substantial difference in performance between PC-to-PC and PC-to/from-array transfers.The EX4100 is ideal for my needs. I can stream music or movies to my HTPC or tablet without annoying noise and data transfer performance seems fine.I should note that I haven't used the array's cloud features. I turned off remote access because I have no use for it, so I can't offer any comments on how well the cloud features work. As a pure NAS, the EX4100 has been everything I want it to be.

BEWARE!!!! The capacity of the device you order is not going to be the amount of space available to you when you get it. I ordered the 24TB version, I was assuming it was going to be 4 8TB drives arranged in a RAID 5 configuration. The device did come configured by default in a RAID 5 configuration, but the available space to me was only 18TB. They fail to tell you the individual drive capacities, and the RAID configuration it comes in. Highly sneaky and manipulative marketing move. They "technically" give you as much disk space advertised, but only if you reconfigure the device and remove all the RAID 5 drive failure protections and risk losing all your data in a single drive failure. Which pretty much negates the whole reason to purchase a multibay RAID array in the first place.I'm not impressed by being intentionally deceived by WD.To be honest, it's a potential Class Action in the making.

Hardware is great! Very easy to set up on the local network.WD's support site to download software is confusing.I have another WD drive, WDMyBook, on my network. Sometimes you can see them both, sometimes only one. ???