WD My Cloud Business Series DL4100 16 TB (4 x 4 TB) Pre-configured 4-Bay NAS with WD Red drives

After owning a noisy QNAP dual drive I was a bit worried about the noise transmitted by the drives and fan bearing in mind this is a bigger unit. I was pleasantly surprised to find that after the initial boot up and the cooling fan settled down to a lower speed that the unit is very quiet. It also goes into standby which the QNAP fails to do. It doesn't have as many "Apps" available as QNAP and seems to lack the ability to sync files across multiple computers. But apart from that I am very pleased with it.Update:After 4 years of use this unit failed. There was a firmware update after which the unit froze and failed to connect to the network. After contacting WD support I was told that I would have to buy a new disk free unit and reuse my four disks. This model is no longer available and the choice is a EX4100 or PR4100. I bought a EX4100 and my RAID disks worked okay in it.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:The DL4100 is a very useful device. I run my own part-time business at home and have a lot of data. I used to have to decide what to back up onto the commercial cloud (sometimes not any easy decision to make), but with the DL4100 I can back up virtually the whole of my data and still have plenty of room for all the family's data needs on it too.I've also been able to have my own full-sized MySql database rather than have to test my software on the live system or try and produce a cut-down dataset.The DL4100 is incredibly easy to set up. All you have to do it plug it in and navigate to an URL and set up an administrative account. That gets you going.It is quick to copy data on to the DL4100. It takes around 90s to copy 1GB on my system.What is good about it is you can access your files anywhere. I don't have to have my PC turned on in order to get to the files on the DL4100 from anywhere else, the DL4100 makes files available just like the online cloud services. It's called MyCloud and that's really what it is. Your files are available if you just install an app on your phone or a Windows program on a PC. It's not difficult at all, I am not a network person at all really I am a software developer but I didn't even need to "Google" anything to use this device.In terms of backing up a PC onto the DL4100 you can configure what folders you want to back up and have multiple copies of each file that have changed as well if you want.You can set up different user accounts as well not just within the household but outside too. I have my own private area and I have also set up one for other members of the family. It will make it a lot easier to outsource some development work when I want to do that again, I can just set up a user account for a developer and give him access to what he needs.The wattage is a lot lower than a PC so it won't make much of a dent on your electricity bill. It uses about 40W when in use and 22W in "standby" mode. That's a lot less than a high-end PC and a fraction of a server.Another cool feature is the display on the device which you can toggle to various settings. The most useful one is temperature, so I know if the room I work in is getting too hot.Shutting the device down is simple. Jut press the on/off button and it takes a few seconds to shut down, a bit like a computer.The disks should I need to are easy to remove and similar to print cartridges if they need to be replaced. I took one out and put it back again just to see if it was easy to remove them and it's very straightforward, they just click in place.Within a few weeks, this device has become a big part of my life!UPDATE: After four months the device completely broke and I lost all my files. I contacted WD who were unable to provide me with a satisfactory way of getting my files back, even if were to get a replacement. Although mine was a review copy I have no reason to believe it wasn't a fully functioning version.

I've been looking to expand my storage setup at home to give increased capacity along with a modicum of redundancy and this NAS drive fave me the perfect opportunity.It arrived with 4x 4TB WD Red drives configured in a RAID5 format (there isn't sufficient space here to go into the different RAID configs) giving around 11.5TB of storage. You can also change it to RAID1 or even JBOD. Just remember that whatever config you use, it is not a fully redundant backup as it will not protect you from fire, flood, theft or a simple corrupt motherboard. You need multiple backup, stored in multiple off-site locations etc.The physical setup includes USB2 & 3 sockets along with 2x power inputs (only one PSU supplied) and 2x LAN interfaces (with same MAC address). This allows diverse power and connectivity, but only reallyworthwhile in a data centre/comes room type environment as any mission critical platform needs proper hosting rather than sat under desk. There is also a Kensington slot to provide a basic theft protection for the chassis but oddly, not the physical drives... Each drive is stored behind a vertical cover which has no locking mechanism.The web gui provides user settings for network, accounts, status and storage reporting tools.On arrival one of my hard drives immediately failed its SMART status check. I contacted WD And after a bit of confusion over the Vine programme, they had arranged for a new drive to be exchanged as a priority. I can't say fairer than that.If you are so desirous you can update the 2GB up to 6GB. The chip sets you need are either a Kingston chip or a Hymax chip. I tried the Kingston but that wouldn't boot. The Hymax worked fine but is harder to find.I'm still getting use to the tools but so far this is a great. I'd recommend for large storage application at home or small busiess