WD My Cloud EX4100 4-Bay Expert Series 16TB NAS Review

Bohs Hansen / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

When you first look at the price of this unit, you’ll think that it’s expensive. But as soon as you realize that you also get four 4TB WD RED NAS drives along with it, then you know that you were wrong. At the time of writing, the WD MyCloud EX4100 16TB at Amazon for $921.49, at Scan UK for £1036.52, or find a great deal through Geizhals.

If you’d prefer the unit without included drives, then you could pick up a driveless EX4100 at Overclockers UK for just £279.98 or NewEgg for $448.99. As you see, the prices variate a lot, so shop around and I’m sure you’ll find a great deal. WD also has their own web store.

Overview

The WD My Cloud EX4100 is a very standard looking black NAS unit. Four front accessible and hot-swappable drive bays, and a USB port with one-press-key copy function. WD also added a two-line display that can provide you with device and setup information. It is a simple design that will fit well in most environments.

This was the easiest to set up NAS I’ve had so far, really all I had to do to get going was to unpack it, connect the cables, and power it on. A two-step initialization and I could start. That is awesome and it is something a lot of casual users will appreciate and I doubt that even the most novice user would have trouble doing it.

The EX4100 didn’t have any trouble with performance either, scoring great with every disk configuration. The dual gigabit Ethernet is a nice touch that will give you redundancy and improved traffic capabilities. I really love that WD added a redundant PSU system too, this is a great bonus and added security and one that I wished more would use.

The USB 3.0 ports support external storage devices just as well as UPS monitoring and the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) and Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP). The one-touch copy button on the front allows you to easily backup files from your thumb drives, smart phones, cameras, or other USB devices directly onto the NAS.

While this is an easy to set up and us NAS, enterprise users will still get the features they need. May it be IPv6, iSCSI, comprehensive backup solutions, or VM and authentication usage. The EX4100 does all that and more.

Basic apps are included for media streaming as well as file sharing and downloading, but you don’t need to stop there. You can expand the functionality with third-party add-ons such as aMule, Icecast, Joomla, SqueezeCenter, WordPress, Transmission, and more.

Pros:

Pre-configured including hard disk drives
Solid performance
Good features
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
Dual PSU support
USB 3.0 with one-touch copy
LCD Display

Cons:

no eSATA

“I doubt you’ll find an NAS that is easier to set up. The pre-configuration allows you to use your new NAS right away, even if you should be a novice user. Advanced and enterprise users will also find the features they need from cloud and backup to servers and authentication.”