I've thought about buying a newer, faster NAS, but that's expensive, and decided to go this route at least for the time being. I was using an old Synology 212+ for Time Machine, but after moving, it asked me to reinstall, crashed in the process of doing that, and lost all my data. Time Machine gives me hourly backups for the last 24 hours, so I can recover something I've inadvertently overwritten. But that only backs up my most recent version of each file. From reviews, I see that some people have had disk failures, but I also do a cloud-based backup.
I keep it plugged into the USB hub that I connect my computer to when it is on my desk. I am using this as a Time Machine backup disk. I followed these directions, and it was effortless.
It will reformat the drive in about a minute. Create a name and choose 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' assuming you have a current vision of OS-X. Right click and choose 'Erase' from the pop-up menu. From the View menu, choose 'Show All Devices.' Select WD Elements on the left side of the window. Here is a slightly updated version of her instructions: Open Disk Utilities. Thanks to Amanda who shared how to format this for a current Mac.
