WTF? I recently bought a WD 6 TB USB 3.1 drive - too easy:
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc1
then used it to backup my FreeNAS NAS over 1 GBit LAN, rebuild my NAS again (screwed up the ZFS database) and copy the data back…
Used multiple rsync “streams”…
Sure - the bottleneck would probably be the Gbit LAN, and maybe OpenSSH, not the USB 3… but the whole process in total only took about 48 hours, which sounds like a lot, but not IMHO… 3-4 years ago took me about 36 hours to transfer 700 GB from a fibre SAN to a fibre connected NAS (both Oracle branded - the NAS being a ZFS Filer)…
@daniel.m.tripp
I share your chagrin, but his decision, I would not have bought such a device as it did not have its own power source (to speed up transfer) nor having a genuine USB3 inlet port. I recognise.
A few years ago, I had bought and refurbished a Dell 7440 laptop for my cousin and suggested he bought at least a 1TB HDD and HDD enclosure with USB3 connectors. Similar to what I owned. He appeared one weekend with his 6TB device, and old laptop to transfer 150Gb of data.
After 3 to 4 hours it had only transferred @ 6GB to this brand new and shinny device. I had a USB2 HDD enclosure that was quicker: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00M40TG68/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and more efficient at data transfer, than this pile of junk.
After numerous attempts to reformat the device, it would only accept fat32. @ElectricDandySlider did suggest a fix, earlier in this thread. But time was a factor, we had taken 7 hours to get no where fast, and only managed to transfer his data using my own USB3 HDD enclosure device in an hour or so.
Physically looking at his device, the cable had a blue USB3 connector for a computer port, but the device inlet port had a matching USB1 or USB2 connector that you can clearly see in the Amazon link for my older enclosure.
I’m very happy you were able to overcome the shortcoming of your purchased device. Does it still come with this https: //www.wd.com/products/accessories/usb-3_1-type-c-to-micro-b-cable-457mm.html cable.
Edit 26/02/19 typo