Western Digital 4TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 for plug-and-play storage - Western DigitalBWLG0040HBK-NESN

Western Digital 8TB Elements Desktop is a great external hard drive. Purchased WD 8TB Elements to backup my computer system. When I received the product, it was easy to install by following on screen instructions, it came with WD software to begin transferring my data immediately. Instead, I chose WD Acronis True Image software, which offers the ability to: Back up operating systems, applications, settings and individual files on Windows and macOS. Everything worked well together and there was no data loss on my windows 10 backup. The WD elements drive sits on my desktop and acts as add-on-storage to my computer. The WD 8TB is portable and is incredibly fast, taking 1hr 30min to back up my computer. WD 8TB Desktop External Hard Disk Drive-3.5 Inch, USB 3.0 with Automatic Backup, 256 Bit AES Hardware Encryption, Password Protection, Compatible with Windows & Mac, Portable HDD. Highly recommend Western Digital 8TB Elements Desktop because easy to use, reliable, fast transfer of data, and provides peace of mind.

TL;dr – it works great. Treat it with respect, be prepared to toss the cable it comes with (because they fail) and enjoy a huge amount of storage for a reasonable amount of money.You’ve probably read a ton of reviews on external drives and have arrived here. I’ve been in the tech biz over 44 years and was there when 128Kbyte 8” floppy disks were considered advanced. I’ve used a LOT of different drives.Let’s put this drive into perspective: it is NOT a “portable drive”, it’s an external drive that you can choose to move from place to place. AS WITH ALL SUCH DRIVES, it contains precision moving parts; if you drop it, it will likely break. If you move it around when it’s operating, it probably won’t like it. If you drop your laptop, it will likely break. If you want an external drive that you can really move around, get an SSD.I purchased one of these drives for cloud-storage and archival purposes. Simply put, I needed somewhere to dump large data collections for essentially read-only access as well as having a buffer area for cloud storage synchronization purposes (lots of r/w access to the drive). It worked so well I purchased another and might even get a 3rd.Cloud storage is great for frequently accessed data, but for your video collection, your vast music collection or the 130GB of pictures your spouse took last month, you might want off-line storage. This is a great choice.Is it fast? Slower than an SSD but faster than many external hard drives out there. If you want speed, use the local SSD in your device or get an external SSD drive. If you don’t want that expense, this is still a great drive.In operation the drive is whisper quiet and runs slightly warm. You may have read about the “click of death”, well, yeah, it happened to me too. It won’t run on an overloaded unpowered USB hub (click, click due to lack of power). The cable it comes with is frankly troublesome and honestly you should invest in a replacement. Yup, click, click, click because the cable failed (fortunately I had another to hand, doesn’t everyone?). All that will happen with other drives too, so it’s nothing unusual.My system: Win10 Pro and Win10 Home on Lenovo, Surface Books and Surface Pro; works out of the box just fine.For those complaining that the drive doesn’t work with some backup software; that’s not the drives fault. For those complaining about the speed for gaming purposes, that’s not the drives’ fault either, you should have purchased an SSD.Yes, it will work with Onedrive; just create a junction from your Onedrive folder to the required folder in the external drive.mklink /J srcFolder destFolderSince you have a large capacity drive for large data sets, robocopy (part of Windows) will be your friend as well as mklink to create junctions from your main drive to connection points in external drives filesystems.What happens if the drive goes down? As with any other drive, you might have lost your data. The solution is to (gasp) purchase two drives and sync one with the other.Pro’s: 5TB of storage for <$100. Quiet, fast and gets the job done. It’s a disk drive, it’s not there to be exciting.Con’s: I didn’t like the cable; invest $6 on a better one. As with ALL DRIVES, you need to treat it nicely.

Worked perfectly right out of the box! I've been using this exact brand for over a decade and have another 1TB drive that still works flawlessly to this day. Couldn't be easier to use, would definitely recommend it to anyone in need of extra storage space or a way to transfer files.

I've been using this drive for quite a while. And, although I do not use it all the time, I do use it to backup photos and documents, maybe four times a year. It works well for me, but it is a little slower than my SSD drive. Still, it's sturdy.

A solid USB hard drive. Easy to use as plug and play without drivers, can handle what I throw at it with ease, and keeps my data safe when I need to carry it with me when I travel. Haven't dropped it or anything that would test the durability of it, but as long as you make sure to take good care of it, it should last a long while. One thing that does irk me about it is that it still uses USB Micro B 3.0. If they switched it to a Type C connector already, then I can finally put away the USB Micro B 3.0 cables into the storage bin until I inevitably need it again for a niche reason. Other than that and overall, solid drive for holding your data at a decent price point.

Easy to use and all the storage I need.