WD Elements desktop hard drives with USB 3.0 offer reliable, high-capacity auxiliary storage, ultra-high data transfer rates, universal connectivity and up to 3TB of capacity. With this one drive, you have both compatibility with the latest USB 3.0 devices and backward compatibility with USB 2.0 devices. When connected to a USB 3.0 port, the WD Elements desktop hard drive provides ultra-fast data transfer. When the internal hard disk reaches its capacity limits, your PC slows down.
WD Elements desktop hard drives with USB 3.0 offer reliable, high-capacity auxiliary storage, ultra-high data transfer rates, universal connectivity and up to 3TB of capacity. With this one drive, you have both compatibility with the latest USB 3.0 devices and backward compatibility with USB 2.0 devices. When connected to a USB 3.0 port, the WD Elements desktop hard drive provides ultra-fast data transfer. When the internal hard disk reaches its capacity limits, your PC slows down.
WD Elements desktop hard drives with USB 3.0 offer reliable, high-capacity auxiliary storage, ultra-high data transfer rates, universal connectivity and up to 3TB of capacity. With this one drive, you have both compatibility with the latest USB 3.0 devices and backward compatibility with USB 2.0 devices. When connected to a USB 3.0 port, the WD Elements desktop hard drive provides ultra-fast data transfer. When the internal hard disk reaches its capacity limits, your PC slows down.
WD Elements desktop hard drives with USB 3.0 offer reliable, high-capacity auxiliary storage, ultra-high data transfer rates, universal connectivity and up to 3TB of capacity. With this one drive, you have both compatibility with the latest USB 3.0 devices and backward compatibility with USB 2.0 devices. When connected to a USB 3.0 port, the WD Elements desktop hard drive provides ultra-fast data transfer. When the internal hard disk reaches its capacity limits, your PC slows down.
Last updated at 04/08/2025 07:20:45
originally posted on bhphotovideo.com
I'm always on the lookout for great deals, especially ones coming from B&H Photo. And this 14TB WD Elements desktop hard drive was one of them.Back in March of this year, I'd bought a 12TB WD Elements external hard drive from B&H for $180 with free shipping and zero sales tax since I'd purchased it with my PayBoo/B&H credit card. That works out to be $15/TB! The latest deal I bought from B&H was this 14TB WD external hard drive for $260, which translates to $18.57/TB. This was still an excellent buy considering the price of electronics, especially hard drives, has recently skyrocketed due to the COVID supply chain shortages. B&H's closest competitor was $20 higher, and I would've had to pay another $20 in sales tax. That made it a $40 savings for me.These ... MoreI'm always on the lookout for great deals, especially ones coming from B&H Photo. And this 14TB WD Elements desktop hard drive was one of them.Back in March of this year, I'd bought a 12TB WD Elements external hard drive from B&H for $180 with free shipping and zero sales tax since I'd purchased it with my PayBoo/B&H credit card. That works out to be $15/TB! The latest deal I bought from B&H was this 14TB WD external hard drive for $260, which translates to $18.57/TB. This was still an excellent buy considering the price of electronics, especially hard drives, has recently skyrocketed due to the COVID supply chain shortages. B&H's closest competitor was $20 higher, and I would've had to pay another $20 in sales tax. That made it a $40 savings for me.These ultra-high capacity USB hard drives are great for storing my huge collection of Blu-rays and DVDs, both as back-ups and as a convenient means of playback without having to shuffle through my extensive Blu-ray and DVD collection (I have over 2000 titles), opening the case (sometimes finding an empty case since my wife or kids took the disc somewhere else and never bothered to put it back!), inserting the discs into the Blu-ray player, and wait for it to cycle on. Now, I can quickly sort and scroll through with my computer to find a movie I want, and watch it using CyberLink's PowerDVD that I'd also bought from B&H for $58; another great value.Needless-to-say, aside from the convenience of playing Blu-rays and DVDs from my computer, having the ability to backup and store all my Blu-rays and DVDs onto a couple of ultra-high capacity, portable hard drives is priceless since I've invested a small fortune collecting and building my movie and TV series collection. At an average of $20 per Blu-ray and $15 per DVD, that's over $25,000 in purchases I've made over the years! What's more, I live in a wild-land fire prone area, and to gather up 2000+ boxed discs during an evacuation at a moment's notice would be almost impossible, not to mention the time and space that are required, especially in the midst of an evacuation, I wouldn't have the luxury of either. Now, if and when the time has come to book out of Dodge, all I have to do is grab two book-size hard drives, together with our other more important items and belongings, I no longer have to worry about loosing my entire movie and TV collection.As for the Western Digital portable USB hard drive, I've always had good experience with WD hard drives in general. Of all the external hard drives I've owned and used over the years (nearly a hundred), I've never had a WD drive failed on me (fingers crossed! Lol), except one, which was entirely my fault since I'd dropped it onto a hardwood floor while the drive was in use and spinning. All of the other failed hard drives (for no apparent reasons at all - they'd just up and died) I've owned have either been Seagate, Maxtor, and Quantum - the latter two were inherited by Seagate through mergers and acquisitions. But that's just my own experience, yours might differ.Also, it just seems to me that the WD drives have faster throughput than other hard drives I've used in the past, but that's an anecdotal observation,again based on my own experience.All-in-all, I've had good experience with Western Digital drives, and expect that this 14TB desktop unit will provide me with the same longevity and reliable service.
originally posted on bhphotovideo.com
I initially thought this drive was defective, but after checking with Western Digital, it appears the design geniuses there thought it would be a good idea to flutter the disk head every 5 seconds. Not every minute. Not every hour. EVERY 5 SECONDS! I guarantee you, IT WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY!!!I've been told there is no way to alter this setting.Presumably this is to increase the life of the drive. The funny thing is that I have several WD external drives that I have been using for almost 20 years, that do not have this annoying feature, and they continue to work just fine.While the drive functions properly today, the frequent chattering, causing unnecessary wear and tear, makes me doubt the long term reliability of this drive, as well as WD's disregard for ... MoreI initially thought this drive was defective, but after checking with Western Digital, it appears the design geniuses there thought it would be a good idea to flutter the disk head every 5 seconds. Not every minute. Not every hour. EVERY 5 SECONDS! I guarantee you, IT WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY!!!I've been told there is no way to alter this setting.Presumably this is to increase the life of the drive. The funny thing is that I have several WD external drives that I have been using for almost 20 years, that do not have this annoying feature, and they continue to work just fine.While the drive functions properly today, the frequent chattering, causing unnecessary wear and tear, makes me doubt the long term reliability of this drive, as well as WD's disregard for customer real-world use and satisfaction.I wish I would have know about this beforehand so I could have avoided the purchase.
originally posted on scan.co.uk
I bought this WD Elements 6TB drive for attaching to a Synology DS220J NAS as a backup service. My DS220J NAS uses DSM (DiskStation Manager) V7.1, which supports backing up of the NAS contents to a USB locally-connected drive.It was important for me to install a local backup service for my DS220J NAS, because I use it as a local cloud facility for storing application files. This is instead of storing these files locally on individual computers and using the NAS itself as backup. This arrangement allows me to share application files across several computers, i.e. the DS220J NAS acts as a central storage facility for all network computers.The WD Elements storage drive fulfills the NAS backup role admirably, with the DS220J DSM software managing backup scheduling ... MoreI bought this WD Elements 6TB drive for attaching to a Synology DS220J NAS as a backup service. My DS220J NAS uses DSM (DiskStation Manager) V7.1, which supports backing up of the NAS contents to a USB locally-connected drive.It was important for me to install a local backup service for my DS220J NAS, because I use it as a local cloud facility for storing application files. This is instead of storing these files locally on individual computers and using the NAS itself as backup. This arrangement allows me to share application files across several computers, i.e. the DS220J NAS acts as a central storage facility for all network computers.The WD Elements storage drive fulfills the NAS backup role admirably, with the DS220J DSM software managing backup scheduling without placing a burden on the network. The WD Elements drive is woken-up and put to sleep by the DSM software, as required for the backup schedule. As the WD Elements drive is only active for 20-30 minutes, twice a day, purchasing a WD Red disk was not necessary.
| Type of Storage | HDD |
| Weight in g | 91 |
| Depth in mm | 135 |
| Height in mm | 165 |
| Size in cm | 8,89 |
I'm always on the lookout for great deals, especially ones coming from B&H Photo. And this 14TB WD Elements desktop hard drive was one of them.Back in March of this year, I'd bought a 12TB WD Elements external hard drive from B&H for $180 with free shipping and zero sales tax since I'd purchased it with my PayBoo/B&H credit card. That works out to be $15/TB! The latest deal I bought from B&H was this 14TB WD external hard drive for $260, which translates to $18.57/TB. This was still an excellent buy considering the price of electronics, especially hard drives, has recently skyrocketed due to the COVID supply chain shortages. B&H's closest competitor was $20 higher, and I would've had to pay another $20 in sales tax. That made it a $40 savings for me.These ... MoreI'm always on the lookout for great deals, especially ones coming from B&H Photo. And this 14TB WD Elements desktop hard drive was one of them.Back in March of this year, I'd bought a 12TB WD Elements external hard drive from B&H for $180 with free shipping and zero sales tax since I'd purchased it with my PayBoo/B&H credit card. That works out to be $15/TB! The latest deal I bought from B&H was this 14TB WD external hard drive for $260, which translates to $18.57/TB. This was still an excellent buy considering the price of electronics, especially hard drives, has recently skyrocketed due to the COVID supply chain shortages. B&H's closest competitor was $20 higher, and I would've had to pay another $20 in sales tax. That made it a $40 savings for me.These ultra-high capacity USB hard drives are great for storing my huge collection of Blu-rays and DVDs, both as back-ups and as a convenient means of playback without having to shuffle through my extensive Blu-ray and DVD collection (I have over 2000 titles), opening the case (sometimes finding an empty case since my wife or kids took the disc somewhere else and never bothered to put it back!), inserting the discs into the Blu-ray player, and wait for it to cycle on. Now, I can quickly sort and scroll through with my computer to find a movie I want, and watch it using CyberLink's PowerDVD that I'd also bought from B&H for $58; another great value.Needless-to-say, aside from the convenience of playing Blu-rays and DVDs from my computer, having the ability to backup and store all my Blu-rays and DVDs onto a couple of ultra-high capacity, portable hard drives is priceless since I've invested a small fortune collecting and building my movie and TV series collection. At an average of $20 per Blu-ray and $15 per DVD, that's over $25,000 in purchases I've made over the years! What's more, I live in a wild-land fire prone area, and to gather up 2000+ boxed discs during an evacuation at a moment's notice would be almost impossible, not to mention the time and space that are required, especially in the midst of an evacuation, I wouldn't have the luxury of either. Now, if and when the time has come to book out of Dodge, all I have to do is grab two book-size hard drives, together with our other more important items and belongings, I no longer have to worry about loosing my entire movie and TV collection.As for the Western Digital portable USB hard drive, I've always had good experience with WD hard drives in general. Of all the external hard drives I've owned and used over the years (nearly a hundred), I've never had a WD drive failed on me (fingers crossed! Lol), except one, which was entirely my fault since I'd dropped it onto a hardwood floor while the drive was in use and spinning. All of the other failed hard drives (for no apparent reasons at all - they'd just up and died) I've owned have either been Seagate, Maxtor, and Quantum - the latter two were inherited by Seagate through mergers and acquisitions. But that's just my own experience, yours might differ.Also, it just seems to me that the WD drives have faster throughput than other hard drives I've used in the past, but that's an anecdotal observation,again based on my own experience.All-in-all, I've had good experience with Western Digital drives, and expect that this 14TB desktop unit will provide me with the same longevity and reliable service.
I initially thought this drive was defective, but after checking with Western Digital, it appears the design geniuses there thought it would be a good idea to flutter the disk head every 5 seconds. Not every minute. Not every hour. EVERY 5 SECONDS! I guarantee you, IT WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY!!!I've been told there is no way to alter this setting.Presumably this is to increase the life of the drive. The funny thing is that I have several WD external drives that I have been using for almost 20 years, that do not have this annoying feature, and they continue to work just fine.While the drive functions properly today, the frequent chattering, causing unnecessary wear and tear, makes me doubt the long term reliability of this drive, as well as WD's disregard for ... MoreI initially thought this drive was defective, but after checking with Western Digital, it appears the design geniuses there thought it would be a good idea to flutter the disk head every 5 seconds. Not every minute. Not every hour. EVERY 5 SECONDS! I guarantee you, IT WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY!!!I've been told there is no way to alter this setting.Presumably this is to increase the life of the drive. The funny thing is that I have several WD external drives that I have been using for almost 20 years, that do not have this annoying feature, and they continue to work just fine.While the drive functions properly today, the frequent chattering, causing unnecessary wear and tear, makes me doubt the long term reliability of this drive, as well as WD's disregard for customer real-world use and satisfaction.I wish I would have know about this beforehand so I could have avoided the purchase.
I bought this WD Elements 6TB drive for attaching to a Synology DS220J NAS as a backup service. My DS220J NAS uses DSM (DiskStation Manager) V7.1, which supports backing up of the NAS contents to a USB locally-connected drive.It was important for me to install a local backup service for my DS220J NAS, because I use it as a local cloud facility for storing application files. This is instead of storing these files locally on individual computers and using the NAS itself as backup. This arrangement allows me to share application files across several computers, i.e. the DS220J NAS acts as a central storage facility for all network computers.The WD Elements storage drive fulfills the NAS backup role admirably, with the DS220J DSM software managing backup scheduling ... MoreI bought this WD Elements 6TB drive for attaching to a Synology DS220J NAS as a backup service. My DS220J NAS uses DSM (DiskStation Manager) V7.1, which supports backing up of the NAS contents to a USB locally-connected drive.It was important for me to install a local backup service for my DS220J NAS, because I use it as a local cloud facility for storing application files. This is instead of storing these files locally on individual computers and using the NAS itself as backup. This arrangement allows me to share application files across several computers, i.e. the DS220J NAS acts as a central storage facility for all network computers.The WD Elements storage drive fulfills the NAS backup role admirably, with the DS220J DSM software managing backup scheduling without placing a burden on the network. The WD Elements drive is woken-up and put to sleep by the DSM software, as required for the backup schedule. As the WD Elements drive is only active for 20-30 minutes, twice a day, purchasing a WD Red disk was not necessary.
I bought this drive because one of my 2 backup drives died. This WD drive has done 2 backups since I received it. Compared to my other 2 backup drives, this WD 16TB drive is very fast. It takes only a little over 2 hours to backup my files compared to the roughly 12 to 15 hours my other backup drives would take to do the same job. The only thing that worried me about concerning the WB 16TB drive was the complaint I read by one reviewer about the noise it made. I found this WD drive to be no noisier than my other drives of which I have six( 4 internal drives and 2 external backup drives). So I would tell other potential buyers of this drive to ignore the noise complaint about this drive.
Our personal drives have been running continuously in a trying environmet (lots and LOTS of unexpected power outages (costing our power provider over $700,000 in 8 neighborhoods to fix according to their communications to us!) and these drives have been BULLETPROOF!We're here to by two more 8tb drives as another storage-and-mirror combo for our personal use and felt the bad reviews need to be answered. We recommend these to small business as an easy plug-and-play data storage solution and a nice offsite storage choice.There's lots of reviews with computers "loosing connection(s) to PC" and "drives going to sleep" that are from folks who don't understand how PC's work:These PC's are almost certainly (in the case of our work with users) letting some or all of ... MoreOur personal drives have been running continuously in a trying environmet (lots and LOTS of unexpected power outages (costing our power provider over $700,000 in 8 neighborhoods to fix according to their communications to us!) and these drives have been BULLETPROOF!We're here to by two more 8tb drives as another storage-and-mirror combo for our personal use and felt the bad reviews need to be answered. We recommend these to small business as an easy plug-and-play data storage solution and a nice offsite storage choice.There's lots of reviews with computers "loosing connection(s) to PC" and "drives going to sleep" that are from folks who don't understand how PC's work:These PC's are almost certainly (in the case of our work with users) letting some or all of their USB devices go to sleep and/or hibernation. Look this up online and fix your setups and they'll run great!Don't forget to put your main drive on high-speed ("SS") port for best results.
Beware previous buyers.I wish B&H would vet things like this.I wasted hours trying to figure out what's wrong with my new external hard drive. Thinking I just hadn't formatted it correctly.After extensive research, I discovered that someone most likely bought this 22TB hard drive, gutted it (shucked it), replaced it with a 500GB drive, and returned it to B&H. And I'm the unlucky next buyer.Hours wasted and now more time wasted trying to get B&H to replace this.Shuckers aren't just stealing from WD or B&H--they're stealing from potential buyers and their time.
I got this drive to hold the backup created by the Macintosh program called Time Machine. A Time Machine drive creates a new backup every hour, and then after a day, those ,merge into a single backup covering the entire day. When the drive gets full, the oldest backups get erased -- so the larger the capacity of your Time Machine drive, the longer the period before it has to begin erasing old backups, and the further back in time you can go to look for something you once had but erased. A 16 Terabyte drive should last me quite a while before it has to begin erasing old stuff. That's why I bought it, because you never can tell when you'll want to be able to view an old backup. It was surprisingly inexpensive, and it seems to work very well.
bit confusing with a 10+ on the front as to what that meant, but works with my older version of Windowswasn't entirely clear if I needed to do anything to format it, I gather from the seller marketplace and their team who contact me that they can only put manufacturer detail although was nothing to stop them putting in on say a delivery note - not that they marked as dispatched or put tracking number until after it was delivered!I am somewhat concerned, and should be clear, my older 3TB lost about 10% for I assume formatting (2.72TB actual?) and this one is about same which maybe ought to be clear that you don't actually get 8TB but I think it is 7.2TB - may be the same for all external hard drives but why sell it as 8TB when you can only use 7.2TB ... Morebit confusing with a 10+ on the front as to what that meant, but works with my older version of Windowswasn't entirely clear if I needed to do anything to format it, I gather from the seller marketplace and their team who contact me that they can only put manufacturer detail although was nothing to stop them putting in on say a delivery note - not that they marked as dispatched or put tracking number until after it was delivered!I am somewhat concerned, and should be clear, my older 3TB lost about 10% for I assume formatting (2.72TB actual?) and this one is about same which maybe ought to be clear that you don't actually get 8TB but I think it is 7.2TB - may be the same for all external hard drives but why sell it as 8TB when you can only use 7.2TB (misleading)Seems to work fine, copying updated files from old to new doesn't take long even though not USB 3.0 ports. Is less than 2 months old so still feeling way
Good Points: Western Digital produce by far the most reliable hard drives I've ever purchased. Not that I'd want to tempt fate talking about reliability but I still have their hard drives from ten years ago. I purchased this one to support the memory of my PS4. Once unboxed and connect to my PS4 it took moments to format and began transfering all my game data to the WD 8tb drive. Over a course of a week thanks to its size I was able to install over 40 titles without making a dent in its capacity. A WD 8tb hard drive is an excellent investment. In a world where prices keeping going up for less goods than you needed , it's great to see a WD hard drive of this size and quality for the price of a significantly smaller and lesser quality one. Worth the ... MoreGood Points: Western Digital produce by far the most reliable hard drives I've ever purchased. Not that I'd want to tempt fate talking about reliability but I still have their hard drives from ten years ago. I purchased this one to support the memory of my PS4. Once unboxed and connect to my PS4 it took moments to format and began transfering all my game data to the WD 8tb drive. Over a course of a week thanks to its size I was able to install over 40 titles without making a dent in its capacity. A WD 8tb hard drive is an excellent investment. In a world where prices keeping going up for less goods than you needed , it's great to see a WD hard drive of this size and quality for the price of a significantly smaller and lesser quality one. Worth the investment.Improvement Points: No dislikes but a slightly longer USB cable would have been useful in order to place the drive in a location with better air flow.
I thought when I bought a 6 TB Hard Drive a few years ago I would be good for a 5-10 years. With a 100 megapixel camera now I am chewing up drive space fast. Even with culling unnecessary images and backing up to the cloud, I still like having more storage on the desktop. This will be my third WD drive. I like that the technology has not changed much from the other drives. As a photograph, reliability matters most to me. With this drive I now have 34 TB of external drive space. on 5 drives. Should be good for a while. I really am happy with this drive! Highly recommended!
| Type of Storage | HDD |
| Weight in g | 91 |
| Depth in mm | 135 |
| Height in mm | 165 |
| Size in cm | 8,89 |
