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For Western Digital Elements Desktop (WDBWLG), 1479 customer reviews collected from 3 e-commerce sites, and the average score is 4.4.

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10.12.2015

I hope I'm not going to downvote my own 5-stars if / when the drive goes dead, but for now:I have already got a good 4TB drive (Touro). By "good" I mean - it's worked for a year now, so hopefully, it won't die on me soon. I needed another one, and as the touro is gone or overpriced, I was tossed between the 5GB Seagate and 4TB WG (Seagate is currently, 10/12/2015 GBP 90 at amazon, and I found this WD 4TB elsewhere for 100 GBP). I know that all drive can, on relatively rare occassions, die, which is a concern for most people, who DON'T buy them in twos for backup, and when you lose your data... oh boy. So, the guarantee itself is pretty useless, because when it dies, at best you get a REPLACEMENT,never your old data. For data recovery you can use any free or paid-for software, or pay a specialist company an eye-watering bill (GBP 800 plus).To the point: I have had both seagate and western digital (internal) drives die on me in the past, but it appears that WD is somewhat more reliable, judging by the reviews in various shops. That said, it could be that, as WD are generally more expensive, there are fewer reviewers, thus lower fail rate. In any case, those rare reviews of seagate 5TB with a simple message: drive died on me after x weeks, all data lost, I'm gutted" swayed me to go for WD. Fingers crossed.On the drive itself:1. it comes with a long enough (I'd say about 2 m long) power plug, with a lightweight plug, and with a longish (I'd say about 1.5 m) MICRO usb 3 cable (my previous 4TB hdd came with a regular USB 3 cable, which is chunkier.2. it comes with a POWER button at the back panel, which is a bonus, as I have always found lack of such power button extremely irritating - and it seems standard on most, if not all external hdd these days, so a big thumbs up for that!3. it is relatively quiet, you can hear it, but it's not annoying (yet)4. it comes with a very small while led which flashes when drive is being accessed / data moved. In a couple of portable usb 3 drives I saw such icon flash white for usb2 connection, and flash blue for usb 3 connection, not here, but not really an issue.5. speed is, as mentioned, 7200 rpm, rather than 5400 rpm. Transfer-wise, this depends not only on drive itself, but also whether it copies from / to ssd or hdd, and what size the files copied are. I'm just transferring about 1.7 GB of various data from one usb 3 drive to another, both via usb 3 port, and the speed is paltry - 18 MB/s, HOWEVER, this is for very small, e-mail files (.emls). Earlier on the rate for large tif files (up to 1.2 GB each) the speed was around 78 MB/s, which is not bad (forget about the nonsene of up to 400 MB/s for usb 3, it's lies)6. elsewhere in the comments somebody suggested this drive is good as NAS. If this is the case, on top of the power button, it'd be worth spending a tenner extra and I'd be willing to consider to buy another one for NAS purposes. If the one I bought doesn't fail unexpectadly, that is ;)Update: as Amazon's bundling together ALL capacities of the same product line, the extra comments refer to:1 x (new) 5TB variant1 x (new) 4TB variantwhich I have purchased AFTER buying the 1st 4TB unit.both new ones work fine as well, although I've noticed that the price's been creeping up since beginning of summer 2016 to the point that the 5Tb now costs around GBP 150 - 160, and for GBP160 you can get a 6TB MyBook Unit, supposedly also better hdd inside.For value for money, I'd recommend 5TB Toshiba, currently (mid-Sept. 2016), available in many shops for GBP105.Update, Nov. 2019 - 2 x 8TB - a value of "backup" can not be underestimated. Both (new) drives worked fine, no bloatware, instantly recognized (after drivers auto-installed on W7). Then one fell on the floor - dead. TOTALLY - my fault. No point sending back to WD, I don't think they even have facilities in Europe to replace faulty components (and mechanical damage is not covered by warranty, which is a fair point). Fortunately, I'll be able to recover most data from other, original hdds. All that said, I'm glad that I bought too, because with backup - which I didn't do in time, sadly - I NEARLY avoided disaster...
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12.4.2020

WD 12TB Elements (Ordered April 2020)Like most, I was purchasing these for the drives inside, rather than for use as an external unit, typically proving to be the cheaper way of buying larger drives when they're on offer.Issues that you may need to know:Firstly, and not wholely unexpected, this doesn't have the standard mounting screw holes you'd expect on older/smaller 3.5" drives, missing the middle of the three on each side in order to accomodate the additional drive platters, and repositioning the mount holes on the bottom for the same reason. This might not sound like much, but if you use a screwless case of any kind, or some kind of tray system that use the older style mounting holes,you'll likely find that can't secure these drives into the bay with the standard kit - I had to resort to some adaptation myself.Secondly, and more importantly, some older PSUs can have a problem powering these drives up due to the use of a newer SATA power specification. There's a few workarounds, so have a quick look for 'fix 3.3v issue in white label drives' if you have a problem. Using a simple molex-to-sata adapter works if you're stuck.The good:It's still very simple to open the case itself - a small flat-nose screwdriver or some plastic cards will do to pry the top-end open (from there it's just a case of pushing), and you'll need a screwdriver (Phillips head) to remove the drive from the two screws attaching the drive to the SATA/power connector. Other than that, there's some rubber mounts that simply need pushed out. There's youtube videos about removing it from the case and what to watch for it you plan on removing it (just needs a bit of care to watch snapping off some plastic clips when doing the initial steps).This is my second - the last contained a WD red, but this latest contains a WD120EMFZ-11 drive (manufacturing date of January this year), hence adding a review for those still hoping for Reds specifically. These latest models are specifically Western Digital Whites: 3.5" SATA III drive, seemingly 6Gb/s, 5400 RPM disks. In open air, spin and seek noise seems to be far better than a neighbouring Seagate drive, appearing to be very similar to some of my older, very quiet, WD Green drives. For use as a video-hosting server drive, it's pretty much ideal - very low power on idle, 5A peak during full use. My only gripe is that it runs roughly three degrees hotter than my other WD drives, including the last 12gb (an EMAZ drive), but nothing major.
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31.5.2020

The WD 10TB Elements are nearly half the price of a WD Red 10TB (which I use a lot) so I decided to buy one. To be honest I was pretty disappointed with the enclosure the drive comes in as it's made entirely of plastic and resonates the drive noise and vibrations. It doesn't look like it would offer any protection if you drop the drive either.After fully testing the drive for any errors (approximately 72 hours!), as an 'experiment', I decided to 'shuck' it which is essentially removing the drive from it's plastic USB enclosure. Plenty of videos online on how to do this but essentially:- Use 4 plastic/credit cards and slide one into each corner of the rear plate,in between the rear plate and sides (this dislodges the hidden internal plastic clips).- Slide the inner part of the enclosure out from the front part of the casing- Unscrew the USB controller from the bottom of the drive- Gently push from the bottom of the drive and slide it out from the enclosure- Remove the 4 rubber corners from the drive- Remove the USB controller from the drive by sliding it off the drive- Remove the USB controller mount from the drive by removing the screw- Jobs a goodun!Disclaimer: Shucking the drive will most likely void your warranty so just be aware of that if you are considering doing it!To my (pleasant) surprise I discover what appears to be a white label WD Red 10TB drive inside. The hard drive chassis is identical to the WD Reds I currently own and has model number WD100EMAZ. The drive has firmware 83.H0A83 which is the same as my other WD Reds and on checking the S.M.A.R.T. values for the drive it also includes a Helium level counter, so, this is very likely to be the same drive as used for the WD100EFAX WD Red 10TB. I now have the drive running in a Synology as part of an array so if it dies it's not the end of the world.I think it's a bit of a lottery what you might get from shucking drive enclosures but sizes 10TB and upwards are likely to be the newer, Helium filled drives and are potentially rebadged WD Red drives.I have bought several WD Red 10TB drives for use in my NAS's which tend to be quite expensive and hover anywhere from £280 to £350 a pop. The WD Red I use is the WD100EFAX model which are 10TB, helium filled, 5400 rpm drives and come with a 3 year warranty. WD Red drives are tested and rated for use in NAS enclosures but Backblaze use also 1000's of desktop drives in their datacentre with great success.
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3.4.2020

Delivered about an hour or two ago, gave it some time to acclimatise to indoor temp after its journey on the cold van, which you should ALWAYS do with products like this. Plugged in to a USB3.0 port on a Win10 machine, opens straight up to a nice empty folder, good to use straight away.There's some misinformation posted in a lot of reviews here, or maybe more accurately, misunderstandings, so I'll clear these up here.1. The drive size *IS* 4GB. 4,000,750,497,792 bytes to be exact.Anyone complaining that it's only 3.6TB I'm afraid doesn't understand how hard drive formatting works. Which is fair enough, you wouldn't know about this if you've little or no experience of these things.Once a drive of any kind - hard drive, SSD, flash drive USB stick - is formatted for use, you lose a proportion of all those little bytes to how file systems need to mark and index all the sections of the drive so that every bit of data can be found. Like a little address index of where everything lives on it, if you like. And that takes up some space.So, once 4TB is formatted for use, there's 3.63TB of actual file storage space left empty.2. This drive is preformatted to NTFS. Which is my own preference for this, but you can format it yourself to anything else you use, like FAT32, exFAT32, or HFS+ and APFS for Apples.3. I'm seeing both read and write speed, over USB 3.0, is 115-125MB per second.4. The actual hard drive in this package is a WDC WD40NMZW-59GX6S1SAFETY TIP: Don't lift, tilt or turn the drive (or ANY hard drive) while it's working. You might get away with it, but if you butterfingers it and drop it while it's running there's a good chance it's doneski. It's a tiny little box and meant to be easily used with laptops, tablets, etc, so it's really asking to be handled in use but TRY your best not to move it around when it's working. When it's not working, the heads park themselves safely away off from the disc surfaces inside, so dropping it then from a small height has a fair chance of being OK, but NEVER when it's running.
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6.2.2020

14Tb allowed me to have a cold storage drive with enough space for me to back up my NAS for removing drives and starting fresh install of NAS with the 4x 8TB seagate ironwolf.The USB3 cable supplied is longer than other usual devices (1m).Work fine for the first week without an issue filling all but 500Gb."How to Read Model Numbers: WUH721414ALE6L4 – 14TB SATA 6Gb/s 512e Base (SE) with Legacy Pin 3 config:W = Western DigitalU = UltrastarH = Helium72 = 7200 RPM14 = Max capacity (14TB)14 = Capacity this model (14TB)A = Generation codeL = 26.1mm z-heightE6 = Interface (512e SATA 6Gb/s)(52 = 512e SAS 12Gb/s)** 512e models can be converted to 4Kn format and vice versay = Power Disable Pin 3 status(0= Power Disable Pin 3 supportL = Legacy Pin 3 config – No Power Disable Support)z = Data Security Mode1 = SED* : Self-Encryption Drive TCG-Enterprise and Sanitize Crypto Scramble / Erase4 = Base (SE)* : No Encryption, Sanitize Overwrite only5 = SED-FIPS: SED w/ certification (SAS only)"What's interesting about this is that it looks like a 7200-RPM data center drive that's been slowed down to 5400-RPM for stuffing into the Best Buy packaging."Thanks to jitter skater:"The 'F' in WD140EMFZ actually reveals that it has 512MB cache, like all WD 14 TB drives have. The smaller models like 12TB or 10TB only have 256MB cache ('A')."WD140EMFZ = Easystore / Elements 14TB driveWD140EDFZ = My Book 14TB drive"The only difference is that the My Book support encryption on the hardware level ("D"= enterprise drive) and has a three years warranty, instead of two years.These are all basically Western Digital Ultrastar HC530 drives, slowed down to 5400RPM and hence absolutely comparable to WD Red 14TB drives."
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7.1.2019

I already had the 1TB version which I've had a good few years now and have used it very heavily on a daily basis, it's also been dropped a fair few times too, and still works perfectly.I was suprised when I received the 4TB version, as this seems to have a spinning disk inside, the 1TB is silent and vibration free, whereas the 4TB makes a spinning sound and you can feel the vibration from it.I purchased this for additional attached storage for my nVidia Shield, I was advised by nVidia that 4TB would work with the Shield (they said this was the maximum they had tested, although online forums suggest people are using larger drives successfully). It was recognised by the Shield straight away,and works fine.I did have a small issue with the sleep function on this drive, now my 1TB drive went to sleep on the Shield fine after a very short period of inactivity, which is what I want, I use the drive to store media on it, so when I'm not using the media I dont want the drive on. Initially the 4TB drive did not go into sleep mode quickly, I then discovered people were saying the 4TB drive did not have a sleep mode, after a bit of panicking, I realised it takes this drive around 20 - 30 miniutes of inactivity before it goes to sleep with my Shield, this is much longer than I would ideally like but at least it does sleep. I can also confirm that it goes into sleep mode on my Windows 10 laptop, again it takes a while longer than my 1TB drive.I get about 110mb per second write speed when transfering large files in Windows.So overall, I'm pleased with this at the moment, I just hope it turns out to be as robust as my 1TB versions.
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1.9.2014

I got this hard drive to use with an Xbox One. The XB1's 500GB internal drive may sound quite capacious, but it fills up surprisingly quickly, especially when the basic installations of some games (such as Wolfenstein: The New Order) take up almost 45GB on their own. There's also a theoretical speed boost to be gained from using an external drive - the XB1's internal SATA II drive is limited to 3Gb/s, while USB 3.0 maxes out at 5Gb/s - though the gain is minimal in reality, especially when using a relatively inexpensive hard drive such as this one. Loading times may be marginally reduced, though you'd be hard pushed to put exact numbers on the reductions.What you do get with WD's Elements is large capacity for all those games you'll be buying in the future,great build quality, flawless operation, and a look that goes very well with the Xbox One. Though the drive is more rounded than the XB1, the top of it sports vents that look very similar to the vents on the right-hand side of the console. Also like the console, the LED on the front of the drive is white (a more bluish shade of white, though it's really splitting hairs).The final point in this hard drive's favour is its noise level. It's very quiet. In fact, when used with an Xbox One it doesn't seem to add any extra noise at all - or, at least, the noise it produces simply blends in with that of the console. If you're looking for an external hard drive to expand the capacity of your Xbox One, then you can't really go wrong with this one.
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5.5.2020

I wanted the biggest capacity I could find that is compatible with a PS4 whilst not breaking the bank. This 4TB HD seemed to fit the bill. The 500GB drive on the standard PS4 isn't enough for more than a few games and i only have 1 digital version (GTA V) and the rest are on physical disk. I reckon even the 1TB Pro version needs an upgrade like this.Installation - it was so easy I can't remember the exact steps and didn't need to follow any instructions. You pug it into one of the powered USB ports on the front with the lead that comes with it and it's on. The PS4 did prompt me to tell me which menu to find it in. You do need to format it the first time which just means it makes it ready for PS4 instead of a PC.This took about 5 seconds to complete. The bit that took the time was moving my existing games / saved games over to the external drive. Might have taken an hour or 2 but you only need to do this once. Also the time will depend on how many games you need to move over.Since then I've forgotten about it. You can't hear it at all. It's black and fits in with the PS4 (see picture). Now I feel more comfortable downloading games rather than buying physical disks. Really useful if you have a PS Plus subscription as you'll get new games every month for free!There are several brands out there and I read a lot of reviews. I just went with this as others said it was PS4 friendly and I can vouch for that.
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18.4.2019

With media content and photographs bloating in size year after year, my current set-up of 2 1TB hard drives, a 500GB hard drive and relying on the 500GB on my laptop have meant that I needed to seriously re-address my storage needs. Having looked at a NAS solution, I couldn't really justify spending hundreds of pounds on a solution that I wouldn't really need. The WD Elements external hard drive was on special offer for £83 so I picked it up.The hard drive enclosure itself was smaller than I expected so it won't take up much room. There's a power supply, USB cable and a manual with loads of T&Cs written in more languages than you can shake a stick at.First thing to note is that after formatting,you only get 5.45TB of hard drive space. I was expecting this was as you never get the full capacity because of the formatting system that Windows employs. I'm not sure what capacity would be available under EXFAT, MacOS and various Linux OSes. In operation, the unit is spookingly quite compared to my old Seagate and Iomega drives. The only sign of activity is a faint flashing LED light on the front of the unit. Using an old HP laptop, the write speed was around 20mb/s. That is slow but considering the age of the laptop, I'm surprised it kept up. On a modern set-up, you'll probably get significantly faster speeds.All in one, I'm happy with this external drive until I need more space in future.
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21.9.2019

I don't believe in negative reviews for hard drives.The fact and reality of hard drives is that not 100% of everyone will always receive a 100% functional one. Defective products exist, especially hard drives. So when I look at the negative reviews, I'm thinking, "what, do these people really expect WD to test a hard drive until it actually fails?". That would be absurd.A hard drive failing or heating up or experiencing some other random form of a malfunction, doesn't warrant a negative review in my opinion. That's how technology works. Sometimes you receive a faulty product and sometimes you don't so you can't hold it against the company.I have had a Seagate Portable Expansion drive fail on me from simply knocking it.I was distraught to lose everything, but I still trust Seagate and I trust my current Seagate 3TB Desktop Expansion Drive. It's years old and still functions without any issues.And I trust I will be able to get as much use out of my Western Digital as I can. If it fails, then it fails. Its inevitable and so long as I have a backup of everything, that's all that matters.People need to stop complaining and realize technology will never be perfect. You paid for the hard drive and therefore you take the risk of it failing at any point.LPT: Never have only one hard drive.
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5.12.2018

This is the cheapest way to get a multi terabyte drive - in fact, despite the fact it is a standard desktop drive in a USB caddy complete with PSU and USB lead, it is still cheaper than buying the desktop drive alone!I am currently using it to back up my NAS system, and as this only has USB 2.0 ports, I can't really comment on the drive speed. However, I will say that it has been writing to the drive non stop for 3 hours, and the unit it only slightly warm, and virtually silent in operation (the small LED on the front is the only way to tell that anything is happening at all!) So far, so good - but there are a couple of niggles that show that it has been built to a budget.Firstly,the high gloss plastic wraparound case is horrendous for picking up fingerprints - the worst I have come across in my life. This is possibly something to be aware of if the drive is going to be handled frequently. Which brings me onto the second point - the edges on the plastic wraparound are not finished off well at all, leading to very sharp edges - not badly enough to cut you, but not far off.So, if it's a drive that is going to be handled, I'd look elsewhere. However, if it's a drive that will be in a single location, or for very occasional backups, it's an absolute bargain.
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11.12.2018

Excellent external drives returning excellent speeds for large files, but like most mechanical drives small files are much slower. These are perfect for backups and storing video. The drives are both quiet even in operation.10TB: Large Files: Read 208 Write 165 Small Files Read: 0.83 Write 2.914TB: Large Files: Read 205 Write 171 Small Files Read: 0.83 Write 2.8Inside the 10TB drive I found a WD100EMAZ white drive with 256MB Cache. Part Number 2W10228It is easy to use a flat screw driver to prise off the plastic outer casing. Then gently work out the four rubber corners. Unscrew the two Philips screws holding the SATA to USB-3 converter. Finally gently pull the drive from caddy – and you are done.I am not very practical, but found this easy.Once extracted: The performance is very similar to a WD Red 10 TB NAS drive. It has the same version of Firmware, the same SMART parameters, but across a range of benchmarks is very slightly slower (<5%).10TB White Drive: 210.2 MB/s Read and 209.3 MB/s WriteWD 10TB RED NAS: 213.8 MB/s Read and 214.6 MB/s WriteI have installed this in my Synology DS918+ and it is working well. Very happy.I have also installed this into a Synology DS119j and it is fully compatible.The only down side is goodbye warranty.
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10.10.2016

After having a problem with a Seagate hard drive, I decided to return to Western Digital as I've had very few issues with their drives. I bought the 4TB drive which came in a professional looking box inside of which was the hard drive itself packed in a solid cardboard frame to prevent damage in transit, the power cable, a USB lead and an instruction manual. I am using a Windows 10 PC and setting up the hard drive was just a matter of plugging in the power cable and USB lead following which Windows 10 recognized the drive immediately. I didn't need to format the drive and was able to start transferring my files straight away.As this has a USB 3.0 connection,the transfer rate is quicker than USB 2.0 - between 25 and 31mb per second. It's very quiet when transferring data and when not in use the only way you can tell if it's on is by the small blue light at the front. The size of the unit is a little smaller than a thick hardback book, but it looks sleek and stylish and doesn't take up a lot of room on my desk. Of course, all hard drives fail eventually but hopefully that will not be for a few years, and I always create backup to two different external drives for safety. So far, it has worked perfectly and I'm glad that I reverted to Western Digital.
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2.12.2014

I bought this to replace a smaller volume HP backup drive which was full and I've been using it about a month. It's simplicity itself to set up - just plug it in the mains power point, attach by USB to your computer (which will recognise it immediately) and off you go. You can organise backups for specific times and days or allow it to backup whenever you make changes to a file. You can also choose how many backup copies you wish to keep. The first FULL backup is completed during setup and can take a while (about 2 hours in my case), thereafter backups are fast and efficient. It is TOTALLY silent (no noisy fan), it doesn't get hot not even warm,and there is just a tiny white light flashing intermittently on the front to tell you it's operating. If you need to restore an item from backup it is easy to find the file. It's a bit smaller than the average paperback book (and surprisingly heavy) but sits unobtrusively on non-slip rubber feet on your desk or nearby - be aware that the USB cable is only about 4' long which may limit where you can place it. So far I am very pleased with it.
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21.3.2015

Bought the 2tb version to add storage to my Xbox one....as i was running out.Took it out plugged it in and my xbox recognised it immediately .....I formatted it and was ready to go...in literally 2minutes.......I transferred all my games over about 389gb...Took me 2 hours to comeplete.. I was shocked how quick.I did read someone's review on here that u can't download games straight to it of the marketplace....you have to download them to your internal drive first and transfer ....this didn't seem to be the case for me....as I had some games that i bought digitally before I purchased the WD 2TB and had to uninstall due to lack of space (but you can re download because you have purchasedthem)......but they went straight to my external drive which was great (as long as you set it as your default storage)......however I haven't bought/downloaded anything new yet from marketplace with the new external drive connected so ...I will try next.All in all..brilliant product and I would recommend to anyone for a cheap and great way to add storage to there Xbox one!
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