10.1.2020

It was less than 2 years ago that I purchased an 8Tb Seagate Backup hub Plus external drive - what I thought then was a "big" drive, but found I had filled that up all to soon. I use this drive to backup my NAS which stores all my media, so as this slowly grew in size, I needed to get myself a higher capacity drive.Enter the Western Digital 14Tb Elements drive, which at £249 at the time of writing, represents pretty decent value considering I paid £179 for the aforementioned 8Tb Seagate model a couple of years back. Strangely, if I want to buy the equivalent drive as a bare unit i.e not housed in an external enclosure with all the additional electronics that entails, it would actually cost me over £300!Why a less expensive to produce version should cost more than one in an enclosure is beyond me.The WD unit is rather like a heavy book in that one edge is curved, rather reminding me of the spine of a hard back. On this surface you will find the single power/activity LED which is quite small. The drive has small rubber feet such that it stands in a vertical orientation - like a book in a book case. This is perhaps the best orientation for air flow given the vented top and rear edges. I personally don't really like drives standing up like this, it's too vulnerable to being knocked if its stood on a busy desk. Lying flat is OK, but I think my unit ran a little hotter like that. I don't know why WD do not provide an optional to fit stand with wider feet to provide better stability. Such a simple plastic stand would cost next to nothing to produce and would give customers the option to have a more secure base.That minor gripe aside, the drive itself is impressive in its performance. Unlike the Seagate which was an SMR type drive and thus termed an "archive" drive which suffered from slow write performance at just 38.7 Mb/sec sequential writes according to my Crystal Disk Mark test, the WD Elements 14Tb drive tested at an impressive 214Mb/sec read and write sequential transfer rate. For reference, the Seagate tested at around 118Mb/sec sequential read as I recall.As with these large capacity drives, the head seek action is quite heavy, far heavier than my internal 2Tb drives and will feel like the drive is suffering from a fit of the shakes when initializing after a power on Not an issue, but worthy of note to those who may think they have received a faulty unit. The previously mentioned 8Tb Seagate had a heavy seek action too, but not as heavy as this monster from WD, I can only imagine it may have to do with the high platter count such high capacity hard drives have.These external drives actually appear to run warmer than internal drives, so it's advisable to situate the drive somewhere where it is not penned in by other items. The drive performed flawlessly when I backed up my entire NAS to it over my horribly slow USB 2 connection on the NAS (only one I have) and took some 81.5 hours to complete the transfer of some 7.3Tb of data. So, it is certainly able to operate continuously for that length of time without issue. Of course, had I backed up via a USB 3 connection, then the transfer would've been far faster.I suggest that purchasers of this drive, as with all Western Digital drives, register them on the WD website in order to ensure the full warranty cover.The drive comes complete with the required power and USB cables of generous lengths. The drive has no power switch as such, so once connected to power and an active USB port, will power up. This drive seems to be smart enough to power down/enter standby if the connected computer is shut down or goes to sleep.Connected to a Windows 10 PC, the drive reports 12.7Tb available. Of course, 12.7Tb is what I call "proper" Terra bytes despite hard drive manufacturers deeming a Tb to be an even 1,000Gb where as I, being old school, see a Tb as 1,024Gb hence the 12.7Tb shown in Windows. That's fine, not a WD thing as all manufacturers go with this system of measurement. The drive's default volume label is "Elements", but of course you can change this is you so wish. Nothing required to do if using with a Windows based computer, so you can immediately start copying files to it once connected as the drive is pre formatted using NTFS. Mac users will either need to reformat or use a utility to permit use of NTFS filesystems. No backup software is supplied with this drive unlike the My Book series from WD. however, this is a bonus as I generally prefer not to use the software provided by the manufacturer for this purpose anyway. A quick note to those less computer savvy; There are numerous free backup programs for Windows you can use if you need backup software..This Western Digital 14Tb Elements is an impressive drive at an impressive price.

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...

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,

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,

6.10.2019

I'm one of those people who keeps close track of family foto's and homevideo's, quite meticulously for the past few decades. It's very valuable to all of the family and enjoyable to watch it back the photo's in particular. It costs me at least 30 minutes per week to sort, maintain and store. As such I've collected 10.000's of photo's and over 2 TB in homevideo's. Ah, and then there is a converted children's iPad movie library as well. And of course our digital admin..We have a reliable Apple network drive and several LaCie hard discs to feed our systems and home network.Yet aside from local network back-ups. I want at least one disconnected drive stored at an other location that the primary home with a reasonable back up.

7.1.2017

At present my files are being stored on two Toshiba eStore Canvio 3TB external drives, but in practise only my images and music files are strictly being backed up to one of these drives from my laptop. The remaining movie files of my DVD and VHS collection have been uploaded for easy and quick access for streaming to my TV. So whilst I have "hard copy" as it were of my movie collection, the collection as a whole is not being backed up.Taking into account the storage I would need, 4TB is sufficient so I opted for this Western Digital model as having a good price/storage ratio.When the unit arrived I noticed a small tick on the outside of the packaging indicating W10. This is quite small and could easily be missed.

6.8.2014

This HDD has many possible uses, but this review is from the standpoint of using it as external storage on the XBOX ONE console.After being thoroughly fed-up with having to manage the ludicrously-small internal drive of my XBOX ONE, the June 2014 system update that included the option to add external storage was extremely welcome. So, I decided to treat myself to an external HDD, and after a bit of research, decided on this offering from Western Digital.Setting-up was very easy. Once connected, the unit was immediately recognised by the console and formatting it for use took just a few seconds. A word of warning about this though - I have read that once the HDD has been configured as an XBOX ONE device,

17.12.2018

Western Digital make great quality external hard drives and I have never had any issues with any of them...so far!touch woodI would always recommend getting a smaller size hard drive (4tb max size) if possible as they can fail and losing so much data (6tb+) can be difficult to take.I've also read that larger size hard drives are more likely to fail but cannot confirm this.These devices are incredibly easy to setup and use.Just plug in the USB cable and you're away.Note: I would highly recommend using a 3.0 usb slot when transferring large files.USB 3.0 does downgrade to USB 2.0 slots but the speeds are so much slower.If you dont have a usb 3.0 lot then use the 2.0 slot but if your desktop pc has multiple drives then make sure you use the faster 3.0 slot.As mentioned before,

29.12.2017

When this 4TB Western Digital portable HDD came up in an offer I jumped at the chance to store most of my digital life on it as a backup. Then with acres of space left to use I put all my digital movies on there along with my photos and music. It's great, capacious, quiet and so far very reliable. As USB3 it is also very fast at moving data back and forth when hooked up to a USB3 port. At this capacity USB3 is pretty much essential if you're moving large chunks of data or streaming a movie from it.But that's when we hit the problem that for me made it a 4-star experience.On my USB2 laptop it is fine moving modest amounts of data around, on my USB3 desktops it can shift vast amounts of data back and forth.

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

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,

17.9.2019

Model: WD Elements 8TBPrice: £129.99I bought this 8TB model whilst it was in a deal for £129.99 and as such it represents great value for money, and is significantly cheaper than a bare drive.Being from the Elements range, this is literally just a bare 3.5" desktop hard disk in an SATA-to-USB3 enclosure. That's it - no fancy backup buttons, no hidden partition containing software tools that autorun when the device is plugged in, no onboard encryption, literally just a hard disk in an enclosure. And that is exactly what I wanted.Performance over the USB3 interface is good, with a benchmarked sustained transfer speed of around 200 MB/s peaking to over 300 MB/s for certain block sizes.

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.

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,

24.2.2020

If you want cheap, good quality and large capacity hard disk - this is the game in town: you get a "white label" Helium (8TB and higher capacities) that is pretty much the same as the Red version for 1/2 the price. And with a spare USB3 (UASP) case that you can keep or sell.- "Elements" - this product - gets you a non-SED (unencrypted) firmware White HDD. The other version "My Book" gets you a SED (encrypted) firmware White HDD. Thus with this version you can remove disk with files and read over SATA/other enclosure - as it's not encrypted.- 8TB and higher are non-SMR (at this time 2019/2020) Helium disks thus good performance (over 200MB/s read/write) so try to get these versions not 6TB and lower.

Western Digital Elements Portable 500GB (WDBUZG5000ABK) - Reviews

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