WD 5TB Elements portable external hard drive, USB 3.0 interface, portable external storage, Plug-and-Play, SuperSpeed USB 3.2 Gen 1, Formatted for PC and Mac, Black

I bought 2x 14TB HDD for £190 on Amazon Prime Day sale as a upgrade to my home server (and backup server) storage.Each machine was running a 8TB Toshiba, 4TB WD and 4TB Seagate. Intention is to eventually replace one of the 4TBs from each machine.But for now, they are running plugged into the USB ports.The drives arrived safely boxed and plugging in and switching on was very easy, with no drivers required. I reformatted them and copied the data from one the 4TB drives over. This was particularly painful and took about 2 days over the USB interface, achieving around 36MByte/s when I was checking which wasn't really USB 3.0 speed but more USB 2 speed. Though this could be down to my ageing servers rather than the drives.The drives themselves ran with relatively little noise, I'd say there were quieter in the enclosure than my Toshiba 8TB drives were inside my PC cases! The drives themselves did get quite warm, but not hot, certainly less warm than the Toshibas (though those did run hot)Once these bed in for a few more days and I've copied my data across, I will test my next plan and update the review accordingly...Update 20 Oct 2020: Having opened up the case, the drives are 14TB WD140EMFZ drives. I've "shucked" the drives out and attached them directly to the SATA connectors on my PCs. This has then yielded the full potential of the performance of these drives.I've sequential read of around 190MByte/s transfer speeds now which is pretty damn good considering it's in a 5 year old PC. Perfectly adequate for a PC storage drive or NAS drive. Random Read/Write is pretty bad, but in this age, spinning disks really are not the solution for such operations and I suggest you get yourself a cheap SSD for that sort of usage.Update 17 Nov 2020: These drives have been running flawlessly for a month now. My backup server had a PSU failure and upon replacing PSU, the drive (and others) carried on working falwlessly.To answer a comment. These drives when shucked out are exactly the same as form factor and data and power connectivity as any standard SATA internal 3.5" drive. screw holes etc are all in standard places.Update 23 Apr 2021: These drives have now been running for 6 months. I've upgrade my backup server and now both machines are running 24/7. Both 14TB drives still seem fine with currently no indications of any issues. Hopefully, touch wood this will keep going this way for a long time...

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, I can't fault these drives so far.My only concern is the varying write speeds. A few of the hard drives I have purchased seem to have much faster write speeds than others despite being the same model.I do not know why this is but others have mentioned possible cost cutting and use of slower drives/materials.It can be frustrating but isn't too bad on the whole, it just means waiting a few minutes more.Lastly, PLEASE DO NOT leave your hard drive on all the time!The heat generated will impact the drive and can lead to problems.These drives shouldn't be left unused for a long time but should NOT be used constantly as a seperate drive.They are for storage/backup of larger files to decrease file space on your pc/laptop.If you feel like the hard drive is getting hot or been on for a long time, then please safely eject the device and allow it to cool down.Overall I'm very happy with my purchase. Delivery was very fast and Amazon were much cheaper than any where else.I will definitely be buying another one in the future and hope Western Digital continue making high quality but affordable products like this.

I've bought many of these to use in my NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices. I've had the 18TB, 20TB, 22TB and 24TB versions of this drive bought at various times over the last few years. All have been reliable (the 22TB which I am writing the review on is over a year old and is working fine).Always check the drive works and is free of errors before removing from the device. I've not had any drive dead on arrival but always best to check as your warranty may be voided once you remove from the enclosure. The drives are easy to remove (search online to see how to do it).One thing to be aware of is that larger hard drives are more noisy generally. In general operation, the noise is not too bad but you may find in an array there's a bit of noise when they all start up together.It's a bit of a shame that manufacturers put a premium on standalone hard drives as it's not great for the environment to buy in enclosures when you know you're going to remove it – even if you recycle the enclosure and the power adaptor. But this is a far cheaper way to get large drives.I would recommend these as a reliable and cheaper alternative to drives marketed as NAS drives. Always do a bit of research first though to see what people recommend at the time of purchase. Reddit is usually a good place to check.

Really reliable drive and cheap for the amount of compatible storage offered compared to competitors. Would given this 5 stars, but the drive connections at both ends are somewhat loose-fitting and easily disengaged with the slightest knock.

Great external storage solution for pc or mac or games console