WD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive Review: A Reliable Storage Companion

My laptop was running out of space between work/games/school/etc, and I needed a big hard drive to keep all of my movies/shows/videos, and to be able to move/transfer/play them from somewhere else easily. This has worked perfectly for that so far. It's no flash drive, but it's portable enough to be able to put in a backpack and take wherever I need. Plug+play, and haven't really noticed any lag in the folders like I have with other WD Elements HDD's I've bought before, and it's been a year since I bought this. 3.5/4.5 TB used so far without issues, doesn't even make much noise/heat up a ton like others. If you need to hoard a bunch of data or have a lot of shows/movies you want all on one big drive, then this is a great option. Simple and effective, relatively cheap too. Would definitely recommend!

Worked Great on a brand new 2022 MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro Chip. It's amazing how cheap HDDs are now. I will continue buying them until the price of external SDDs goes down. You can literally get twice as much storage capacity with HDDs for half the price of a SSD. As always, with external drives used to do backups on Mac computers, you must reformat the disk before doing the backup and this WD is no different. Reformatting is a very easy task as always, and it takes no more than a few minutes to get the external drive ready for your Mac. However, I ran into some issues with Time Machine on the newest version of Monterey (the one that came installed in the laptop). It seems like it no matter what format you choose when reformatting the external drive, Time Machine automatically reformats the drive on its own to the new Apple File System (APFS) when you do your first backup. Not only that, but once Time Machine reformats the drive to APFS and completes the backup, then it blocks the HDD and you cannot use it to save anything else in it, drop files, etc. It basically locks the drive for backups only. Oh, and with the APFS format you cannot use the drive to backup older Apple computers. I NEVER had this happened in any of my Apple computers before. I tried a few other HDDs from other brands to ensure this was not an issue of the WD brand. They all did the same, so I knew it was an Apple software glitch issue. It took several calls to Apple to figure out that yes, Time Machine does this. The only way around this issue is to create a "new volume" in the external HDD. Then you can use the separate volume to save other things, drop files, etc. You could create as many volumes as you can, and the APFS makes it very easy. When you plug the HDD, the volume for the backup pops on your desktop (Time Machine color), along with any other volumes you created (yellow color). Hope this saves somebody out there a lot of frustration and aggravation trying to figure out what the issue with Time Machine and external drives using the newest Monterey version. I also hope Apple fixes this problem. It makes no sense that you select a specific reformat option but then Time Machine ignores it and reformats to APFS against your wish and block the drive in the process. The WD external drive works great. It is a really great value for 2TBs of storage, and it is a very small and lightweight drive. All the issues mentioned are specific to the Apple operating system that would happen with any HDD of any brand.

Great item no noise when plugging in. Great value for the money. When storing everything off your hard drive of your tower, your desktop etc. Holds quite a bit of capacity.

Awesome product easy to use and install works exactly how I needed and it's pretty small which is a plus for relocating it

I want to clarify, this HD does exactly what it's meant to, exceptionally. It is plug n play, it requires no formatting or complicated software, its transfer rates are great & it has a rugged protective design that means it'll last a long time. BUT I want to let folks know, specifically, if they're utilizing USB wireless devices such as a keyboard, mouse, etc; You must plug this in as far away from the recievers for those devices as possible. In fact, if you have a laptop, I recommend using a far longer cord & putting the HD as far away as the Hard Drive allows. To be clear, I'm not sure this is a real manufacturing or producer error, this just seems like signal interference inherent to the power output of the hard drive. It WILL cause your mouse, keyboard, etc to lag. It can cause wireless connections to drop. If you have a little plug in USB reciever for any device you use on your computer, move it to the opposite side from the HD. In fact, try to keep the HD out of the line of signal entirely AND as far away from it as possible. If you plug a WD Elements Portable External Hard Drive & experience: - Lag of keyboard input - Lag of wireless mouse input - Intermittent or disruptive wireless disconnections - Signal or Detection dropout of a microphone or webcam using a wireless reciever It is because of the WD Elements Portable Hard Drive. It is not an error, it's not malfunctioning, it is just disrupting the signal. Get a long USB transfer cord, or turn your laptop, or MOVE your wireless recievers so the HD is not between them & the device. I swear, it's working fine, it's super easy to work around, you do not need to refund/return, etc. The product is great, I'm just writing this to thank the seller & also to make sure anyone googling this has a clear, reliable, understandable result in search as to what to do. Your computer isn't dying, nothing's wrong, it's just way too much in the airways.

The price is okay, and the product works perfectly! I do wish it was a little cheaper and that it came with a case but It arrived on time in excellent condition. I highly recommend both the product and the seller!

Llevo años usando el producto y aún funciona sin problema, puedo almacenar películas de tos del disco y lo mejor la velocidad en la que viaja la información..