WD 20TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 external hard drive for plug-and-play storage - WDBWLG0200HBK-NESN

Used or refurbished. Loud spinning noises when loading. Shakes the desk. Takes a minute to wake up from sleeping.

It performs as expected. For storing LARGE quantities of information, it works well. It is not the fastest solution, but it is also not all that expensive for the amount of data that it holds. I own several of these USB drives and none have failed. Great value for the cost.

Works exactly like I would expect a Western Digital product would. Ive trusted them for years. Well worth the price.

It works seamlessly with my Mac.

I picked up one of these for use as an external backup drive. I plugged the power supply into a smart switch set to turn on at a specific time and then it shuts off a couple hours later and during this time I have a scheduled backup that runs. This way the drive is not constantly powered and it is protected from malicious attack (such as ransomware) during the offline times and it saves runtime from the drive itself preserving its lifespan. Speeds on the drive are exactly as expected and are easily enough for normal use. The drive does get bit warm because its only convection cooled so I dont recommend you enclose it too much for it can reduce lifespan. I noticed that the drive doesnt seem to like to go to sleep while the computer is on no matter how long it sits untouched but I suspect it may be windows causing this but changing various settings never resolved the issue. Roughly every 5 seconds the drive makes a small thump sound/vibration that can be heard only in a very quiet room but this is confirmed normal operation and its actually a method of self preservation. If the sound bothers you then I dont suggest you use the drive as a pillow to sleep on as its really very quiet and the sound is a deep note so it does not carry at all (note: I am 28 and my hearing is very good and it still doesnt bother me). General Drive Tips: Hard drives are extremely sensitive to movement while operating and I strongly recommend against moving one at all while it is on. Unplug the drive from power before moving it and NEVER allow an operating drive to tip over. Also never assume any drive or storage device of any kind (HDD, SSD, USB Stick, CD, etc...) is safe from failure and thus never store anything important on only a single drive. If you cant afford to lose it you certainly can afford to save it more than one place.

I bought this to go with my late 2017 iMac running Windows 10 on bootcamp. I had a 2TB solid state 2TB drive that I was using for backups that after many years of service, finally failed. I had built a 2TB thunderbolt drive to capture video from World of Warships gameplay. Recently, it started to give me fits where the drive would need o be remapped with a new drive letter before capture. I have spent more than a few hours trying to figure that out with no success. Time to get some drive support. I broke this drive into 2 partitions each of about 4TB. One for video and the other for backup. I have the drive connected via a USB hub that has another drive and shall we say a lot of stuff hanging off the hub (UPS feed, apple watch charger, various dongle chargers, etc). Why cant we have one dongle connector port? So how does the drive preform? Very well! I found the transfer speed from the thunderbolt drive to be acceptable. I wasnt trying to set speed records but it managed a large data transfer without issue while running a backup at the same time. Is it as fast as SSD, no. I didnt expect it to be. I was lucky eough not to get one that makes weird noises. As a guy who remembers the day when he paid almost $2K for a 20MB external HD and talking with coworkers about being able to by HD for a dollar a MEG, this is great. 8TB that I can grab in a hurry in case of hurricanes is just crazy.

Way low per TB price

Not my first Western Digital hard drive which was why it was easy to make the decision to purchase this one. Tranferring files was easy, though time consuming which is a comment on my archive. For a reliable storage device I confidently buy & recoommend WD!

If your purpose of buying this drive is to Shuck(remove it from its enclosure to use as internal drive) I would recommend you do at least a s.m.a.r.t check with windows command line chkdsk while its still enclosed to see if it came bad out of the box because you will void warranty, so you cant send it back after you shuck it and find a bad drive in the enclosure. Both my 6TB and 8TB came with WD white label WDC WD80EDAZ models. Strangely enough my 6TB did not require the 3.3 volt pin mod in order to be recognized by windows but my 8TB did, I bought them about a couple month apart so who knows if they changed it. I also want to note that even after the 3.3 volt pin mod on my 8TB, it was still not showing up in windows. Showed up as a strange size in EaseUS partition manager but was hidden in Windows disk manager but was visible in Diskpart in cmd. I want to stress that even with the mod it took a fair bit of noodling to get it to work in windows. I had to erase the partition via the enclosure connected then mod it, than connected it via sata and sata power(I also tried creating a partition in ANOTHER enclosure because my pc was too messy and large for me to mess with currently but ended up having to anyways to get it to work). Still didnt show up until I ran diskpart in cmd to see if it saw it, it did but then had to run clean command before it let me erase or create any partitions with it. This wasnt as simple as some reddit posts or youtube videos made it out to be. So just a fair bit of warning to anyone who hasnt done this before, its doable just more work than youd expect, if youve done some troubleshooting in the past i believe you would be able to handle the process. The most annoying would be the 3.3 volt mod as that required a bit more finesse with chubby fingers and poor eye sight. Some say you need to cover the one pin but i saw others mention that you can cover the remaining pins with no issue so i went that route, it made it easier to cut and cover with electrical tape and scissors. The drive itself. The 8TB runs pretty damn hot outside of the enclosure, temperature was 50-55C, laying bare on the wood table while i was copying about 3.5 TB of data to it about nine hours process, I cant imagine how hot it runs INSIDE the enclosure it came in(the enclosure does not have any fans only air gaps for it to exhaust). When i stuck it in my case with a lot of airflow, 2 140 fans front intake hitting the drive directly, they ran at 28-30C. A lot more reasonable. I dont really care about the speed I just want reliable storage to hold all my data backups and it seems ok, will edit if it fails within a few months etc. The temp it was running at bare kind of sucks so your mileage will vary. Currently copying data to it so cant do a speed test, you can probably find another review posting speed so look at their review for that. What an annoyance to get this thing running, but the savings was worth it I guess.

If youre anything like me, you never seem to have enough storage space for your digital files. Luckily, the WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive is here to solve that problem once and for all. This is an impressive piece of hardware that can hold a massive amount of data, making it perfect for anyone who needs to store large files or multiple backups. The first thing youll notice about the WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive is its sleek and minimalist design. It has a simple, black exterior with a small WD logo on the front. The drive is surprisingly compact for its storage capacity and will easily fit on any desk or in a cabinet. The enclosure is made of durable materials, and the drive itself feels sturdy and well-built. Setting up the WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive is a breeze. Simply plug it into your computers USB 3.0 port, and youre good to go. The drive is pre-formatted for Windows, but you can easily reformat it for use with a Mac if needed. Once connected, youll have access to 8 terabytes of storage space thats both fast and reliable. Speaking of speed, the WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive is surprisingly fast for an external drive. It uses USB 3.0 technology, which provides data transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps. This means you can transfer large files quickly and easily without having to wait around for hours. One thing that sets the WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive apart from other external drives is its compatibility with WDs backup software. This software allows you to back up your files automatically and even schedule backups to occur at specific times. This feature is incredibly useful if youre looking for an easy way to protect your data. Overall, I highly recommend the WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive to anyone who needs a lot of storage space. Its fast, reliable, and easy to use, making it an excellent choice for both personal and professional use. So if youre tired of running out of storage space, do yourself a favor and invest in the WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive.