WD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive for Windows, USB 3.2 Gen 1/USB 3.0 for PC & Mac, Plug and Play Ready - WDBU6Y0020BBK-WESN

TL;dr – it works great. Treat it with respect, be prepared to toss the cable it comes with (because they fail) and enjoy a huge amount of storage for a reasonable amount of money.You’ve probably read a ton of reviews on external drives and have arrived here. I’ve been in the tech biz over 44 years and was there when 128Kbyte 8” floppy disks were considered advanced. I’ve used a LOT of different drives.Let’s put this drive into perspective: it is NOT a “portable drive”, it’s an external drive that you can choose to move from place to place. AS WITH ALL SUCH DRIVES, it contains precision moving parts; if you drop it, it will likely break. If you move it around when it’s operating, it probably won’t like it. If you drop your laptop, it will likely break. If you want an external drive that you can really move around, get an SSD.I purchased one of these drives for cloud-storage and archival purposes. Simply put, I needed somewhere to dump large data collections for essentially read-only access as well as having a buffer area for cloud storage synchronization purposes (lots of r/w access to the drive). It worked so well I purchased another and might even get a 3rd.Cloud storage is great for frequently accessed data, but for your video collection, your vast music collection or the 130GB of pictures your spouse took last month, you might want off-line storage. This is a great choice.Is it fast? Slower than an SSD but faster than many external hard drives out there. If you want speed, use the local SSD in your device or get an external SSD drive. If you don’t want that expense, this is still a great drive.In operation the drive is whisper quiet and runs slightly warm. You may have read about the “click of death”, well, yeah, it happened to me too. It won’t run on an overloaded unpowered USB hub (click, click due to lack of power). The cable it comes with is frankly troublesome and honestly you should invest in a replacement. Yup, click, click, click because the cable failed (fortunately I had another to hand, doesn’t everyone?). All that will happen with other drives too, so it’s nothing unusual.My system: Win10 Pro and Win10 Home on Lenovo, Surface Books and Surface Pro; works out of the box just fine.For those complaining that the drive doesn’t work with some backup software; that’s not the drives fault. For those complaining about the speed for gaming purposes, that’s not the drives’ fault either, you should have purchased an SSD.Yes, it will work with Onedrive; just create a junction from your Onedrive folder to the required folder in the external drive.mklink /J srcFolder destFolderSince you have a large capacity drive for large data sets, robocopy (part of Windows) will be your friend as well as mklink to create junctions from your main drive to connection points in external drives filesystems.What happens if the drive goes down? As with any other drive, you might have lost your data. The solution is to (gasp) purchase two drives and sync one with the other.Pro’s: 5TB of storage for <$100. Quiet, fast and gets the job done. It’s a disk drive, it’s not there to be exciting.Con’s: I didn’t like the cable; invest $6 on a better one. As with ALL DRIVES, you need to treat it nicely.

I bought another one of these for additional backup of personal pics, vids, and docs. Went with a name brand to feel a little more secure about this not failing but in this case using this for over a year and buying a second one these seem reliable. Small, sleek, pretty straight forward to install for anyone who can use a smart phone. They seem to go on sale often.

During my recent road trip vacation, I relied heavily on the WD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive to store all my photos and videos, and it was an excellent choice. The 2TB capacity was more than enough for my entire trip's media, which included high-resolution photos and videos from multiple devices. The transfer speeds using the USB 3.2 Gen 1/USB 3.0 interface were impressive, allowing me to quickly offload large files without waiting around.Its compact and lightweight design made it easy to carry around in my bag, and I never had to worry about running out of space. The drive is compatible with both Windows and Mac, and I had no issues switching between devices to back up everything on the go.Overall, the WD Elements Portable Hard Drive was a reliable and essential part of my trip, giving me peace of mind knowing my memories were safely stored. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a fast, portable storage solution, especially for travel.

The Western Digital 5TB portable external hard drive has been a lifesaver for my data storage needs! I needed a reliable solution for backing up my large library of photos and pdf crafting templates, and this drive did not disappoint. With a massive 5 terabytes of space, I was able to store everything I needed with room to spare.The setup was incredibly easy—just plug and play. It’s compatible with both Windows and Mac, and transferring files is fast and smooth. The size is perfect too. It’s compact and lightweight, making it easy to carry in my bag without taking up much space or adding extra weight.What I really appreciate is how durable it feels. The casing is sturdy, and it seems like it could handle some bumps while traveling. Which is important because you don't want to lose your files. Overall, this is an excellent external hard drive for anyone needing large storage in a portable format. Highly recommend for photographers, videographers, or anyone needing lots of reliable backup space!