WD 12 TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive – USB 3.0
WD 12 TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive – USB 3.0, Black
Formatted for Windows 10+
The WD Elements desktop hard disk drive is formatted NTFS and compatible with Windows 10+ and can be reformatted for Mac.
Comparison Metric
 WD Elements Desktop |  WD My Book Desktop |  WD My Book Duo Desktop |  WD Elements Portable | |
| Technology | HDD | HDD | HDD | HDD |
| Auto Backup Software | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Great for | Plug-and-play storage | Backup and restore | RAID backup | Portable storage |
| Interface | SuperSpeed USB 3.0/2.0 | SuperSpeed USB 3.2/3.0/2.0 | SuperSpeed USB 3.2/3.0/2.0 | SuperSpeed USB 3.0/2.0 |
| Compatibility | Windows; Mac w/Reformat | Windows; Mac w/Reformat | Windows; Mac w/Reformat | Windows; Mac w/Reformat |
| Hardware Encryption | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Password Protection | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
Will this drive WD Elements Desktop work with my Xbox or PS4? What about my Mac or PC?
Yes, however, it’s best suited for PC or Mac. For the best gaming experience, we recommend the WD_BLACK D50, which is designed for optimal compatibility with Xbox/PS5/PS4.
I’m not computer savvy, is the set-up easy?
Setup is simple! Plug the drive into a USB Type-A 3.0 or 2.0 port using the included USB Type-A cable and open your device’s file manager, such as File Explorer or Finder.
Do you need a battery for the drive to work?
The Elements Desktop drive is powered with the included AC adapter. There is no battery or battery replacement to worry about.
What needs to be done to format this device for mac?
To easily reformat to Mac, plug in the drive, open your Mac’s Disk Utility application, and follow the steps from there. Please note, this will erase any data on the drive.
| Weight: | 870 g |
| Dimensions: | 13.5 x 4.8 x 16.58 cm; 870 Grams |
| Brand: | Western Digital |
| Model: | WDBWLG0120HBK-EESN |
| Colour: | Black |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | Western Digital |
| Dimensions: | 13.5 x 4.8 x 16.58 cm; 870 Grams |
Great value. Best bit was how easy it is to set up. I use an iMac and this required formatting. Simple to do and within minutes am transferring files for storage.
I have two competitor (sounds like something to hold back water) drives purchased a year aprt and after 15 minutes of solid copying during a back up the competitor drives just hang. The WD elements drive though just rocked on and finished the back up.
I shucked mine to use the bare drive in my Synology NAS, they’ve worked perfectly for the past 6 months.
Note, pay close attention to the prices, I paid < 200 for each, for the past couple of months prices have spiralled due the Chia Blockchain craze, that is now dead, but prices are still "high", I suspect the 2 main HDD vendors are artificially doing this - My advice is wait, if your paying 15 per TB, that's a good deal, > 20 per TB is overpriced.
I received three in one purchase (14TB). Two are running WD140EDGZ 7200RPM helium drives and one is running a WD140EDFZ 5400 Helium Drive. Drives run relatively cool for the capacity (i.e max 50 degrees I have seen on large sequential file transfers of around 1TB) considering no fans in the enclosure. Much cooler then my WD_BLACK 8TB external drives which were pushing 60 degrees C on heavy workloads.
All have run without issue in this first few days so no DOA’s
Grea
Works out the box,
Tho I did still do a format, changing to GPT and EXT4 as I’m on linux and the thing has been great to use and is almost full!
Removed the hdd from the enclosure and installed in a computer as it was cheaper at the time than buying a non enclosed hdd. The hdd works great no issues after 2yrs, its fast and reliable.
Been shopping around for a hard disk since my Seagate Expansion Desktop died after 4 years.
Found this which worked out to be under 20/TB – reasonable under current HDD market I thought!
We ended up getting a WD120EDAZ-11F3RA0 in this – does look like a Red but can’t tell whether it is CMR/SMR.
So far working fine but we’ll see!
Great build quality from what we expect from market leaders WD, sturdy, strong, firm and weighty. 4TB is about the safest size drive you’d want and WD do the best around.
I bought this for internal storage – I removed the disk from the casing, and luckily by rejigging a couple of cables I had a spare old-style power cable which doesn’t have that orange stripe (or whatever it was – can’t remember) which meant I could power on the disk without having to mess about with anything.
Anyway, as others have mentioned, there was a weird clicking sound to it – like every 30-60 seconds I think it was, it would make a click. This was a bit annoying at first but my computer is pretty noisy anyway and I usually have headphones on so I didn’t notice it much, but did think that it might not be the best for an htpc. However, at some point it stopped – I really can’t remember the last time I heard it, aside from in the weeks after buying it, so I can only assume it must have stopped within a few months. So maybe it’s fine for an htpc after all, if you can put up with a bit of noise initially.
Can’t comment as to longevity of course, but I’ve been using exclusively WD for over 10 years now and haven’t had a single issue yet. If/when this comes back down to 100 or less, as it did often enough last year, I’ll definitely get another one.
I’m not having much luck with external HDD over the years and have lost Tbs of data, music and video. In the last 7 years I’ve had three fail, but I noticed a pattern. All those that have failed were Seagate drives. In addition to this new one, I have 2 others running, a 5 year old and a 10+ year old one, both 3Tb and both WD drives.
Of course this doesn’t guarantee longevity with this new drive, but after Lacie and Seagate letting me down catastrophically in the past, I feel a little more confident.
The HDD itself is nice looking, like a chunky book. It’s quiet in operation and it doesn’t have a bunch of software on it that I’ll never use. Transfer speed seems good, having backed up 3Tb+ from the failing drive it’s replacing, so hopefully my full media library will be up and running again for a few years before I start panicking again.
I bought these to remove the drive inside and use in my main computer, to do this you need to remove one of the pins but once you’ve done that, they are perfect and a good way to get a drive at a fraction of the cost of the bare drive which shouldn’t be the case but is.
Good storage, but does vibrate and make odd sounds
Simple to use, plug and play. USB 3 read speeds are good as long as they are sequential on larger files. I did a test and it was actually faster than my 1tb 5400 rpm hdd in some read only cases. I do some video editing with large files, so I migrated to this drive from my hdd. I did not notice any performance degredation. The drive does go into power save mode when not being used after a few mins or so. This can cause a delay when opening files in windows explorer as well as when the computer boots up initially. I’m not a verified purchaser as I bought this using my partner’s prime account.
I bought two of these. One to work on and one to use as a back up.
I bought WD because their’s have never crashed on me, unlike some other brands!
Now I have a working hard drive, a back up hard drive, and I use my two smaller hard drives to back up my back up, whilst I’m backing up my ‘working’ hard drive.
After the failure of my earlier hard drives (not WD ones) I now always back up my back up!
Still looking for another at this price to replace ageing Drobo. Used this one as a mass backup, kept off site and brought in monthly to update – a Seagate 8TB does my TimeMachine backups 24/7 and the Drobo keeps 20 years of files. Now those are also on this drive as Drobos are about as reliable as central hearing boilers.
Good storage optio
Got this to expand my nas storage. Was very easy to shuck based on a YouTube video, note this will invalidate warranty unless you put it back in the case. Reading other reviews it is a wd white drive to which is similar to the red drives but at a fraction of the costs. Been running it for a few months and works great. Didn’t need to do any modifications / tape on the drive just worked in the synology nas drive.
Had this for three months now and its working fine as a backup drive. Is seems pretty fast for what it is (ie pure backup rather than a work drive), its quiet and was formatted for my Mac. Thankfully it doesn’t come with a Western Digital baked in partition as one of my other older WD drives has and which you simply can’t overwrite – I suspect this was because it was a PC formatted drive. It’s USB rather than USB-C and it seems to require being plugged into my laptop rather than just attached to a usb hub which is odd as it’s not drawing power via usb.
For the price this is a rock solid hard drive. I use it as a backup drive for programming, audio and video related work. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of space.
The may sound silly bought i wanted a back up for my nas dive system,so i got this.
And as yet it works fine,although it can be a little noisy at times.
But i have a easy work around,just put something soft underneath to deaden the sound.
Maybe a little too early writing this as I’ve only had them up and running a couple of days, but so far so good. They do seem a little noisy, but then I’m using the new MacBook Pro M1, which is silent, and this is a disc drive. The HDDs in my pc weren’t silent, but with fans often running, you didn’t notice them.
I will update here if I get any problems, but my experience of WD to date tells me these will work fine.
(I like how in the review page, Amazon ask you to rate three areas: Storage capacity, it’s as big as you paid for. Tech support, if I need it I guess I’ll let you know. Portability, it’s a desktop HDD! Weird).
I have several of these and they’re good hard drives but beware they aren’t true size. Most manufacturers trick us, they class a terabyte as a million mb when a true terabyte should be 1048576 mb, there’s also a percentage that isn’t useable space so it’s very disappointing that they rip us off the way they do and defend themselves by saying a “decimal terabyte” is 1000000 mb. There needs to be a change in the law to make companies keep to the binary measurements before this goes the way of the chocolate bars and get even smaller.
Good Drive - if you do not mind voiding warranty
I bought this (12TB Version) for the drive itself, as it is more cost effective to buy a drive in an enclosure than a drive itself.
Once removed this was a White Drive, and required a small fix for the 3.3v pin which “prevents” the drive being used as an internal drive on older PSUs ~ online guide and a slither of Sellotape and it is now working happily in my NAS
tech support is 3 star, as didn’t have any” tech support” besides google, but needed to resolve the 3.3v pin which took all of a couple of minutes (booting machine, seeing not identified, taking drive back out and cutting a slither of said non conductive tape, plugging back in and voila)
Portability, 3 star, it was portable once… not anymore. the Base Mounting Screw ports are different from standard, and only 3 would line up for my specific mounting bracket ~ it is in fine, it is just down to my case
The drive itself is heftier than my usual drives, but all my other drives are under 6TB.
would shuck again if I need more storage
brilliantly built produc
Got my second of these drives for use with my MacBook Pro and iPad Pro and both work seamlessly ONCE I replaced the included cable. A short, bulky and ill fitting usb c cable with what feels like a brilliantly built product just ruins it. A good quality usb c cable isn’t expensive and in the bulk WD could be buying would make s minimal impact on the RRP so it’s just laziness.
Once the cable drama is dealt with the drive performs great. High speed transfers and compliments my setup well. Have seen a few reviews which moan about the speeds but the included pictures almost always have as picture of as windows setup and my guess is that they are using the included usb A adapter so ofcourse your going to get low speeds, throttled by your equipment. Transferring 4K files from mac and iPad takes no time at all.
I wanted another External drive (I already have a WD 4TB MyBook drive) as I’m now into video editing on my YouTube Channel. This drive came very quickly and with various reviews warning me about being short changed for a lesser drive, first thing I did was check the drive over fully! To be honest, I pluged it into a RED USB Port on My PC (3.01 USB Type) and it was recognised right away by Windows 10. And already formatted too! And the actual capacity of the drive is 9.09TB – which is much better than I hoped. Usually these drives are loaded with bloatware and the drive is space limited. But not this one! Very pleased with it. If I had a complaint, it would be that the drive is noisier than the MyBook version. But really it’s not bad at all. I hardly notice it. Access times are good and write speeds seem to be slightly better than the 4TB MyBook drive. Both sit on my desktop and stay connected all the time even when I power the PC down each night and up again in the morning. Essentially, I have no complaints. It does what I want. I can give feedback on Tech Support because Iv’e not needed it! But so far, five stars. And a two-year warranty. Price is very good for this capacity too. Go for it!
Doing it's job several months late
I hate writing reviews for hard drives within a few months. Unless something breaks, it’s one of those “you need to give it a while” objects when reviewing. So far, the SMART data is showing no issues. Speeds got a little slower as I filled it (it’s 80% full now) but half the problem seems to be with my USB socket and my choice of OS… So far, so good!
Loads of storage for a reasonable price.
I bought the 10TB version to back up my raw footage for my YouTube videos and photographs. I have a batch file that automatically backs up any new video or photo from any drive on my pc and saves a copy to the WD drive at regular intervals.
The drive works perfectly well, it is a little noisy on the desk but soon goes into power saving mode and spins down whereby it becomes silent. It appears on the system as a USB Hard Drive and can be disconnected at any time via the Windows disconnect function.
My drive makes a repetitive clonk noise, it works absolutely fine but it does seem to have a strange click as though it is stalling or something – whatever the noise is, it doesn’t appear to be effecting the read or write speed and no errors are detected.
There is a button on the back marked as ‘Power’. This doesn’t do anything and it seems as though this is a bit of a throwback to older drives or something (before power saving mode) – strange why the manufacturers have chosen to leave the button in place? (I’ve checked other reviews and other people are saying the same, so this appears not to be a fault).
Things I like:
It looks good, it has large capacity, the cost was decent for the capacity and it works perfectly.
Things I don’t like:
The power button doesn’t do anything – it would be nice if this made it disconnect from Windows and power down….but it doesn’t. The strange (quiet) clonking makes me slightly nervous but it doesn’t appear to be causing any problems. I’d like the drive to be easier to open up to allow drive replacement or to be able to use the drive inside the unit to be placed inside a server once the capacity had been exhausted – the way this is, the only option for expansion is either buy more of these or destroy them to gain access to the drive inside for insertion into a large NAS or something. (this probably wont bother most people, I fill HDDs very quickly and go through loads of them)
Conclusion:
I’d certainly recommend the WD external HDD, it works perfectly and I know that WD concentrate on reliability over speed which is perfect for a backup media. Having said this, the speed is very acceptable and causes no problems at all. The biggest draw for me is the cost per TB and that is is reasonably small considering that it houses a full size HDD drive with interface.
I’d certainly buy another so thumbs up from me.
I bought two of these a year ago, got “white label” ‘consumer spec’ RED drives inside.
Bought two recently when the price dropped and got two helium filled, enterprise Ultrastar DC HC520 (He12) drives. Part number “US7SAM120”.
Both times, the Elements price was considerably cheaper than buying a bare drive. “Shucking” – taking the cases apart to remove the drive inside – is easy. I broke the tabs/clips on my first attempt but after that it became obvious how to do it without any damage. So, if there are warranty problems three of four can go back together good as new.
I have no 3.3v power issues here as my backplane takes power from molex connectors.
The drive has been on 24/7 since I purchased it over 8 months ago and does overnight backups. Ut us relatively quite and has been faultless. It achieves the expected usb data speeds and I get consistant 180mbs usb speeds. Formatting I still get 10.9 tb but that is normal.
I purchased this 10tb WD elements external drive to hold my dvd collection.
I am very happy with the capacity of the drive and it’s upload/download speeds for my requirements.
The drive is quiet and unobstrusive.
It does the job for storage
Don’t expect to run OS off of it, or to store temp or cache files there. It would happen what happened to the 1 star raters: switch off.
It has acceptable storage for the price. If you have a lot of data to store or transfer to/from working device (but not to work whilst the data is inside the drive), then it is fine.
Pretty sure in warm climate it would not do well. I live in a cold place, so this drive functions very well. No complaints.
Good value 5TB drive. Using it for Acronis backups. Effortless setup and seems reliable, but only had it a month so time will tell. Would recommend based on experience so far.
My Time Machine back-up disc failed one month out of its 24 month warranty (Seagate) so I’ve replaced it with this. Hopefully this will last a bit longer. It’s a little bit noisy, but nothing outrageous. The capacity is amazing.
Bought two of these and after only a few days use I am satisfied. So decided to order some more only to find that one week later Amazon has raised the price from 185 to 225 indeed this is 15 more than they are charging for the 14TB option.
Give your heads a shake Amazon.
Used for storing system images and backup pc games from steam and epic. Brilliant drive. No errors or lost data.
Usb interface speed depends on cables and the file sizes etc but I have seen regular highes up to 125mb/s
It also seems to be cooler than the Seagate alternative.
Good value large storage that has never let me down.
As a professional photographer I need storage I can rely on and have used this is one part of my backup workflow with no complaints
Using it as a Time Machine backup disk for a Macbook Pro.. Very good value, effective and has already proven its worth in a backup and restore capacity. I’ve got three of these devices and they’re very handy. Little bit of background noise when it spins up, but worth having.
Useful for 'second level' stuff archiving
I used this to take some stuff off the NAS (which has RAID and all that on it) and it’s fine. Being a large form factor it does need an external PSU which is irritating compared to the smaller portable items but that’s only a minor quibble. Otherwise it’s spot on the money. WD has been a solid performer for me for years so I went for the brand name and reliability too.
I’ve been using it for about two weeks so far as a single NAS drive (with backups, don’t worry!) and it’s been absolutely perfect. Quiet, cool running, and it just works.
As far as I know the drive in this is a Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drive, however with my usage that’s not been a problem at all. Transfer speeds exceed gigabit ethernet connections at all times even with over 3TB of data on it.
Time will tell how long it lasts but so far, so good.
(Also Amazon – PLEASE do not ship this thing just in the retail box like you did with mine. Thankfully the box arrived relatively intact save for a slightly crushed corner but this is something you really want to put in another box with padding!)
Great hard drive, very easy to remove the outer packaging and gain access to the drive directly. Did this and put it straight in a server. Love this drive a lo
I dont like the spinning disk and wanted to tell people that my 4tb is silent but my 12tb is making a click click click spinning noise. I have heard the spinning ones are less durable so I recommend the 4 Tb but not the 12TB
Quality wise it leaves me a bit nervous as it is pretty cheap feeling and does make a few unusual noises, but after returning and replacing it’s clear it’s just the design of the product so will have to see.
For now though it’s a very good product with good speeds (for USB 3.0) and is serving its purpose.
I’ve now had the hard drive for a little over two months and have had no problems so far. Previously I had a WD 6TB drive so knew what to expect. The first thing to know is that the capacity is a lot less than advertised but this is the same for all drives. A 12TB drive is actually 10.9TB but that it is still massive and I have about 4TB left after using it for my Plex Library. The rule of thumb is always to buy a drive that is at least 2TB more than the size you need. As these big drives have more working parts than smaller drives they do make quite a bit of noise that can be distracting if you keep them on a hard surface. I put mine on a rubber matt that seems to lessen the sound quite a bit. I would recommend buying another one eventually for backup in case of data loss. All in all these drives are excellent for price vs size and seem to be a very reliable storage solutio
Others have said these are noisy, but mine is satisfactory. Quite fast on usb3 and can be removed and put in s computer or Nas. I got mine as a deal for approx 180 and at this price I’m very happy. I would buy anothe
Nice and speedy enough, with a usb 3.2 connection can reach speeds of 170mb/s, not much to say WD drives have proven to be the most reliable in my experience, so far.
This external hard drive is great. Works flawlessly and I now have a lot of spare storage capacity for backing up data and photos. Haven’t given a rating for tech support as I have not needed to call upon this service.
I bought this hard drive to use it with my Raspberry Pi home server for media storage and file sharing. It works really well, speeds are good and the enclosure has niceties like UAS. However, it also completely turns off when the USB connection is lost, i.e. when the Pi reboots or if there’s a power outage, and it stays that way until you turn it back on by pressing a physical button. Furthermore, the enclosure will also turn off when idle, even when connected and mounted in Linux, causing data loss, but at least this can be turned off using sdparm.
As far as I understand, this “feature” is only there on higher-capacity versions of this drive. Really disappointed with this weird implementation.
I have more than ten of these units ranging from 3TB to 12 TB. They are reliable to the point of being boring. I use Nero Backitup software as I didn’t get on too well with the WD software.
Great drive no issues on older windows machines
Once reformatted in windows 7 pro it can now be used with even an old windows XP pro machine. Would recommend WD over seagate drives as there is never an issue removing them from the older windows XP pro machine unlike the seagate drives that constantly say the drive can’t be removed as it is in use even if it has never been accessed. Only plugged in by mistake.
Its good but I don’t know about the review questions about warmth and thickness? I have copied all my drives onto one now and can access them in one go but keeping the other drives safely put away.
Ever since the helium versions I went with WD and despite a few hiccups the drives (8TB, 10TB, 12TB) have performed well in servers and NAS devices with great performance. Unfortunately, 4 of the 8TB (out of 6) have failed in time (helium loss?) and had to be replaced but the replacements as well as 10/12TB are OK.
Back to the 14TB, inside you will find a White-label “Red” PMR (not SMR/shingled) 5400rpm drive, note I believe this is an air “A”-firmware drive not a helium “H”-firmware one. In any case it reaches 200MB/s read/write maximum which is great performance. It also supports SED/crypto features which are not enabled here (as with MyBook).
The case is easy to open (easier than MyBook) and the USB3 JMicron controller does not need to be modded to work with other drives. Don’t remove the EEPROM as with MyBook as you will kill it.
Note this requires the pin3 mod if you have an old PSU/rail that provides +3.3V, the drive will not start. You can easily see on the Internet how to isolate this pin (or remove it) to make it work with older computers.
Considering the cost of retail Red 14TB drives, you are paying close to 60% for pretty much the same drive. For warranty just insert the disk back into the case – hopefully you will not need it, fingers crossed!
What can I say its a portable hardrive.
Smaller than expected but I like that.
Runs off 240v power supply which is supplied.
Easy to set up just plug it all in and your away.
100% recommended
The enclosure houses a ‘WD100EZAZ’ drive, which i believe is a relabelled WD Red, helium filled NAS drive. I have not seen temperatures go over 40c.
Only owned for a few days but it seems like a great drive and a bargain at 160 when compared to a WD Red.
Bought this to start a digital film library to hold files instead of (personal use only) dvd copies I have made legitimately from the TV etc over many many years.
This was a great price at 87.99. it is a simple 6TB drive that was instantly recognised by Windows 10.
I created 2 volumes on it using Windows 10 Disk Management , each 3 TB , to then copy files from my two existing WD internal drives, 3 TB each.
I will then use the internal drives as mirror drives to the external Elements drive in the unlikely event that it fails!!
Fully recommended.
Fast delivery by Amazon from.Cologne Germany to here in North Wales in one day.
A few changes in casing design from older versions owned include a rounded front and now also a power switch located at the the rear just above the USB socket, the presence of which allows the drive to be switched off when not in use and unlikely to be imminently required without reaching out to a switched power point which may be required if the adapter plug were not to be removed from the mains socket.
The casing is well-ventilated at the top and also on the upper back plane to keep the drive as cool as possible without requiring a casing fan. The power lead is the usual 1.8-2m length ending in an adapter plug for which UK and Euro fittings are provided. The USB lead is of the usual 1m length but can be replaced or extended to a longer length if required and personally anticipated.
The drive is formatted to NTFS and not directly compatible with Mac hardware unless a third-party software was used; formatting to exFAT would allow most capabilities while ensuring full compatibility with both Mac and Windows systems should they both be used.
Purchased as a Deal with a 20% reduction, it was actually less expensive than its 8TB version.
ADDENDUM 12/21 – Several from the range were purchased over time, the most recent being the then largest available – 16TB! On first-time use and when transferring data from a RAID array, it froze at 7% complete with the software reporting this drive to be corrupt and unreadable. After reformatting, another attempt was made and that failed at around 1.5% complete with the same explanation. Again reformatted and on another attempt, it also failed at about 1.5% and also with the same explanation.
An attempt to obtain a replacement from Amazon failed as there was no available stock and I was passed to their Technical Support team who tried a resolution which initially suggested a further attempt! The next idea was to change the USB lead which made no difference. They then suggested that I email WD and provided an email address that was invalid. I had given up any hope with the drive and only then was the decision made for its return.
Bought it on sale. Removed the HD and using it my computer for storing a lot of backup data. Other than being slightly noisy the drive works absolutely fine and is the cheapest per TB storage I could have gotten. Really happy with it. Will buy one more in future to make sure I keep the other one in a RAID so as to not lose my data.
When my NAS box had a drive failure I needed something to back up to before rebuilding. This device fits the bill and offers a fast data transfer. The only criticism is that the capacity is a little low but you can buy larger at a cost.
I use this for gaming, namely an external storage device to download my steam games too using USB 3.0.
It works great for this and I can fill up my extensive steam library with ease thanks to the 4TB storage.
One thing I will say though is that it starts getting a bit noisy when you have half filled it up…and it gets very active on boot up for some reason so I tend to unplug it and only use it after booting when it doesn’t seem to get so ‘excited’
This will store everything you need and quickly if you use USB3, no problems at all with it, been using it for a few months now and have not had a single problems with it, I use it for backups and for cold storage.
The only thing I’m not too happy about is its capacity with it being only 12.7GB. Yep, giving you, the buyer that important bit of info, for free. Something I’ve been hunting for in the reviews, but no such luck.
I’m using it to store family photos, movies and TV content for everyone to enjoy. So yeah, its being put through its paces. Still going strong 2 months later. No performance issues here.
Having read a lot about these drives, with experience of old versions and the new 8TB version with so called new gas inside, took the plunge to see how a 14TB actually performs.
Operated on three different systems with different results.
With Windows 10 no operating issues, plug and play, no obvious problems, except for one caviat (mentioned at the end of this review).
With Windows 7, plug and play, except when writing large files. You get to a point with the drive at around 2TB full, that large files stop writing to it. However, split the file up, and it resolves the problem.
With Vista, you will enter the unknown, plug and play to a point. What point depends, on the function, but allowing for messing around you do finish the task, but have to work at it.
Now for the caviat.
Much has been written about the new drives filled with a new gas inside, and their noise in use, with clicking as well which gives you cause for concern. Having used a 8TB version with every noise taking place I was well placed for what to expect from the 14TB. However, not well placed enough! I was summoned to the computer when a noise similar to a car reving up really loud started. Much to my amazement, it was the 14TB drive, and it had been in idle for around two hours. The noise drowned out the TV, so it was loud! Quickly searched on the drive for files and it stopped, so no idea what happened. Works fine, just normal clicking and spinning noises that I now expect from these so called new gas filled drives. Jury still out as to exactly why these drives do this, you just have to have a diffent mindset, and ignore them, because as yet I have not had one fail.
So I have purchased 3 of these drives from Amazon, 2 from Currys and 1 from Scan. They all have a yellow WD logo and yellow 8TB sticker on the box (the old ones were blue). Using CrystalDiskInfo they are all WD80EDAZ drives. These are white label air filled (Not Helium) Ultrastar HC320, 5400RPM, 256MB cache, CMR Enterprise class drives. This appears to be the latest incarnation of these drives. Must admit I was a bit gutted they wern’t Helium drives but to be fair they are very good so far. May be 1-2 degrees higher temp than the helium drives. A very good buy at 124.99. So if they go lower than that snap at least one up.
So glad to have this drive. It has allowed me to get all my info together in one place which is amazing. The drive is simply plug in and off you go. The storage space is phenomenal and price wise is good value for money.
WD drives used to be the worst. They have more recently being using very good quality internal drives. The cases used to fail a lot as well, but this is my 3rd one so I’m obviously happy with them. I got it for less than 14 per TB so I’m definitely happy with that 🙂
Good but..
No problem with the drive, so far, but I wanted to set up password access, which was one reason I chose this model.
To do this you need to download an app from WD. Problem is you don’t get asked where you want to instal the app, it just defaults to your C: drive and then refuses to work if the C: drive isn’t WD. Given this is an external drive, primarily sold as being for backup, how does that make sense?
It’s impossible to add the new drive to the app and there are no other instructions at all.
Sadly I had neither the time or the will to do anything other than uninstall the app so I’m only partially satisfied with my purchase.
i dont know why it asks about warmth,?
Anyway its lasted longer than its predecessor which wasnt this brand.
i actually used pull ties to secure it to the bookshelf. otherwise all good..used as a backup
Great storage from WD. Bought several, never had a problem with any. Does all you expect it to do. Good price especially when you wait for it to be discounted, as it often is. Would recommend.
Was in need of some quicker (USB 3.0) storage as space has run-out on my internal hard drive. This external hard drive works great, easy to use (basically plug n play) using it on Windows 10 so no formatting etc. was required. It’s quiet and quite small for the amount of storage there is. Perfect for storage!
Great drive, good performance.
I’ve been using this drive for the past couple of weeks for storing 4k (2160p) movies / media content to stream from my Windows 10 Plex Server. So far it’s been no problem whatsoever, with network being the main bottleneck rather than disk speed.
The drive has similar speeds to that of a WD Red NAS drive, so I would suspect that Western Digital repurposes their lesser performing red drives into these elements external drives due to the lack of performance expectations over USB3.
As many others have stated, I highly doubt the drive will last a very long time, and will probably fail shortly after two years (which just so happens to be the warranty period).
So i have bought the 10TB model 9.3TB ish is what you actually get as windows calculates this differently than you would expect..
I bought this unit to on and connected on 24/7 so i have also purchased the 3 years insurance which was about 7 extra Worth it in my opinion.
So this item is being used as storage for my Plex media Centre..
The item seems to be really good for my needs plenty of space and doesn’t seem to heat up too much atall.
Currently the unit has been running for the last week continuously.
The unit its self is warm To touch as you expect but nothing that seems Too hot or that there is any problem.
Its a low heat that is to be expected.
The transformer (Power adaptor) is also warm to the touch but only slightly and again not hot and nothing out of the ordinary for an item that has been on 24/7 for the last week (at the time of this review)
I managed to get a transfer rate of around 75mb transfer rate over usb 3.0 with this item
Overall I’m happy and i will update this in time with reliability of the item
++UPDATE (24th jan) this hdd has now been running 24/7 since day of purchase and as of this update that is just over 3 months solid this unit has been powered on and in use with no problems++
Further update it is now 13/04/23 at the point of this update and this hdd has been powered on 24/7 since the day i bought the unit which was oct 2020 so almost 2.5 years with absolutely no problems atall and not being switched off..
Still stable still working as intended and i.ln daily use..
I will add more updates as time goes by
Item is perfect to use as a backup. I have many small portable external hard drive. That’s contains plenty of photos, videos and documents. I used this device to back all the data up for those devices. Perfect item with ample amount of storage. Regarding portability, this item requires power, which can be a bit annoying. But buying a case can help with it being more portable.
I needed a massive store for backing up a load of photos and UHD videos. This looked like it would do the job, and it does – amazingly well. For a USB3.0 connection, it is adequate, and although the huge file transfers take a predictable time to carry out, they are all carried out with no fuss or bother. Excellent value.
14 tb wd elements external hd
just received so far runs fast mostly moving 3 tb to it and it says 8-9 hours. the drives are small and light which is pleasing love the small size of the case and well personally love air hols on top and back. I was a bit worried about noise after reading a couple of peoples comments but it is very quiet so no complaints on mine. but ive had it copying for about 2 hours and its winter so cold room levels help but so far very impressed. Example at hot summer day my pc runs at 41 c and now in the colder months with copying my pc is at 32 c so dont think hds heat up badly.
I love it.
Before I got this, I used to have multiple external 500GB 2.5″ drives to store all my media. Trying to remember which drive had what data on was a pain. This solves that problem. 10TB is more than enough storage for my daily needs. I currently have this connected to a Raspberry Pi 4B running on Twister OS and everything runs great. I have also used it to swap data back and forth to my Manjaro Linux on my workstation, no issues at all. Even works well with LUKS disk encryption for added data security. It’s so much more convenient to have all my system snapshots, retro games, media and photos all on the same drive.
Excellent delivery, easy to use, just plug into the USB port. It is a bit heavy on the set-up space, only 3.63TB usable out of 4TB advertised. But this is due to standards advertising rather than this product. It works brilliantly, access times very low. A great buy.
From the drive label:
WD120EMFZ
SATA 6Gb/s
RJ HA500
MDL WD1200EMFZ-11A6JA0
R/N US7SAP140
P/N 2W10513
WWN 5000CCA28D*E **** (first * C or D; last set unique to drive)
20 DEC 2019 / 23 DEC 2019
E182115 T
R-REM-WDT-US7SAP140
CAN ICES-3(B)/NMB-3(B)
5VDC 0.44A
12VDC 0.57A
Does what it says on the tin. Very competitive price & fast. Only issue was discovering the Off (and On) button located above the USB port has to be held in for a few seconds to sucessfully turn off unit! Instructions need to include this!
Working well but running ho
I needed a replacement drive as one of my current disks has thrown a wobbly. This seemed like a good alternative to the WD red disks I normally buy at a good price
Whilst I plan to shuck the drive to make it an internal, I’ve now run the drive in its caddy for a week. I’m a bit alarmed that I get high temperature warnings on it…. But I see other people reporting this and seemingly it’s normal. Only time will tell
WD 8TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive – USB 3.0
Excellently priced for 8TB of storage. Curry’s had it at 10 more and wanted to charge delivery.
Delivered next day free of charge from Amazon which was good.
As this is a Western Digital drive the manufacturer has a 3-year warranty. I own lots of WD drives (I even have a 2TB home cloud for years now) and I have NEVER had a single failure.
I am using the drive as external storage and I am already up to over 7TB. As it’s USB 3.0, it is very fast at both read and write.
The supplied USB 3.0 cable is about 1m which is quite good. Allows me to sit the drive on my desk with the computer under the desk.
A few negatives but only tiny things:
It stands upright and doesn’t take much to tip it over, twice I have knocked my knee on the desk and the drive has fallen over whilst it was in use. It could do with some sort of stand for the base to prevent this.
I would not call it a portable drive, it requires a power adapter (supplied with it), and its not one of those 2.5inch drives, it is quite chunky.
Regarding the button on the rear, its not clear what it is ‘supposed’ to do. While the drive is running, holding the button for 5 seconds will shut the drive down. If the drive is in standby (not shut down) it will wake it up. If a short press when it is running, it will go to standby and then sometimes immediately wake again!
When in standby, it can take a while to run up to speed, specially annoying when booting my computer in the morning as the computers BIOS detects the drive but then has to wait for it to spin up and ‘come online’ before my computer continues to boot. Although this may only be a matter of 10 or 15 seconds, it doubles my computer boot time which is normally only 10 seconds!
If I remember to shut the drive down at night, then this is not a problem, but who does that!
It churns away on its own, it has a constant ‘duh-du’ sound about every 5 seconds with the odd ‘duh-du-du’. As it’s sat on my desk it just sounds like someone drumming their fingers on the desk. It’s very quiet but noticeable, I’m constantly wondering what it’s doing!
Overall, excellent value for money, well respected manufacturer, excellent speed and capacity.
Bought this purely for the drive inside as external drives are a hell of a lot cheaper than buying the same drive as an internal drive. The case contained a WD Red edition which would have cost around 100 more to buy as an internal drive. The case it’s self is good quality so I have a smaller spare drive which I now use in the case. All in all a very good buy.
I bought this with the intention of buying a second and replacing the storage in my nas but in the end I just used it as intended as an external drive until such time as my NAS runs out of capacity as they are not nas drives.
When on sale, these seriously undercut the price of the disk on its own.
This is a great compact fanless drive and with 12GB and no need for an additional power adapter it is a perfect uncluttered solution as a backup drive that can be easily hidden away. I’m currently using it as a Apple Time Machine backup drive to backup 3 Macs (Drive is partitioned into 3) over a home network, with the drive connected via USB 3 port to a Synology NAS (WD Drive is partitioned in exFAT format which is compatible with both Macs and Synology NAS). In my case the NAS gives the WD Drive network access but there are other ways to do this like using an Apple Airport Express. So for those after something similar it is possible with the partitioning of the WD drive and network connection via another device.
he drive itself is good and fast and silent shame it didnt have the 12tb it was sold as having, i dont blame the seller tho because this is something all harddrive makers do so its always a good idea to buy a drive abit bigger than you need. A+ to the seller it came fast and sealed and was well packed. Would shop with them again.
Great external drive. Has more than enough space to back up all of my devices to. 2 iPads 2 iPhones with enough space for storage years ahead.
It’s silent, doesn’t get hot….and takes up minimal desk space.
If I needed one, I’d happily buy another.
Faily quiet, formatted to mac os and it’s now a time machine backup.
Every hour or so this gets put to use. My last wd drive was only replaced because it was a 1tb version, and probably 8yr old. Still works though!
If you need a serious amount of storage then go for this. I brought the 12 Tb drive and inside is a white label drive if you’re planning on using it as an internal drive, but you do need to cover up the third pin. The drive is surprisingly fast and runs very quiet.
I am using it in a Qnap Nas and everything has worked well. To remove the drive from the cage you just need to stick 4 credit cards into the corners of the back and slide the plastic shell off. Inside the drive is screwed to a PCB with thick rubber supports to each corner to prevent it from vibrating. If you do it properly you can remove the case without damaging it at all.
Great Would Recommend
Id recommend this external hard drive,of the 10tb you actually get 9.09tb as it has to be formated in order to work which is already done for you straight out of the box.Ive been filling mine with movies and tv series for months and still have 5.5tb left.I have my laptop connected to my tv and use a wireless keyboard so adding this hard drive has turned it all into a kind of entertainment center.The drive itself is USB 3.0 so if its connected to a USB 3.0 port it can transfer files at quite a fast rate.I will get another one at some point when I need more space.
A small piece of advice if you want to store precious photos and video clips always make sure you back them up elsewhere such as the cloud or to disc or another hard drive,fash drive.Its better to be safe than sorry.
Works well was pre formatted so just plugged into my pc and was able to use.
I do find sometimes its a little slow when opening the drive via windows explorer but i just need more space.
I normally get seagate but it works well.
Plug it in and it works.
It requires mains power, supplied via a plug adapter. It uses a USB3 cable – both supplied
Its pre formatted NTFS, so if you have something other than a PC running Windows you may need to reformat it.
Speed is good, but of course depends on the power of the PC and the size of the file being moved. With a new disk and a large file I got 160M. I have always found WD disks reliable, so if you want to store HD movies this is a good choice. If you compare per TB for all the sizes you find they work out the same, so buy the biggest one.
Quite fast, does 180MB/s in a 50GB data copy test.
Need a soft support though, otherwise a constant humming sound will annoy you.
Goes to sleep mode, this is nice as this saves some energy.
Saw many mixed reviews online before I bought this, after using it now for 3 months I’m really happy to say that it works perfectly! Been using it for weekly backup of my big RAID 5 setup, so every week there’s around 6TB of data going through it, speed is normally around 100MB/s, not the fastest but for backup it’s ok.
Excellent device but not suitable if you are on the go
Bought this mainly due to the storage capacity. I’ve never had issues with WD hard drives so put my trust into this. It currently stores a significant amount of my data, important data has multiple backups on multiple devices to prevent data loss.
It’s quite a large hard drive physically so it’s definitely not what you’d consider portable. Having bought devices like this before I knew what size to expect. It’s an excellent desktop external hard drive but you’d struggle to use it on the move with a laptop.
Very fast delivery.
This drive is amazing, I use it as an external drive for my Synology Server. I use a timer to turn it on, then synology does its backup, the last folder that backs up dismounts the drive and the timer turns it off 10 minutes later.
It works like a charm.
Nice disk, large capacity, speed – as USB allows. It is only a pity that there is no back-up software like the larger brothers in this family. I mean the software is there, but you have to buy it. You can also use independent software, I know, but it would be nice to have a lite version from the manufacture
Easily shuckable and contain either WD120EMAZ / WD120EMFZ drives inside which are OEM Reds or whites.
Work fine in my HP microserver gen8 without having to do any mods to the power pins.
I did find that the drives do run pretty hot in the enclosures, one reached 50 degrees+, hence only 4 stars
OK i bought this to Shuck, not fussed if i void the warranty although i suspect there is nothing to void as i havent broken any seals.
Anyhow, contained WD 5400rpm red drive so i expected a laboured 120mbps if i was lucky. Nope, 210MBPS up and down wow.
no need to cover the third pin, i swapped out a 5tb WD black and was away (this is much faster) – only time will tell for longevity but its quiet as a mouse stealing cheese and doesn’t give any back chat when i ask it do do something for me.
Good value
An external hard drive with a 12TB disc for 180 seems insanely cheap compared to the bare-bones SATA drives of a similar size. Granted that the spin speed is 5,400rpm so the seek time is not especially fast, but for data storage/archiving it’s perfectly adequate (and who buys a 12TB hard-drive unless it’s for storage?).
So, I did what many others have done, and ‘shucked’ the drive from the case and mounted it as an internal hard-drive in my PC. I don’t think (at time of writing) you can find a cheaper drive of a similar capacity by such a reputable manufacturer.
Straightforward and great addition to improving my desktop experience.
Excellent choice for my first HDD. No installation requirements other than plug it in and wait a few minutes for Windows 10 to install it. Began using immediately then! Straightforward.
The approximately 10% reduction in storage space was expected as indicated by most user reviews I checked for all brands of HDD. I only require basic functioning and this WD Elements 4tb does that well for me. I cannot comment on gameplay suitability. Drive is small and compact and easily positioned for use and airflow. Product very quickly delivered and safely boxed. Well pleased so far.
I purchased this simply to increase my storage for my Xbox One video game console. It’s really easy to use. Simply plug into one of the Xbox One’s USB drives, format the hard drive following the on screen instructions, then she’s ready to go. Read, copy and install times are pretty fast. The hard drive is fairly big, but I just manage to hide it around the back of the hdtv. All in all, it’s great for the task at hand.
Easy decision to shuck these bad boys and put them into a 4 bay Fantec external HDD enclosure. Why have 4 external drives when you can combine them to use only one USB cable and port?
14TB should be plenty of data storage space for anybody. If you want more, you can always wait for a year for the 16TB to come down in price to similar level as 14TB drives now. Are you willing to wait a year for 2TB more?
Excellent external HDD.
Excellent external HDD. Easy to open for those who want to extract it.
Read and writes are very good, as it is NOT 7200rpm hdd.
Read/ write beginning of drive 180MB/s, middle 130MB/s, end 90MB/s.
Compare to Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 2TB (2012 version), is faster at beginning 210MB/s, but then fails dramatically at 50% and especially 70% forward. Roughly at 1TB WD is overtaking Barracuda. Which was MAIN criteria for me replacing.
Also, read and write at the same time (defrag) seems MUCH faster at corresponding part of the drive, than – theoretically – faster Barracuda. Means defrag of huge partition goes much much faster. To explain precisely.
At the beginning of drive Barracuda has read/ write around 210MB/s, but defrag goes only at around 130MB/s (read + write), which is much ‘slower’ than just one operation. On WD is MUCH faster. That makes vast difference going forward the drive, and at 2TB WD was consistently massively faster than Barracuda. At any given part after roughly 20% of capacity (under 1TB), 5400rpm WD was overtaking vastly Barracuda 7200rpm.
Which is the important criteria, as full defrag of any size like 1TB+ takes hours.
Drive does NOT seem to be shingled, within all tests I performed. Which was writing more than 10TB to disk of different data.
I bought this to hold all our media files, 1500+ movies, 250+ TV shows many with several seasons, 100+ albums and the drive is about 40% full. It was PnP on my BT smart hub2, three of us can watch different films at the same time, whisper quiet.