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 List Price: $249.99 Sale Price: $112.23 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days 
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Simply affordable. Western Digital's WD Elements Desktop USB 2.0 external hard drives are the right answer for simple, reliable add-on storage.
| 5 star: | (1,794) | |
| 4 star: | (524) | |
| 3 star: | (137) | |
| 2 star: | (105) | |
| 1 star: | (531) | |
Good value, no extra junk software!Very good hard drive!Register the drive with Western Digital to get the warranty updated !
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I work for Computing support at Arizona State University, and I have enough technical knowledge to be certified as a TECH JUNKIE
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I am a photographer too, so I have tons of Photos (about 160GB), Videos, Software, Movies and Documentaries. I was looking for a simple external hard drive without any backup software included, I am smart enough to do manual incremental backups with file tree structure intact (I use GOODSYNC to backup, its very simple and easy to use and free).
I have looked at many many external HDDs and narrowed down to two models “Samsung Story 1TB – very good one too” and this one (I wanted it to be cheap too – got this for $85 on [...]). I did not go with other WD models because of their annoying Backup Software.
Coming to the WD Elements 1TB: Its much smaller than I expected. It is dead silent, I had to touch it to convince myself that it was running, when I first turned it on. Its not too heavy either. The indicator light is placed at the rear, which is a very good thing (I find these LED’s annoying, especially at night).
After I did the first setup, I copied 383GB of data (931GB was total space). It took about 4hr 47min, speed varied between 20MBps to 37MBps. This is pretty good speed for USB 2.0. It was just a bit warm (my old segate hard drive would be very very hot for this amount of data transfer).
I would recommend it to beginners or pros alike. I am very happy with this purchase!
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Just received the 3T version to connect to my Airport Extreme Base Station as a drive for archive files as well as Time Machine backup.
1 TB for the Time Machine partition, and 2 TBs for files archive.
You have to format it first to Mac Extended Journal for both partitions for your AEBS to see it. Once you do, just plug it into the ABES and it’ll show up on your desktop as a HD volume, and you can just use TM to back up into it.
The first time backing takes forever, but once you have it backed up the first time it’s a breeze. Highly recommended.
Let’s hope this drive lasts. Just started using it so have no idea of its longevity.
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After reading the reviews on this HD, I was a little reluctant to purchase it. I’ve always like Western Digital drives and never had any major issues with them. But I’ve never had an external drive from WD. The drive is smooth and the transfer rate is pretty good for USB. The only issues that I have with this drive is that it’s a little bulky. It’s not your typical travel drive, but I guess it’s not meant to be your grab and go. Also my other issue with this drive is that you have to use an external power adapter. You can’t just plug it into your computer or laptop and use that energy source. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal if you had it stationed by your computer or docking station. But the fact that it’s an external drive makes me wonder why it requires the use of a power adapter. But if it wasn’t for the those two problems, I would definitely give this item a 4. Good buy and for the price I paid, I think it’s worth it.
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So far I love it. My LaCie died and I called LaCie. The Guy said all external hard drives die sooner or later. (Thanks a lot.) My friend saved all of my information for free (I did pay him $100 for doing that.) I bought this one because of his recommendation and the reviews I read. Here’s hoping.