Western Digital 8TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 external hard drive for plug-and-play storage - Western DigitalBWLG0080HBK-NESN, Black

The WD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive has been exactly what I needed for reliable, high-capacity storage! This drive delivers outstanding performance and convenience for backing up files, expanding storage, and transferring data. The 2TB capacity is perfect for storing massive amounts of photos, videos, documents, and backup files. Having this much portable storage has eliminated my constant worry about running out of space on my laptop. The USB 3.2 Gen 1/USB 3.0 connectivity provides excellent transfer speeds that make backing up large files quick and efficient. No more waiting hours for file transfers - this drive moves data fast enough for practical daily use. The portable design is ideal - compact enough to slip into a laptop bag but substantial enough to feel durable and reliable. The sleek black finish looks professional and the size is perfect for travel or desktop use. What sets WD apart is their proven reliability. This drive has performed flawlessly for months of regular use without any errors, corruption, or performance degradation. Western Digital's reputation for quality storage is well-deserved. The plug-and-play functionality works perfectly with Windows systems - no software installation or complicated setup required. Simply connect and start using immediately for seamless storage expansion. This external drive has provided peace of mind for data backup and practical storage expansion. Outstanding reliability, capacity, and performance at an excellent value. Highly recommend for anyone needing dependable external storage!

The WD Elements Portable External Hard Drive is a fantastic choice for Mac Air users seeking reliable storage without breaking the bank! It's incredibly user-friendly with true plug-and-play functionality, solid build quality that inspires confidence in (data's safety) encryption and comes at an accessible price point and outstanding value. Whether you're backing up important files, storing your media library, or need extra space for creative projects, this drive handles it all with ease. A smart investment that simply works.

I've been using this for a media server's storage for over a year now and it has been pretty flawless. It just sits on the floor next to my little mini-pc that runs linux and several docker containers for serving media. It's quiet for the most part and it has been on for over a year straight and has been pretty heavily used and so far no issues. 12TB is a fair amount of space for my use case and I'm quite happy with this purchase.

I’ve used a bunch of these WD Elements drives over the years, and this one is exactly what you’d expect – simple, no-frills, and it does the job really well. Plugged it into my Windows laptop and it showed up right away, no software install needed. Same thing on my Mac – plug and play, formatted it quick and good to go. USB 3.0 speeds are solid for a spinning drive – copying big video files or game backups takes time but it’s consistent and way faster than USB 2.0 junk. The 5TB gives you a ton of space. I use it mainly for Time Machine backups, storing old photos/videos, and keeping Steam libraries I don’t play often. Fits everything I need without worrying about space for a long time. The drive itself is pretty quiet – you hear a faint hum when it’s working

I've been using WD portable drives for many years, and they've proven uniformly reliable. I love the form factor, and how they simply plug into a USB port and they're ready to go. This would be 5 stars except I was surprised to discover that the drive has no built-in security / encryption. My bad, I guess I should have read more closely. But it's 2026! You'd think *all* "portable" drives would have some kind of password thing built-in?

Priced right, plenty of storage, easy to use and arrived quickly. I even came with a back-up program that was easy to set up. A small price to pay for the peace of mind that backing up provides.

I’ve had and have been using this drive for nearly four years. It works flawlessly. I had to reformat it to use it on my Mac and Windows computers but that only took about 15 seconds, 20 tops. Works great and is quite reliable. Do yourself a favor and get this drive.

I work with hundreds of hard drives per year. I also recover data from hard drives, so I have a decent idea of what we're dealing with here. To put it bluntly, all consumer level hard drives are not great, but WD (Which bought out Hitachi Storage) is simply the best. It's why they cost more, and it's worth every cent. I've had brand new Seagate drives dead, right out of the 20-count boxes we get. Speed wise, I am not really sure how fast these are compared to other brands, but with SSDs, I view hard drives as a cheap/slow storage space. And 1 TB is a LOT of data if you think about it. I'm writing this on the 14TB drive, but that can be hundreds of thousands of pictures for example. So the real question is "What would you do if you lost them all?" Take it from me, it is always "When" is it going to die and not "if". The drive will fail, no matter what. So you should always have a backup drive. If this is your backup drive, then you're all set. If this is your "main" drive, then consider buying a second, even if the second one is a Seagate - point being you are covered when the main one breaks. I have taken these apart before (Not the more modern very large ones) and those drives did work as internal drives, but I would hesitate to do that simply because you're probably going to trash your warrantee when you try and return a case that has a bunch of broken tabs (The cases for these elements drives are terrible and fall apart when you try to take them apart). My drive shipped with a rather small power brick, which was a nice touch. I think the cable length was something like 5 feet, so it's not a super short cord. Used the USB to connect to a Windows 11 laptop and it found the drive right away without any issues at all. If you use this as a permanent drive, e.g. a home network share, then you can go into Windows Device Manager and switch the drive type to include caching which speeds up the drive a bit (At the expense of data loss if you do not eject the drive before you yank the plug). If data integrity is essential, then for consumers, I would recommend the Red series drives as they are made for home network storage units. For corporate, the Enterprise drives (Which are usually SAS and not SATA) are the way to go. Of course none of those are USB drives, but I'm throwing this out there in case you have the option of going with an internal drive. At the end of the day though, like I started with, data integrity is the most important thing for me, and it doesn't get better than Western Digital.