I bought this during Prime Day for a sweet sale with the 3TB version that includes a 32GB flash drive. This will be my fourth WD Elements drive (none have failed on me yet and I can only hope it will continue to be that way!).
For this review I'd like to point out a few things that could be relevant to the next person who considers purchasing it..
1. If you're considering the portable drive for the purpose of shucking it, DON'T BOTHER! While the Elements series do not contain hardware encryption (compared to My Passport), the drive inside does not use a standard SATA connector and it will only be a waste of time outside of curiosity. On top of that, the warranty will likely be voided.
2. Transfer speeds are 2-3x faster compared to USB 2.0. Because this portable drive receives all its power from the USB port, the transfer rates are a little lower compared to the desktop version. I tested with about 1 TB of files transferred over and was able to get between 50-90MB/s (desktop version can go as high as 140MB/s). All while remaining silent.
3. Try not to confuse TERABYTE with TEBIBYTE. Drive manufacturers tend to use the former for their storage capacity, while the operating system reports the latter. For example, actual space reported after formatting will be 2.72TB (for the 3TB model). But if you right click on your drive and go to Properties, under the General tab the capacity reports a little over 3,000,000,000,000 bytes (for the 3TB model).
4. You CAN plug in a micro-USB 2.0 cable to this thing and it will still power up normally. While I can't question the reason for this (since it will be limited to USB 2.0 transfer speeds... on a large capacity drive), this should be avoided at all costs unless it is that really desperate moment (maybe you lost/damaged the original cable and needed a quick solution while a replacement is arriving, etc...). On the reverse side, you can plug the included cable with into a USB 2.0 port (only do this if you have no other choice at the moment). Computers made within the last several years comes with USB 3.0 ports so using that is pretty much a no-brainer.
5. If you did purchase the HDD + Flash Drive combo, it comes with a Sandisk Cruzer Blade 32GB flash drive (USB 2.0). Again, the combo was on sale during PRIME Day and it was a better deal compared to the other options.
This is still a good drive and should be great for any laptop user. Just make sure you're getting the most out of it by using a USB 3.0 port. It's compact and lightweight for portability.
| Hard Drive | 3 TB External |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
