Another major player in the field of portable hard drives is the Western Digital Elements 1TB, manufactured by Western Digital, perhaps the most famous desktop data storage specialist, which boasts a huge storage capacity and is completely compatible with most systems through use of the relatively universal USB 2.0. The drive comes in various size configurations, such as 1.5 TB, 2 TB, 2.5 TB, 3 TB and 500 GB. Being one of the most purchased brands, it has almost 2,300 reviews on Amazon and even over such a colossal amount of ratings, manages to score an average of 4 stars out of 5.
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The Western Digital Elements boasts the following essential features:
- Highly affordable
- USB 2.0 hard drive
- Very simple usage
- 1 year limited warranty
- ATA100 hard disk interface
- Compatible with Mac OS X (Tiger or Leopard), Windows Vista/XP
One of the biggest advantages of the Western Digital 1TB drive is that it is truly “plug and play”. There are no fancy drivers to install before you can use it, you simply stick it into your computer and it functions out of the box as a mass storage device. This is a good solution for people who do not want to use the proprietary backup software that comes with the drive or that have fancy operating system configurations. The device also has a power-saving feature which functions extremely well and spins off when not in use and is available almost immediately when it needs to be used again. Some WD products come with a separate partition full of utility software that is difficult to remove, but this
Western Digital Elements 1TB drive comes with none of that and is a solution for people who are just looking for some plain old mass storage backup space and do not need any of the technical utilities that the other WD drives come with.
Another great feature that many users have noted is that the drive is extremely silent. Sometimes it’s difficult to decide whether their Western Digital Elements 1TB is actually running! Some users also found it handy that the indicator LED was on the back of the unit, because the flashing light can be annoying at night time, especially. Another great feature of the Western Digital Elements is that it does not heat up excessively – some users did extensive testing of data copying and transferring data at full-throttle speeds of 20-37 MBps did not even heat up the Western Digital Elements much at all.
Some users reported drive failures and bad sectors, but these are the kinds of problems that can happen to any user of any drive and therefore not specific to the Western Digital Elements 1TB in particular. Western Digital customer service is notoriously customer friendly and they will replace a faulty drive without questions if it is within the warranty period. Generally, a drive that has faults will start showing signs after just a few months so the 1 year limited warranty is perfectly suitable for this purpose. If you decide to go with a Western Digital Elements drive then you should continue to backup your data in another spot as well – it always pays to have at least 3 copies of your data. Increasingly now people are backing up their data using a service such as Dropbox or another cloud application, so it becomes less of an issue in case you are unfortunate enough to suffer purchasing a portable hard drive that has manufacturer’s mistakes.
Pros:
Extremely fast USB 2.0 speeds of between 20MBps-37MBPs
Compatible with Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/7
Pure mass storage device without any fancy technical software or utilities
Cons:
Weighs more than other portable drives at over 2 lbs, so more suitable for a permanent desktop location
To read more about the Western Digital Elements 1TB on Amazon, click here!
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