WD 1TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3 0 - WDBUZG0010BBK-WESN

This review is for the 1TB hard drive. Included with the external hard drive are the instructions and a 3.0 USB cable (approximately 18 inches in length). This hard drive does not have/need a power cord as it uses power through the USB cable. One minor issue with this drive is that it doesn’t include any backup software. For me, that isn’t a huge issue as it isn’t necessary for me and backup software is easily accessible online. In comparison to a couple Seagate Expansion 1TB external drives that I purchased a three years ago (both are still going strong), this WD drive’s external casing is nearly the same width and thickness but almost an inch shorter in length, roughly 4.5 inches by 3.25 inches by .5 inch thickness. So, this drive is even more compact and portable than external drives manufactured just a couple years earlier. I have had no issues with either the Seagate brand of drive nor the WD brand as they both make very reliable drives. In this case, the choice was simply based on price (it was 40 dollars at the time of purchase direct from Amazon) and cost per GB. One Seagate drive I mainly use for storing security camera video and the other for music streaming with this WD’s purpose being mainly a backup drive for files. This WD drive connected to my Win 7 computer quickly with no issues at being recognized. I immediately started copying nearly 100 GB of files to this drive. The drive’s transfer rate was quick and the files transferred reliably over the course of 1 to 2 hours. The files included documents, photos, music, and videos. Although some people may like it, I am not crazy about the hard drive read/write light being on the back of the drive next to the USB port. For me, I would prefer to be able to see it on the front, but I can understand some would like the light on the back as it makes it less distracting in low light. These also have a 2-year warranty, which is decent although not as good as the 3-year warranty on the Seagate expansion. I will update my review if I have any issues with durability. 4.5 stars Read more

So far so good! Honestly I haven't gotten an external storage drive in a long time. I did not expect it to be as small as it was! This thing is the size of my wallet it's awesome. Keep in mind, my wallet is far from large 99% of the time. I know it's something small to get excited about, but it's super nice and portable. I bought it to use with my Xbox one. I have an original big box, so the 500gb has been filled for awhile and I've been deleting games for new ones. Finally bought this and I plugged it into my Xbox and it prompted if I wanted to save games or for just media. Setup for games, loading screen, and bam! I'm good to go and my storage is expanded! Started to download some of my old games right away. They load quick, I don't notice a difference between the external drive or my Xbox internal games. Will probably buy another larger one later for my computer or maybe upgrade my Xbox storage more! Would recommend to anybody looking for a decent price and reliable storage. Read more

I bought this drive to expand the storage capacity of my PlayStation 4. I own a 500gb model, and, although that seems like a lot of storage, it really doesn't go far. It amounts to a few games and some other miscellaneous content. It got to the point where I would have to delete my favorite games, just to play something new. That's not something that I wanted to continue to do. It took literally 5 seconds to format this drive as an external storage device, and around 20 minutes to transfer most of my games from the PS4 storage to this drive. I transferred roughly 300gb. Now I have plenty of spare memory. The PS4 will automatically use the drive as your storage, unless you choose to revert back to using the PS4 drive. You can switch between drives whenever you wish. So far, this drive works great. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between playing games stored on this drive vs playing them in the PS4 internal drive. That's exactly what I'd hoped for. The drive is very small. I haven't noticed much noise while the drive is being used, just a slight hum, and that was with my ear about 2 inches away. I have only one very minor issue with the drive: the annoying blue light that flashes regularly when the drive is in use. This annoyance was easily fixed by facing it towards the wall. Just be aware that if you have it facing toward yourself while in a dark room, you will very aware of the drives presence. I'm so glad I bought this drive. It has freed me! I am now able to play all the games I want, without the frustration of having to constantly delete and reinstall my favorite games. Read more