WD Elements 8TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive Black WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN

Pros: it was back ordered, but I still received it within a week Small power supply Worked perfectly right out of the box activity light isn't obnoxiously bright two year warranty lots of ventilation slots

Cons: power switch is not optimally placed, but that's being really picky

Overall Review: purchased this to back up my NAS. recognized instantly by my win7/64 PC with a gigabyte MB Did a quick format moved it to the NAS USB 3 connection and started copying my entire NAS to it. I've collected images from all of my previous hard drives to one basket, and now I want a second basket "just in case" my NAS takes a break and pukes up my carefully collected data Didn't bother shucking as I needed it in the external case. temp readings around the case showed a max of 104f after copying data for a couple of hours, a few degrees cooler then my other WD externals which are just idling. My NAS drives are running at 115 right now during the copy, with the fan set for full speed. I'll be back if there is a problem, After I finish the first backup, which should bring the drive close to it's 9.09 TB formatted capacity (NTFS) I'll run an overnight surface scan to see what the condition actually is. I only expect to use this drive for ten hours a week or less and strictly to back up the NAS. All of my other WD externals/internals of various flavors have been reliable, so why buy another brand? One of my oldest WD is a velociraptor 2.5 10k rpm drive which is the system drive of my WMC server Running 6 years 24/7 no issues at all. Of course in mass productions duds happen. The two year warranty on a portable drive is good. 4 eggs. If it proves to be a winner, I'll give it the extra egg in a few months. There must be room for improvement, right?

Pros: None that I can think of.

Cons: For me, this was a very unreliable HDD. It died after 6 months of light usage and I can therefore not recommend it.

Overall Review: Out of my three USB 3.0 external HDDs, two have died within less than a year, one Seagate and one WD. Out of my 5 or 6 eSATA drives of various brands, none have died. Strange.

Pros: Large, inexpensive, does not use WD proprietary hardware encryption (like the My Book series), passed initial diagnostics with flying colors, operating fine (but I've only had it for a couple of weeks so far).

Cons: None.

Overall Review: When I get a new drive, internal or external, the first thing I do is a complete set of diagnostics, including a surface test for bad sectors (this takes a LONG time on a 10TB drive, but I do it anyway). This drive had no issues whatsoever, including no bad sectors (now, I did NOT dive deep enough to determine if any sectors were mapped out already by the manufacturer). I didn't measure performance, since I am using this as a backup drive for an older computer, so it doesn't matter (and any measurement on this older computer would not be useful to anyone here anyway), but the performance seems as expected. BTW, I avoid the WD My Book series, since My Books use proprietary hardware encryption built into the drive controller inside the enclosure, which means if the electronics in the enclosure fails, you're sunk... data inaccessible... you can't remove the drive and connect it directly to a SATA connection and access the drive. While I don't buy external drives to shuck them, I want the option in case of electronics failure. If I have any issues in the future, I'll update this review. If I haven't updated it, that means no issues.

Pros: 8TB

Cons: none

Overall Review: shuckable with White label WD80EMAZ inside

Pros: Fast backup speeds initially - starts at 180 MB/s then eventually when filling drive drops to 110 MB/S Drives Quiet Stay Cool White Label Helium Drives USB 3

Cons: 5400 RPM drives

Overall Review: White label Helium Drives at 5400 RPM. PERFECT for backup running about 170 MB/s. I used to have Seagate External hard drives but when they went to 8TB, their reliability and speed went down. Switched over to these and never looked back. Bought several 8TB and 10TB versions for server backup which then is offsite backup. Highly Recommend!!

Pros: - Easy Set up - Low Price for High Capacity Hard Drive - Quick transfer rate speed

Cons: none

Overall Review: Did around 2TB worth of files transferring at an average of 95-100 mb/s

Pros: cheap

Cons: i did it to myself

Overall Review: basically wanted to replace some drives/ combine them all into something new and so it was all in one place. skip ahead a week and hours of backing up, the drive states it has a hardware issue. The website to register the product is down every time I try to register it, so far it's just a huge headache

Pros: This drive is very fast. I'm not sure why, but it is faster than my internal 7200 rpm drive when moving data, hashing files, etc even though this is a 5400 rpm drive. It is also fairly quiet. When waking it might "rumble" a bit (not sure why this is as my other drives don't do it, perhaps the motor spinning up?), but otherwise it is barely noticeable. As quiet or quieter than my other desktop external drives.

Overall Review: I love this drive, would buy more if I could afford them. I've filled it halfway with data without any problems so far; works great. Some extra info for the curious: smartctl reports the internal drive as WDC WD100EMAZ-00WJTA0. (smartctl requires the switch "-d sat" to read this drive.) This is a helium drive; helium level is reported under SMART 22. (My drive is still at 100%)