WD Black 2TB P10 Game Drive Portable External Hard Drive for PS4/Xbox One/PC/Mac USB 3.2 (WDBA2W0020BBK-WESN)

Pros: - Mass storage with a small form factor - Fast read/write speed - one cable that handles data and power - easy to plug and play for more mobile gaming

Overall Review: I had sworn off mechanical drives a few years back, and did not think I would consider anything but SSD. Newegg had an impressive sale offer for the WD_BLACK P10 Game drives. The storage to price was better then any HDD, or SSD. The read/write speeds were very good for a usb external storage unit. My last mechanical HDD was a WD Black 5TB internal drive that served me well until it started to report SMART failures. So I took a chance and bought one. Overall it is a great external HDD. It comes pre-formatted as an ExFAT format. I considered a reformat to NTFS, but found most suggest the ExFAT for better plug and play usage. Crystal Disk test report a average read/write of 125MB/s compared to the advertised 140MB/s. This speed put my WD BLACK 5TB internal HDD to shame which only averaged 105MB/s. I copied my hefty library of games, about 3TB, over from my secondary SSD. This took about an hour, and had no errors. I then tested a few games. Loading does take a bit more time, but gameplay does not suffer much. I would definitely suggest the WD_BLACK4TB P10 Game HDD. I may not use it for my desktop often, but it is a good backup. I may also use this for my gaming laptop that has a OEM 1TB SSHD. The internal drive does okay for running the OS, but games do not run smooth. When I connected the WD_BLACK P10 Game Drive and played some games it was far smoother when run from the external drive. So another good usage if your internal laptop storage is small, slow, or both. A small negative. I had hoped to take the drive out of the external case for use internally in my desktop. I was able to find a Hex Key small enough to remove the outer case bolts, but the cover would not come off. The top cover is inset, and I can only assume not designed to be user serviced. Just a minor let down. I slightly doubt I would see much better performance by installing it to a SATA 3 connection.

Pros: First off; this a hard drive. Not a M.2, not a SSD. For a USB driven portable 4T hard drive this is an awesome product. I always wanted to have a portable copy of all my games for my laptop. While some load times may take some time compared to your NVMe laden desktop ( I was ok with it; after all it's an external HDD ), there was no impact while playing AAA games. No skipping, no stutter, nothing! Yes, it can be used as a backup drive, but it's functionality deserves to be more than that. During games copies I was getting up to 160 Mb/s. To me, that is extremely respectable ( I was ok with it; after all it's an external HDD ) . - Very decent read/write speed. ( I was ok with it; after all it's an external HDD ) . - Stays warm, not hot; no issues after continuous 6 hour writes. - Very portable; 2.5" drive. - Case looks great.

Cons: Slight con. Would like to see USB C to USB C. Time to let Micro USB B go. One odd thing: This now on three devices. Sometimes when plugged in, a drive warning comes up and would like to scan the drive. When scanned no errors. Thought maybe reformatting to NTFS, comes as exFat, would solve the issue. Still the same.

Overall Review: Highly recommended. Great product. Would definitely buy again! Let's make a 6T version!

Pros: You can format it to NTFS and you should for fail-safe features like Journalling that are built into NTFS which would help you to recover lost files or fragments thereof. Unless you use Mac products, then don't, cuz Mac OS only reads NTFS but doesn't write to it. Here is an excerpt from superuserDOHcom/questions/257646/why-should-i-use-exfat-over-ntfs-on-removable-media/262304 The mistake in "DOH" is obvious. Basically, "NTFS has journaling which helps ensure the file system can recover from corruption, whereas exFAT does not. So if you use the drive only from Windows PCs and reliability and data integrity are important, such as for archival or backup purposes, NTFS should be used over exFAT."

Cons: Oh, what a tedious and close up SN peeking I had to do, in order to realize that slash in a zero is actually a zero and not an 8. Very hard to read serial number. It wouldn't let you register unless the SN matches their database. Other bad is extremely short USB cable. Yet other bad is super flimsy USB connector. For some reason, it wouldn't let me format through Windows Explorer. I had to go to AdministrativeTools, ComputerManagement, and do it from there. Alas, the old but trusty Acronis wouldn't even recognize the drive that is bigger than 2TB and had no idea what exFat is. By the way, exFat is regular fat seriously reworked so that it could do over 4GB files, etc., but, like I mentioned, no journaling feature. If you only use it for Windows computers, format it to NTFS right away. There is no error protection in exFat. The only reason that WD licensed exFat to use it on its drives is compatibility. Just so that you are aware, in case you don't read other pop reviews about this drive is that the internal hard drive doesn't have sata connector, but has a USB connector soldered to the PCB inside. Possible to fix with another connector by resoldering a new one by replacing the broken one, if it ever gets to that point so that you can save the data.

Overall Review: The bads don't outweigh the pros. Terabites for peanuts. Gone are the days when you paid twice this price for 1/4th of this storage capacity.Oh, it does actually purr like a cat and sounds sort of like velociraptor but the casing only gets warm when sector checking in Windows--that took awhile, also the full formatting to NTFS. Basically, saw it on sale--BOOM! NUF is iNUF! for deleting old files that could still prove useful just to make room on teeny oldies. Now... if only WD would make these drives with SATA connectors... leecious.

Pros: Responsive under heavy load.

Cons: No vibration dampening it seems.

Overall Review: Used this drive as a cache drive while moving a large amount of data. Now its being used as a NAS drive, and is basically always on. Is still fast and responsive almost 3 months later

Pros: 5TB and fast. What more is there to day, except reliable (have to wait on that since I just got it).

Overall Review: Would by again. In fact, I already bought two more.

Pros: Used it to backup folders from my LINUX computer (no formatting necessary). Plugged it into my Windows 10 machine and I can read the files/folders no problem and create new ones. Fast copying and large files also, n.p.

Cons: When it was first delivered it was ice cold out of the box so I let it sit for a few hrs. to get to room temp. before I connected it. could not copy folders with special chars. in the file name. (solution: I renamed them!)

Overall Review: I can honestly say I am going to buy at least one more of these drives!

Pros: Nice metal case Modern looking Fast for a mechanical external hard drive WD quality Great value for the price

Cons: None

Overall Review: It’s an outstanding product for the price, very fast considering it’s an external mechanical hard drive, all the WD devices I have owned has been great, this ones no exception, does what I need it to do & does it fast

Pros: Easy to use

Cons: The light on the front stays on even when pc is off

Overall Review: So far great product