WD 18TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black

Product Information

With the PS5 continuing to be hard to find and unlikely to be discounted during Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021, picking up games and accessories will be where the real savings are. Whilst they do get warm in operation, we have never found them to become too hot, even under continued load.

18TB My Book Desktop HDD USB 3.0 with software for device management WD 18TB My Book Desktop HDD USB 3.0 with software for device

However, if you are not looking at intensive use cases such as editing 4K videos, then the performance should be perfectly acceptable. Even if you do not live in the US, you should be able to get it shipped although we haven't tried a lot of territories. The Western Digital G-Drive 18TB is also surprisingly good value for money, only retailing for USD 20 or 30 more than the slower drives recommended below for data backups. The slightly cheaper Elements Desktop drives have a more basic design and negate the bundled backup software; however, they feature the same drives and performance.

Some retailers are offering some tempting discounts ahead of the sales extravaganza, though, such as this delightful desktop storage deal. What is even more incredible is that this external drive is even cheaper than its internal sibling of similar capacity. The My Book are very similar to the Elements Desktop drives, only adding hardware encryption and bundled backup software. We know your data is important to you, so we build the drive inside to our demanding requirements for durability, shock tolerance, and long-term reliability.

18TB External Hard Drive, USB 3.0, 2 year Seagate Expansion Desktop, 18TB External Hard Drive, USB 3.0, 2

The LaCie d2 Professional range of drives are popular for those looking for a combination of fast disk access and large capacity. They are less suitable as backup drives, as their faster performance is less important for backups and you are paying a premium for a level of performance that you may not need. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you real information about the best products and services. The design is pretty basic but the plastic case provides enough passive ventilation to keep it cool.A good backup strategy requires multiple backups, ideally at different locations (such as leveraging Cloud backup) to be effective. The WD Elements Desktop uses the same hard drives as the more expensive WD My Book, but does not include hardware encryption or bundled backup software. Such data is accessed infrequently, therefore the drive performance becomes a less critical factor when choosing a drive. Even though using only a 5400 RPM drive the USB 3 seemed fast enough for all but the most demanding tasks. The combination of fast 7200 RPM drives and a Thunderbolt 3 interface results in high data transfer rates, making them ideally suited for more intensive use cases such as video editing.

External Desktop Hard Drive (HDD) Up To 22TB for PC WD Elements External Desktop Hard Drive (HDD) Up To 22TB for PC

You need to move up to the Western Digital G-Drive Pro 18TB to get the faster Thunderbolt 3 interface. The 3 year warranty is better than the 1 year of the Seagate Expansion Desktop or the 2 years of the Seagate Backup Hub Plus. Note that due to the drives being mirrored the available disk capacity will be half that of the total, so a 24TB drive will be 12TB, 16TB will be 8TB, etc.The 7200 RPM drives combined with a Thunderbolt 3 interface provide a significantly faster transfer rate than typical desktop drives.

18TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black WD 18TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black

interface makes it ideal for data backup as transfer speeds are lower than drives that include faster 7200 RPM drives or faster Thunderbolt 3 interfaces. Use of an internal HDD in a RAID configuration or device will void the Data Recovery Plan purchased with the product. The LaCie d2 Professional range of drives have long been popular with those looking to increase the available storage of their PC or laptops.Whilst some will easily be able to consume it all, many will never be able to need such large data storage. Cloud Storage is Not Cloud Backup - Please note that using Cloud storage such as iCloud Drive or OneDrive is not regarded as cloud backup. For those interesting in reading more about hard drive failures, Backblaze publish an annual hard drive statistics article, detailing the reliability of the over 165,000 hard drives they manage. Hard drives can get quite hot under continuous load, therefore having adequate ventilation will help extend the longevity of the drive. It would be nice if they add an option to turn off the blue LED on the front which can become annoying in dark or dim rooms.