Ideal for storage. I don't use it daily. Large capacity and good speeds. I don't recommend it for always online use, something like a NAS is better for those tasks. But as a backup and for storage, it's the best.

Guys, this WD series is unbeatable, super fast and extremely durable!! I have two small ones for over 20 years and they work perfectly, knock on wood!! Ok, you need a few hundred to get a large capacity one but they are not expensive compared to others and they are worth it!!

Steady value. I have a bunch of this particular model in various capacities ranging from 2TB to 20TB! All very good. The oldest one, if I remember correctly, must be almost ten years old without any problems and with daily use.

I should note that in the larger capacities (for example, the 20TB one I have) the transfer speed reaches 230mb/s!

Beast. I have connected it to the Raspberry and I run it with Samba, it's convenient that it has its own power supply in this case.

I have the 18TB drive for about two months now and I have reached only 2.8TB free. For the 18TB, I have to say that it is not slow at all, noisy, or hot.

It is only slow and noisy when it spins up from idle (you can't control how it does that).

Overall in transfers, it is very good and maxes out USB 3.0 although I have noticed that as it fills up, sometimes with certain files it has speed dips.

So far so good I would say. I would prefer it to have a 5-year warranty and free recoveries like Seagate but the 18TB seems like a good product.

I bought it in 2023 for about €120 and now at the end of 2024 I see €145+ and I can't give it 5 stars. Yes, nice disk, fast but if it doesn't last five years it doesn't get 5 stars. I can't say I have any particular complaints about WD in the last 20 years unlike...

It's still early for impressions, but what I have as data is the transfer of 4.5 tons in 9 hours, I think that's good. It doesn't make noise, connects easily and relatively quickly.

It could be a little faster.
I have filled it up, about 90% for functionality
but I'm worried it might break.

Model of 2tb. After 2.5 years it left me. Suddenly it doesn't receive power. I haven't erased my data yet, I will open it to see if the body of the disk works in a dock station. I hope it's the power supply of the case that's to blame and the disk has escaped unharmed. However, it still remains a product of chance. It may last for 10 years, it may not. I would expect a product with the purpose of backup to be a reliability monster. This is not.

I have had it for about 4 years and it works like a dog! I copy files, store files, and generally it has worked for 24 hours straight for many days.
It has not given me any problems whatsoever!

Well... my dear Western Digital, my hard drive crashed and you have eaten the corners of the century! You have managed to be the most unreliable... I lost all my personal files, photos, etc. You turned my 8 terabytes into thin air! If you want to lose everything, go ahead and buy it... good luck!

It makes some noise, but it is quite fast for an HDD.

If I had the money, I would go for Lacie (I believe it is a superior hard drive!!!)

Economical storage for occasional use, with the hope that WD will maintain the reliability we are accustomed to.

Connected to PS5. You understand that there is my entire collection plus some that the internal of the PS has, and every time I play, everything loads from it. It shows no signs of malfunction and the loading times are the same as the console's original hard drive. During a power outage and while in operation, everything is fine with a data rebuild, nothing was lost as I feared. Very decent operation and now it performs external duties on an iMac.

It takes a long time to start if it is powered on and connected to the computer. This usually implies its ultimate failure over time, with known problems such as bad sectors, etc

Classic hard disk drive from Western Digital. It is the first hard disk drive in general that I purchase with such a large capacity, so I don't have a point of comparison, but this specific one makes a lot of noise when it is working and when it stops. I have the same model in 2TB and 3TB and they didn't make as much noise. That's the only negative thing about it.

Regarding the 8TB model:
Positives: Fast, nice design
Negatives: Gets very hot during data transfer (55°C)
Regarding the 12TB model:
Positives: Fast, nice design, lower temperatures compared to the 8TB model during data transfer (49-50°C)
Negatives: None so far

I have been using it for over 1 month, permanently connected to a PS4 PRO. You understand that there is my entire collection plus some that the internal PS has, and every time I play, everything loads from it. It shows no signs of malfunction and the loading times are the same as the original console's hard drive (now it has an SSD 870 EVO). In case of power outage and during operation, everything is fine with a data rebuild, nothing was lost as I feared. Overall, this is the second one I have used, the first one is 4TB and was in the same operating condition for 2.5 years (game loading and lots of read-write). It functions very well and now it serves as an external drive for an iMac. It is worth buying and I consider it trustworthy, with very good speeds. If someone requires something faster, M2, a case, and more money are needed!

One fine for home usage. I haven't stressed it much, I simply store data occasionally. Let's see if it can work for an hour a month. It's relatively fast, time will tell if it can handle it. In the 7 months, it hasn't shown any problems

I bought the Western Digital Elements Desktop 8TB hard drive on 4-5-2021 for $158.98, unfortunately, within a few days its price has increased by over 60%. This particular disk has been placed in a room without air conditioning and operates 24/7. The temperature it reaches ranges between 57o & 62o C. It is generally quiet and even during data recording - transfer, it is barely audible.

I bought this one specifically for archiving purposes, so I didn't have high expectations regarding speed.
One thing I noticed from the beginning was the very long initial seek time of 4-5 seconds every time I accessed the disk.
Initially, I also had a problem with blue screens when trying to open folders while downloading torrents, but this was ultimately due to the -unacceptable- usb to sata controller of the WD. When I finally made it internal (hdd shucking), this issue was resolved.
For anyone interested, mine had a WD120EDAZ white (re-branded red CMR), but from what I read, some have WD120EMAZ inside, which is SMR. It depends on what you get.

I bought it in September 2016, 3TB. About a month ago, it fell from my desk. It fell, hit the tower and then the floor. I didn't expect it to work at all. And yet. Now it has started making a slight noise. The disk is almost full, with 673GB of free capacity. I am extremely satisfied.

Although it is faster in data transfer than portable ones, I believe that the many cables are a bit noisy. Additionally, its size doesn't help...

And after about a year, mine 'burned out' too, I don't know what to say, I lost a lot of files (and I've had the same experience with the same company's hard drive before, twice actually).. And I bought the same company's (WD) for the third time and another Samsung for backup (and so on). I have to say that I would still buy it again because of the design. However, I was not satisfied.

My ones (4) have WD120EMAZ inside. I should have gotten the 18s.

UPDATE Purchase 12/10/2020 OFF 23/08/2024 one of the 4

Nice construction, white label drive. (8TB version)
In the Black Magic test, it showed 190mb/s read/write (of course, empty)

I have 15 WD hard drives in my possession. 6-7 of them are from the same model, in all capacities.
I have to say that I have never experienced any major issues in the 5-8 years that I have had them