WD 16TB Elements External Hard Drive, Desktop HDD storage, USB 3.0 compatible, Fast Transfer rates, Easy add on storage for all your pictures, videos, music and documents, Black

I've bought many of these to use in my NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices. I've had the 18TB, 20TB, 22TB and 24TB versions of this drive bought at various times over the last few years. All have been reliable (the 22TB which I am writing the review on is over a year old and is working fine).Always check the drive works and is free of errors before removing from the device. I've not had any drive dead on arrival but always best to check as your warranty may be voided once you remove from the enclosure. The drives are easy to remove (search online to see how to do it).One thing to be aware of is that larger hard drives are more noisy generally. In general operation, the noise is not too bad but you may find in an array there's a bit of noise when they all start up together.It's a bit of a shame that manufacturers put a premium on standalone hard drives as it's not great for the environment to buy in enclosures when you know you're going to remove it – even if you recycle the enclosure and the power adaptor. But this is a far cheaper way to get large drives.I would recommend these as a reliable and cheaper alternative to drives marketed as NAS drives. Always do a bit of research first though to see what people recommend at the time of purchase. Reddit is usually a good place to check.

I bought 2x 14TB HDD for £190 on Amazon Prime Day sale as a upgrade to my home server (and backup server) storage.Each machine was running a 8TB Toshiba, 4TB WD and 4TB Seagate. Intention is to eventually replace one of the 4TBs from each machine.But for now, they are running plugged into the USB ports.The drives arrived safely boxed and plugging in and switching on was very easy, with no drivers required. I reformatted them and copied the data from one the 4TB drives over. This was particularly painful and took about 2 days over the USB interface, achieving around 36MByte/s when I was checking which wasn't really USB 3.0 speed but more USB 2 speed. Though this could be down to my ageing servers rather than the drives.The drives themselves ran with relatively little noise, I'd say there were quieter in the enclosure than my Toshiba 8TB drives were inside my PC cases! The drives themselves did get quite warm, but not hot, certainly less warm than the Toshibas (though those did run hot)Once these bed in for a few more days and I've copied my data across, I will test my next plan and update the review accordingly...Update 20 Oct 2020: Having opened up the case, the drives are 14TB WD140EMFZ drives. I've "shucked" the drives out and attached them directly to the SATA connectors on my PCs. This has then yielded the full potential of the performance of these drives.I've sequential read of around 190MByte/s transfer speeds now which is pretty damn good considering it's in a 5 year old PC. Perfectly adequate for a PC storage drive or NAS drive. Random Read/Write is pretty bad, but in this age, spinning disks really are not the solution for such operations and I suggest you get yourself a cheap SSD for that sort of usage.Update 17 Nov 2020: These drives have been running flawlessly for a month now. My backup server had a PSU failure and upon replacing PSU, the drive (and others) carried on working falwlessly.To answer a comment. These drives when shucked out are exactly the same as form factor and data and power connectivity as any standard SATA internal 3.5" drive. screw holes etc are all in standard places.Update 23 Apr 2021: These drives have now been running for 6 months. I've upgrade my backup server and now both machines are running 24/7. Both 14TB drives still seem fine with currently no indications of any issues. Hopefully, touch wood this will keep going this way for a long time...

The 18TB drive is absolutely fantastically priced for its size!The drive is a little noisey as it awakens from its slumber, it’s also a relatively slow drive and doesn’t try to hide that.However it’s space and value far exceed the perceived downsides of the speed and noise of the drive as you won’t be using this daily of you are using it in its USB form factor.However when you crack it open, that’s when this drive really comes alive. Inside the slow plastic USB shell lies a 7200rpm WDC WD180EDGZ which when connected directly to an array or PC is silent and really rather impressive performance.If used as a USB drive Its sheer size alone will allow you and the entire family to back up all of your important data such as photos, videos documents safely in one east to access place.If you are cracking this open and putting inside a sinology, raid array or simply a PC the 7200rpm WDC WD180EDGZ really does hold its own against smaller drives, theoretically faster drives.Overall this is a reliable, great value drive that is designed for backup and storage (not for high speed gaming or searching) and If you understand that going in you won’t be disappointed!These are also the same drives that the extremely handsome “Richard” form Digital Foundry purchased and recommended during the Black Friday sales (2021) and we all know that recommendations don’t come much higher or more prestigious than that.A fantastic purchase!