WD 20TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 external hard drive for plug-and-play storage - WDBWLG0200HBK-NESN

I purchased this to use as a local backup for system images of several machines. Although I have an online backup service that regularly updates documents, images and videos, I have found it wise to have an on-site tool for protecting against a hard-drive failure that results in the loss of the operating system and applications. Having just suffered an SSD failure of a drive that was just over a year old, Ive decided that a local backup of the entire drive is more useful than a partial backup of data-only using an online service. Using the two together ensures the least painful near-complete recovery, if handled intelligently. I didnt feel the need to use the encrypted WD backup software thats included on some of their other offerings, which is why I bought this one, which was a little less costly. Im using it with Macrium Reflect to write system images to guard against catastrophic failure & loss of important data/apps. The drive connects easily and quickly to my computers, and can be used on both USB-2 and USB-3 ports. When connected to the USB-3 port of a PC with over 600GB stored on the system drive, I was pleased that a complete system image backup could be written and verified in under 3 hours. This isnt strictly a function of the drives raw read/write speed, as there is some overhead in Macriums backup process. I havent tested the Elements drive for raw read/write speed -- I just know that it seemed pretty speedy for this application, and I was pleased with its performance! Im hoping to get many years of occasional use from this drive, creating periodic system images to guard against the loss of my O/S & data.

It worked as expected and it is plug and play. I will recommend it.

Skip to What Worked to see how I managed to get it to show up. My WD 12TB drive was formatted in ExFat on my mac pro. I loaded it with movies and tv series I purchased to watch on different tv sets in my home. These were all converted to MP4. After loading the HD around August of 2022 with about 3-4TB of files, I hooked the HD to my tv and was able to watch my recordings with no issues. Power Switch The HD does have a power switch. It is located just above the rear terminal ports. Its weird switch and difficult to find but its there. Its about 1 x 1/4 inch plastic lever that blends in with the surrounding black plastic casing and is laid out across the width of the casing--so the 1 inch is the width and the 1/4 inch is the height with the unit standing vertical. Anyway, press the area until you feel it give a little. The lever hinge is located towards the inside so the lever is pushed in more towards the left edge, when viewing it from behind. You have to depress the switch for a few seconds until you see the light finally turn off. Note that if its blinking, then you will have to depress the switch until the blinking cycles 1-3 times, then it will turn off for good. If the light is solid, then depress the switch until the light does out. The Problem So last week, I wanted to add a few more movies that I purchased a few years earlier and wanted to watch later. When I hooked up the HD to my mac, it wouldnt show up on my desktop. So I thought I would restart the computer. That worked. I brought the HD back to a tv and watched one of the movies. Then I wanted to add a few more movies. So I hooked it up to my mac, and the same thing occurred. HD didnt show up. This time nothing worked. For about 2-3hrs I tried everything. The drive didn’t show up in Disk Utility at all. All the fixes I found on the web didnt work. I tried everything I could find on the web. Nothing worked. Most of the web pages stated that if those 4 or 5 fixes didnt work, then the HD is likely damaged. Good thing I didnt try to use my tv video equipment to reformat the HD, because the issue wasnt a bad HD. I knew this to be true because it worked fine on my video equipment. The problem was with the computer hookup. I hooked the HD to a MacBook Pro and same problem. Interesting Discovery I looked at the HD lights when hooking up to the tv set. Apparently, the HD goes through a startup phase and the light blinks while the video equipment is getting setup to access the files. I noticed that when I plugged it in the mac, the light would simply turn on and stay solid, so it appeared that the startup phase was not occuring. One of the articles I read said to insert the USB terminal into the computer very slowly as there is some kind of power issue with USB technology that has been a bug forever. I thought if this was true, then it would have the same issue no matter what I hooked it up to, but I tried this anyway. All I got was the the light turning on and staying solid. I did it many times and it didnt change a thing. It wasnt a solution. I was about to give up, but I thought I this power thing was something I wanted to keep trying. What Worked So I inserted the USB terminal very slowly. (I think it might have been on the HD end this time and not the computer end of the cable). The moment the light turned on solid, I backed it out. I kept doing this ever so lightly about 5 times, until the light began to blink on its own. I let go of the cable and the light continued to blink. After a few more seconds, the HD appeared on the desktop! I then fully inserted the terminal and it stayed on. After that, I immediately performed First Aid from Disk Utility. Ran it on the disk then ran it on the volume. No issues discovered. So its some kind of issue with the USB technology. I hope this helps folks. After several shutdowns and restarts of my Mac, the HD is loading up now.

Used this drive to upgrade the capacity of my Storj Node speeds and capacity are great even thought it falls 1.5tb short of the 20tb capacity it’s advertised as

16TB with14tb usable how do they keep getting away with false claims????

I bought two of these back in 2020. One just failed after 3 years. I guess no drive lasts forever, but I am disappointed that it waited just until after the warrantee period was over.

After 6 months of daily use WD 14TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive I would not purchase this product again and would not recommend. While the 14 TB storage capacity is great and understanding that mechanical drives are slower than SSD counterparts. I have experienced the following issues; - Noisy operations, this drive is loud and gets annoying after awhile of use. i hear drive spinning and grinding while using my iMac every few minutes, plus the drive wake up is really loud. - Drive wake up slows down my workflow, it can be up to a 10-15 second delay (all activity freezes including mouse movement) waiting for the WD 14TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive to wake up. Again, would recommend doing research for a large capacity storage option.

so far no issues, purchased to replace a newly purchased Seagate which failed in 20 days or less,

If you look really hard, youll see an answered question that says Nope, it doesnt need batteries! It has an adaptor! which isnt the same as including it in the spec. The SPEC doesnt mention Hey, you need AC power, which is a huge drag. As portable as a toaster. You can do it, sure, but what a PITA. The adapter, fortunately, is a strip-hog and takes up two plugs or more. Making a pig-tail plug would add eleven cents to the cost and... no way. They cant be bothered with that. Nope, you have to find room on your strip, etc. for this strip-hog. For a hard drive. Good news: it works. Cheap and deep. Bad news: welcome back to 2008, or thereabouts.

Using this connected to a Asustor NAS, have lots of media and this drive is currently housing all the movies I have, works great and spins down when Im not watching something on Plex. Have loaded it up with almost 12TB of content so far and no issues, runs great. Actual formatted capacity will always be less of course, but overall this fits my needs perfectly!