WD3TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive HDD, USB 3.0, Compatible with PC, Mac, PS4 & Xbox - WDBWLG0030HBK-NESN

"Plug and play" means exactly that. When I first plugged this drive in to my Windows PC, it didn't recognize the drive. This is an easy fix. Just go to "disc management" and format the drive there for NTFS. It should show up in the list there "unallocated". Just format it and bam, no problemo. Follow the auto filled prompts along. It's easy. So that is my only complaint, if you want to call it one about this drive. It is built solid and great quality as usual.

My desktop is Linux Mint (Ubuntu). As with most USB-based, external/peripheral products now including my WD 8T Elements drive (this product) and also Blu-ray players and others I have bought in the past, this just works. Plug it into a USB 3 port and it will just mount, no need to format or worry about it.My through-put was typically on the order of 50M/second during copies. I'm only using this drive to back up massive copies of media.Note that the WD 8T Elements drive doesn't run off USB-provided power like some of the smaller drives, but needs the accompanying wall wart/power adapter. That's only a very minor inconvenience.

Drive quality:I got one of these each for my siblings when they graduated college and high school so that way they'd be able to keep all of their school information together. They were using flash drives before and this was a great upgrade after one of the flash drives got corrupt. Easy to use. Huge storage and was a reliable companion during their studies.

I had a problem with another company so now I am all in with Western Digital. Haven't had any problems after a few years of use. I've bumped into it a few times and even dropped it from about a foot and a half and the little guy works great. Unfortunately 2TB isn't enough for information nowadays. I have had another company's external drive die on me after a few months, but WD has yet to let me down.

Temporarily giving this 4 stars due to the fact that the cable that was included with the HD did not fit the HD. I am going to see if I have a cable that will work, otherwise probably going to send it back to an HD that will work. Hard to believe that WD's main product can't ship with the right cable.

I've been using this drive for quite a while. And, although I do not use it all the time, I do use it to backup photos and documents, maybe four times a year. It works well for me, but it is a little slower than my SSD drive. Still, it's sturdy.

My computer was running out of space with all my family videos and pictures. When you get to the end of a hard drive capacity, it slows your computer.I attached this external hard drive with huge capacity and redirected the file destination for video, pictures, and documents to this drive.Freeing up space on the internal hard drive revive the life of my computer. Things no longer crawl when I click on something.It was a pretty easy installation and it’s pretty straightforward. There’s nothing to it other than plugging in a USB cord to your computer..I have mine sitting on the side of my computer tower it’s sleek and looks good.Definitely worth the value of hard drive capacity that you get. I have it running on Windows 10 and it is Windows 11 compatible as well.

Western Digital 8TB Elements Desktop is a great external hard drive. Purchased WD 8TB Elements to backup my computer system. When I received the product, it was easy to install by following on screen instructions, it came with WD software to begin transferring my data immediately. Instead, I chose WD Acronis True Image software, which offers the ability to: Back up operating systems, applications, settings and individual files on Windows and macOS. Everything worked well together and there was no data loss on my windows 10 backup. The WD elements drive sits on my desktop and acts as add-on-storage to my computer. The WD 8TB is portable and is incredibly fast, taking 1hr 30min to back up my computer. WD 8TB Desktop External Hard Disk Drive-3.5 Inch, USB 3.0 with Automatic Backup, 256 Bit AES Hardware Encryption, Password Protection, Compatible with Windows & Mac, Portable HDD. Highly recommend Western Digital 8TB Elements Desktop because easy to use, reliable, fast transfer of data, and provides peace of mind.