Western Digital Elements HD

Hi folks, I presently use an assortment of External HD's which require their own Power Supply. I am considering the WD Elements 1 TB USB 2.0, which is "Bus Powered" directly from USB Anyone have experience and/or comment about this device. Reliability is "highly" important to me. Thanks in advance.

No experience with that unit, but have a mate with a My Book, and in simple terms it performs as you would expect from WD, so I have no doubts that it will work fine for you, BUT, I personally steer people away from USB devices lately, at least for external storage anyway, as you are well aware, data transfer is throttled by the USB speed, so large files are painfully slow compared to other options. Personally with the new tech evolving the way it is, I suggest you look to an eSata unit, or possibly USB3 (although this may be too expensive currently), a few years back a mate wanted an external drive, I looked to the future and talked him into a unit that gave him USB and eSata, thus allowing him instant usage with the current system at that time, but when upgrading in the future it allowed him to swap to eSata (ensuring the new system had this, which most do lately) with no further expense, well earlier this year he upgraded, and is so over the moon he followed my advice back then, he knew I was not steering him wrong, but until you see the difference you don't believe how much it can be. I personally suggest people to get a separate drive and caddy, this allows them to get whatever drive they want, then getting a caddy with the greatest (or most important) connections you are getting the best all round, it also means you can get a more compact (slimmer) caddy, my mates My Book is massive when I compare it to the stand alone caddy I got for my other mate, pretty important when taking it out with you, but do check it can power through the USB port, tried looking for it's spec and all I saw said it comes with power, so maybe I'm not seeing the right one ? But as a further thought, I often get mates stuff to sort, many times it requires me moving my system out and opening it up to add a suspect drive as a slave, or a simple back up prior to reinstalling, it is a nightmare doing it each time as I have no space, so I knew of eSata ports you can buy for the tower, and had always intended to get one, but a recent need forced me to get a card reader, my existing one was not extensive enough for my current needs. As a result, I came across a card reader, that not only had an eSata port, but a Sata port as well, so now I just hook straight into the unit (fits in the floppy housing) on the front of the system, use a Sata lead and Sata power lead, and off I go, beats the need for further mains cables, and beats the pants off the USB adaptor I bought prior thinking it would be OK, don't get me wrong, did the job, but talk about slow, it added hours literally to do what I needed, so much so I normally aborted and opened the system up, which then took minutes to do what the USB quoted as hours, just thought it worth the mention, IMHO it's a far better way to go, hope this helps.

like 8210GUY i recommend going e-sata if you can,

you need portability doug or just extra storage space?

if you just need the extra storage more than portability i'd suggest something like this :- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct….rodid=HS-060-AK
then buy internal drives as and when you need them.

it can be used with any sata internal drive
you can get versions that will hold more than a single drive too,
has both usb and esata connections,

This is what I have now, it means I can hook up a Sata or eSata drive in seconds, without messing with the inside of the system, I wish I had such a thing years ago, it would of saved me a massive amount of trouble.

Hi folks,

I presently use an assortment of External HD's which require their own Power Supply.

I am considering the WD Elements 1 TB USB 2.0, which is "Bus Powered" directly from USB

Anyone have experience and/or comment about this device.

Reliability is "highly" important to me.

Thanks in advance.

I recommend against a WD USB external. I have a WD Elements 2TB USB 2.0 drive, though it's powered through an ac power supply. WD USB drives have issues with Windows (unknown if it's just windows 7 or other windows versions). They eventually can't be unmounted for safe removal. For me, the first few times I used it (I put a switch between it and the outlet so I don't have to leave it plugged in all the time) I was able to unmount it and turn it off safely. Then I got an error saying it couldn't be unmounted because it was in use or being accessed. So I googled the problem and downloaded sysinternals/winternals process explorer and used it to disable every process accessing the drive and it still didn't work. I searched around some more and it turns out WD has had this problem for a long time now and hasn't done anything to address it. I eventually had to just turn off my computer, give it a few minutes, then flip the switch and hope for the best.

Also, WD Elements drives have no ventilation whatsoever. So if you're using them for a decent length of time, heat can be an issue with reliability. There are a lot of reports of Elements drives failing after a relatively short while and speculation is that heat is a factor in that.

If I had to do it over again, I would have gotten a Seagate drive (I got the one I did on a black friday sale, so price was the deciding factor). They have a utility you can download for use with their drives that fixes the problem, making it safe to unmount the volume. While I can't recommend a USB powered drive, I at least know that Seagate offers a solution to that one program. If you plan to never remove the drive then I suppose it wouldn't be a problem for you though.