16TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 for plug-and-play storage - WDBWLG0160HBK-NESN

I've been using this for a media server's storage for over a year now and it has been pretty flawless. It just sits on the floor next to my little mini-pc that runs linux and several docker containers for serving media. It's quiet for the most part and it has been on for over a year straight and has been pretty heavily used and so far no issues. 12TB is a fair amount of space for my use case and I'm quite happy with this purchase.

The WD 20TB Elements Desktop drive is exactly what a large‑capacity external should be: simple, quiet, and built around a proper CMR hard drive that delivers consistent performance across the entire 20TB span. In an era where many high‑capacity externals quietly use SMR, it’s refreshing to see Western Digital stick to a full CMR design that maintains stable write speeds, predictable behavior, and long‑term reliability. Real‑world performance is strong for a drive of this size. Sequential transfers remain steady without the drop‑off or cache exhaustion issues common in SMR‑based units. The enclosure runs cool, the USB bridge is stable, and the drive behaves exactly as expected during large file moves, backups, and long‑duration workloads. For anyone dealing with multi‑terabyte datasets, this consistency matters far more than peak numbers. The 20TB capacity is a game‑changer. It consolidates what would normally require multiple smaller drives into a single, clean volume, making organization and backup workflows far easier. For the price — especially when purchased renewed — the cost‑per‑terabyte is outstanding. If you need a high‑capacity external that prioritizes reliability, sustained throughput, and no‑nonsense operation, the WD 20TB Elements is an easy 5‑star pick. It’s a workhorse drive with real CMR performance and the kind of long‑term stability Western Digital is known for.

Well, I have to edit this review to include a NEW western digital drive I recently ordered (because amazon doesn't let you leave separate reviews for different drives made by the same company. My reviews here are for VERY different products and we should be allowed to review them separately, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ------------------------------------------------------------ REVIEW for the "WD Elements Portable External Hard Drive for Windows, USB 3.2 Gen 1/USB 3.0 for PC & Mac, WDBU6Y0020BBK-WESN": Anyway, the TWO terabyte WD drive I bought on January 1, 2026 for $79.99 had obvious signs of use. There was a small but noticeable 'ding' on the right side of the drive, and the CrystalDiskInfo utility software showed that the drive had been used for 3 hours. That's far more than any drive that's fresh & straight from the factory will have accrued for simple testing. I kept this drive because I needed it immediately, but I'm not happy about it having been USED and the 'ding' chipped off on the side that shows it had been dropped. Even so, it's performing wonderfully (so far) on a new Mac & an old Windows computer, but time will tell the true tale. ------------------------------------------------------------ REVIEW for the "WD 20TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 drive, WDBWLG0200HBK-NESN" I ordered the WD 20TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive in early May 2025, wiped it and re-formatted it as NTFS for Windows, and then transferred a ton of backups to it. (A little note: 20 TB drives have an *actual* capacity of 18.19 TB). This WD drive is reliable, sturdy, and a winner by every metric. It's a very quiet drive (I only ever hear a very soft & short 'brrr' when it's waking up, but then it falls silent and remains quiet for the rest of the time that it's active). My drive is on all day, yet I never hear any sounds while it's working. I actually forget that it's on until I need to search it for something! Even with my ancient PC, this WD drive had smooth transfers of up to 180 MB/sec. When that PC died and I connected the WD drive to a new mac laptop, the transfer speed was even faster. This drive has been in use every single day for almost 8 months and it's still just as quick and quiet as the first day I used it. Of course, if you format any drive as NTFS like I did, and then you use that drive with a Mac, you can only copy files FROM the drive while it's connected to the mac device, and you can't can't copy files TO the drive. I thought I'd only use this with my old windows comp and didn't forsee its overdue demise so I used the NTFS format... but since I can access those files, it's no biggie. I'm about to order another WD drive and I'll format it as ExFat so that it'll have full read & write abilities on both mac & windows. This is a great drive and if you're a dual-OS user like me, just format your drive accordingly. It's nice to be able to have the best of both worlds. :)

I have several Elements drives ( three 20TB, this new 14TB and an old 8TB )that, when on sale, are a great value per GB/TB, although I would avoid anything below 8TB because those drives use cheaper, less reliable SMR technology ( web search " SMR vs CMR " for details.) I use them only to backup large video files which they're perfect for and remain unplugged otherwise. The reason is that Elements drives enter sleep mode after only 30 seconds of idle, and the firmware doesn't allow for use of WD Utilities software so the sleep time cannot be adjusted, which makes them inadequate as a second or third drive for constant daily use. If all you need is lots of space for backups, these are perfect. However, if you're looking for an hdd that you can leave plugged in and use it as an additional drive, there are better options such as the WD My Book drives for which you CAN use WD Utilities to adjust the sleep timer so it stays awake and ready. I have a couple of those as well, but they're more expensive. A third option is my go to. I purchased a 10tb WD Black and put it in a Startech enclosure. With this, I get great performance ( for an HDD ) and it acts exactly like an internal drive inside my pc. Of course, not even this high performance drive can match the speed of an SSD ( 4 of which populate the inside of my pc and are used for all of my video rendering and editing,) but once again, for the price per GB/TB, and the total amount of storage, it's worth it. In conclusion, if all you need is storage for backups, you can't go wrong with the Elements series, but if you need something to act more like an internal drive for regular use and don't have space inside your computer, the options I mentioned are far better!

I use these as back-up storage drives for my Sample libraries. I use them in pairs using the second drive to manually back-things up as needed. I like the large storage capacity and the price point. I have a couple dozen external drives including SSD. The speed of these via USB 3 gets the job done. The security factor, knowing if something happens my work is safe & backed-up, is worth the price of admission. That said in the last 15 years I haven't a single external drive fail. I'd like to think it's because I take of my equipment and don't move these around. I use SD cards when I need to transport my Beats, Samplea and DAW sessions. But it's more likely down to chance. I got thumb drive that was DOA once (irrelevant) Anyway, I make/produce music for a living, if something happens to my files there's no insurance that will make-up for the 1000s of hours I spend chopping/flipping and editing Samples or stacking/layering and Sound designing. Latet the files are used during beat creation. I have a system that depends on having reliable drives I also have over 100K Rare Vinyl LPs digitized on other drives. WD is my go-to for externals but I've used multiple different brands over the years. Okay let's run through the tags. These are not portable drives. I guess you could put them in a case but nah. Power source is an adapter with a barrel that plugs into the drive. My project studio at home is all Win/PC but I also use Mac's at a commercial studio. Compatibility depends on how you format the drives. The Mac computers at my commercial studio are connected to Lacie & Glyph drives for the most part. When I transfer files back & forth, I use an SD card reader/writer and my Akai MPC Files are universal. If you use these with a Mac format the drive for Mac OS. Using a PC format the drive for Windows. These aren't backwards compatible. You can't plug one into a Mac, eject the drive and plug the same drive into a Windows PC. It's one or the other. Is it technically possible with dual boot and all that, probably but you should format the drive for the system you're using it with. Format accordingly. Drive size 12TB or 24TB it's up to you. I like the lego style drive design, those are the coolest drives I have style wise. These are fingerprint magnets. But they look fine. See included photos. Hopefully that covers the tags, The drives are good I'll continue to grab these as needed. Good luck.

I bought a pair of these 14TB drives on sale and did not expect much from them. Wow! I am impressed. They are cool, quiet, and fairly fast. I run from the AC wall wart and have not had any problems. I run these on my Raspberry Pi 4 after I re-formatted them.

I have owned a lot of hard drives over the years. WD has been my go-to for quite a while now. I still have a 1TB WD external that is running. It's from when 1TB was a lot. It's still fine. This was my latest, and my worst hard drive purchase of all time. I ordered this on March 1st, 2025. I'm sitting here, trying to recover data off of a dead drive on June 18th, 2025. It's still under warranty, but the warranty is void because of how things happened. I usually back up everything. I keep a file with a bunch of passwords on it. It gets backed up to several locations. I updated that file today with some new passwords that I need to keep. This hard drive became inaccessible within minutes of me updating that file. I didn't have time to back up anything. I have an the old version of that file several times, but not this version. The drive simply disappeared from windows. I thought that was odd, so I checked to see if it somehow was unplugged. It wasn't. I listened to it, and it was spinning just fine. I thought that was odd, so I checked disk management and it said the drive was not initialized. That's...bad. Windows didn't even know the size of the drive. That's usually a physically dead drive. I thought it was rather odd that a 3 months old drive would go from functioning perfectly to completely dead instantly. None of my other drives were having any issues. So began the fun. First, I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in. It spun up, but windows couldn't recognize it. I tried that on several different computers, both windows and otherwise. I tried to connect it to my phone and tablet. They would see it, but couldn't connect. I went back to my main computer, and it still couldn't even see the size of the drive. This left me with a massive problem. I could warranty the drive, and definitely lose my data, or pay $1,000 for data recovery to potentially find out that the external enclosure had failed, or I could void the warranty, pull the hard drive out of its enclosure and connect it via SATA. I went with option 3, because I don't have $1,000 to spend right now, and I need that file. After getting it out of there, I connected it via SATA to my computer. Well, now it knows how large the drive is, but it's still not initialized. That's what's going on in my picture. So, that's where I am. I'm staring at a $300 brick. I'm trying to figure out how to get my data off of it. Normally, when a drive dies, I have some warning. Even when it actually goes, I can still get most of the data off of it. This one died catastrophically 3 months after I installed it. I have had some regrettable hard drive purchases in the past 30+ years of working on computers, but this one stands at the top of that unfortunate pile. Was it the right decision to take the drive out of the rather flimsy enclosure? If I can't recover anything, then all I did was cost myself the warranty. That is something to consider though. If the enclosure and the USB-SATA adapter goes bad in warranty, you are out of luck. You can't take it out to recover data. Your warranty is gone if you do. You data is gone if you don't. Good policy! Update after some testing Every single block is bad. All of them! I'm fairly certain it went to sleep, and when it tried to power back up the read/write head smashed into the disk. That is all that makes sense, considering it spins just fine but all the blocks are bad. This drive was always loud. It was considerably louder than the older 8TB Elements that is sitting right next to where it was. I just thought that was how it was supposed to be, but I think the actuator was having problems from day one. Removing the hard drive was definitely a waste of time and money. Buying this drive was waste of time and money, actually. Update after tearing it apart The head definitely crashed into the platter. It did that while sitting on my desk. It's a 10 platter design, so the head is quite complex. I think there was a minor flaw in the actuator from the factory. Either that, or it got moved around in shipping. Whatever it was, it probably explains why it was so extremely noisy from day one. The flaw slowly got worse over the next 3 months, and then it catastrophically failed. WD definitely has done nothing to make this right. I guess I'm just out $300 and some data that I didn't have time to back up. I wasn't too worried about it since the hard drive was basically brand new. Well, that was a mistake, just like buying this hard drive.

Good price for large amount of storage. Runs quietly. Much smaller foot print than the older 4TB Lacie drive it replaced. Very happy with it after two weeks. Install as Time Machine for my MacBook Pro was plug and play simple.