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Western Digital Elements Desktop vs Western Digital My Book

Product Comparison: Western Digital Elements Desktop vs Western Digital My Book

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Western Digital Elements Desktop 4 TB External Hard Drive, USB 3.0

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Western Digital My Book Desktop External HDD

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General Specifications

Brand

Western Digital

Model

Elements Desktop

My Book

Origin

China

About the Product

WD Elements Desktop storage with USB 3.0 offers reliable, high-capacity, add-on storage, ultra-fast data transfer rates and universal connectivity with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 devices. The sleek design features up to 3TB capacity plus WD quality and reliability. It includes a free trial of WD SmartWare Pro back-up software for local and cloud back-up.

The My Book desktop hard drive is designed to complement your personal style with a massive amount of space to store your photos, videos, music and documents.

Key Specs

Storage Drive Type

Desktop

Capacity

4000 GB

8000 GB

What customers say about "Key Specs"

Western Digital Elements Desktop 4 TB External Hard Drive, USB 3.0

It took me me many hours searching to find a high capacity HDD and the Western Digital 4TB HDD was the best value I could find.
Excellent, very fast and affordable for this capacity.
I had already purchased lower capacity versions of this drive so knew them to be sturdy and reliable.
Got this for an amazing low price. Nice quiet drive with huge storage capacity. Been using for the last 2 weeks with no issues.
However, the actual capacity is 3.65 TB, not a full 4.

Western Digital My Book Desktop External HDD

It's really fast. It's faster than my old seagate barracuda internal drive connected through Sata III. It has an average sequential read and write of 160 MB/s.
This model (I got the 6TB size) is available in sizes up to 8TB. A pretty massive amount of storage on a USB drive!
This generation has 8TB, 6TB, 4TB and 3TB single drive models. Dual drive 12TB and 16TB models are available too.
I love WD external hard drives, these large capacity ones in particular. This is my first 6 TB one, I have 12 other ones that are only 3 TB and 4 TB, I've only used this one for a little over a week, but so far so good.
I installed the drive and one week later, the disc became corrupt, preventing me from copying any new files onto the drive.
Was disappointed compared to previous products, did not set up correctly, had to download software to make it work.

Size & Weight

Color

Black

Height

6.5 in.

5.5 in.

Width

1.9 in.

Depth

5.3 in.

6.7 in.

Weight

32 oz.

48 oz.

What customers say about "Size & Weight"

Western Digital Elements Desktop 4 TB External Hard Drive, USB 3.0

The size of the unit is a little smaller than a thick hardback book, but it looks sleek and stylish and doesn't take up a lot of room on my desk.
Recommended if small size is not a purchase criteria.
It does make a whining noise and takes a long time to spin up, but I think this is normal for a drive of this size - desktop size.
This Western Digital Elements drive houses a well ventilated full size hard drive. The casing adds about 20% to the size of the drive on each side.
Very happy with this external hard drive. It's fast, a comfortable size, and has allowed me to retire a few smaller drives.

Western Digital My Book Desktop External HDD

A file backup hard drive made for desktops. Not made to be highly portable as in the smaller, pocket-sized versions; it's made as a book-sized appliance that sits next to your desktop computer.
There is only one plus, which is its big size.
I was surprised at the size and heaviness of it and. i
Great value, nice size. I am using this to back up my backup of family videos.
It should be very clearly stated the number and size of the drives inside, horrible packaging description and a huge waste of time.

Features

OS Compatibility

Windows, Mac OS

Interfaces

USB 3.0

Backup Function

Yes

Data Protection

WD Backup

WD Backup, 256-bit AES hardware encryption, Password protection with hardware encryption

Extras

High Capacity in a Compact Design, Improve PC Performance, Plug-and-Play Simplicity

Password protection with hardware encryption, Easy to Use, Massive Capacity, WD Quality Inside and Out

What customers say about "Features"

Western Digital Elements Desktop 4 TB External Hard Drive, USB 3.0

Used to connect to my 4 yr old LG Smart TV to activate the tv's WebOS time machine features for live tv pause, rewind and programme recording.
All are USB 2 but this is supposed to be backwards compatible - labels all over the box, advertised as a prominent feature on the website and in the description etc.
As this has a USB 3.0 connection, the transfer rate is quicker than USB 2.0 - between 25 and 31mb per second
This drive works exactly as it should I connected it to my Mac ran disk utility formatted it and bingo.
It's very quiet when transferring data and when not in use the only way you can tell if it's on is by the small blue light at the front.

Western Digital My Book Desktop External HDD

Easy to set up. I just plugged it in and it was automatically detected by windows with no problems.
It comes with a 4ft USB 3.0 cable (much nicer than the very short My Passport cables!)
The drive is faster than I expected. It took about 1 day to copy 5.14 TB to it via USB 3. Those were mostly music files 3MB to 60mb plus some videos.
The top half of the hard drive uses the shiny black paint that gets covered in fingerprints as soon as you touch it.
The hard drive has no indicator light that shows it is on or receiving power. You can only tell by listening or if it's detected by your device / OS.

Included

Additional Accessories

USB 3.0 cable, AC adapter, Quick start guide

Software

WD SmartWare Pro Back-up Software

WD Backup and WD Security software

Number Of Drives

Power

Power Supply

AC adapter

Warranty / Certifications

Manufacturer Warranty