Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard

I had been considering buying an external hard drive for a while because it became clear 80GB wasn't enough for me. I started by looking in the Argos catalogue and looked at a Hitachi one because I knew they were reliable as I had one. It was £74.99 for 500GB. I kept looking around the net on various sites like Amazon and Play.com and the prices were less than that for double the memory. Finally, I was torn between 2 hard drives. The Seagate Expansion 1TB and this. I opted for this purely because it was a few pounds cheaper and the Seagate had lots of bad reviews about reliability and a dreaded clicking noise.

Anyway onto the review, I have decided to split this review up into categories and review each category separately with a rating of each category.

What's In The Box

I ordered my Elements from Amazon. It came by Home Delivery Network in a brown Amazon box. Inside that box was a piece of brown paper and a Western Digital Box.

Inside the Western Digital Box was the hard drive (thankfully), a quick start guide, Warranty info (2 years in Europe), a USB 2.0 cable and a Power Adapter. The guide said a copy of the manual was on the hard drive. There wasn't one but there's really nothing to it. The quick start guide will get you going in no time.

Design

The Elements gets of to a good start. It looks very cool. However there are a few problems affecting a 5 star rating. First of all the top although looking like it's got a matte metal finish is actually a slightly cheap feeling matt plastic. There's nothing wrong with it durability wise but it affects the premium feeling. Also the sides are shiny plastic which acts as a magnet to dust.

Design 4/5

Capacity

The Elements offers fantastic storage space for the money. It's got a super large 1TB of memory. That's 1000GB!!! Even me doing loads of video editing will struggle to fill this monster! But then they say you can't have too much storage.

Capacity 5/5

Speed

The Elements is not a premium drive and makes no claims of being super fast. It's just simple, budget storage. It still is pretty quick and is just about capable of capturing DV Video in Lossless quality. And now you've got enough space to capture DV in lossless quality! Transferring files is easy through Windows Explorer and fairly nippy too. If you're looking for super high speeds then the Elements won't work for you and you should look at a more expensive Firewire/SATA drive.

Speed 4/5

Value For Money

This drive offers absolutely brilliant value for money. I've had a look in high street shops and other brands and will write a short price comparison of what prices you could pay for 1TB.

Seagate FreeAgent - £70

Hitachi Desktop Hard Drive - £80

Iomega Desktop Hard Drive - £75

So as you can see this hard drive at just £54.99 offers absolutely brilliant value for money!

Value for Money 5/5

Power Consumption

The WD Elements range offers a special Green Power technology that makes it more efficient. Also it goes into a sleep mode after a long period of inactivity. It is powered by an Energy Star approved power supply (Don't ask me what that is!). The packaging box it comes in is made from recycled card board. It's definitely an Eco-Friendly hard drive.

Power Consumption 5/5

So, to conclude. The Western Digital Elements 1TB USB Hard Drive offers masses of simple, reliable and eco friendly data storage for all your internet downloads/videos/music etc. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

(Also on Dooyoo and Ciao)

My first external HD device. Selected this Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard after a bit of research and I am delighted with it. You get an amazing lot of strorage for your money. The device is about the size as a paperback book and is quite rugged, with strong rubber on both ends to give protection from knocks. Simple to set up and use. Quiet operation and does it not get too hot. Satisfied customer!