Western Digital Elements Portable

Rubbish – Had three of these drives. Only used every other week to back up. Each one died after 2 years. Total rubbish.

Avoid at all costs-- a waste of your money and your files – This is the second WD external hard drive purchased that has now crashed and lost all of my files. I should have learnt from the first crash and loss of all of my data. I utilise an external hard drive as back up support for all of my confidential work related documents and projects. This drive is stored safely in my office and never taken out… Read more

therefore on both occasions has not been exposed to any external forces which may have damaged the drive. Likewise on every use the drive is scanned for viruses. This second drive was purchased 6 months ago and whilst not used on a daily basis has been functioning fine with no indication of issues. Without warning (one day after using) when attempting to access was unable to access the drive. On every attempt my directory could recognise the drive but would not access--on every occasion my computer would freeze requiring manual restart. Have contacted WD who recommend doing all of the basics that I have previously tried and then recommended one of their preferred data recovery providers (at cost). This is the second time the exact same thing has occurred with a WD product. I would recommend to anyone considering purchasing a WD product DO NOT and find an alternate. A total waste of money as well as you may as well just delete all of your files to cut out the middle man. WD produce faulty defective products that in the long term will cost you in terms of financial loss, loss of time and loss of your important hard worked on data. Look elesewhere.

Avoid WD products like the PLAGUE – I purchased this product with my Beyonwiz V2 Personal Video Recorder. It works okay. But when I plug it into my PC to add programs to watch or copy videos, the drive is NOT RECOGNIZED. WD Support is utterly hopeless. The ran me around for countless hours, lead me to 'initiating' the drive in my computer and HAVE NEVER SOLVED THE PROBLEM. Their… Read more

staff barely speak English and have no experience or expertise. I wouldn't buy another Western Digital Product if my life depended on it! I've always had Seagate drives and never had a problem. I wish I'd seen these Product Reviews before making my purchase. Give WD a miss. They're RS!

Review of HDD – Been using this for my ps5 for a bit now until it failed on me due to Fault WD HDD 3tb ordered from Catch for 118 plus extra postage Now I posted it back for a refund including postage cost ! Catch pay return shipping Show details

Garbage – After spending hours loading rare and valuable videos, this useless piece of garbage all of a sudden decided to become invisible. I would never trust Western Digital again, never, ever!

Perfect drive but you your own software – Own over 50 of these drives and they are the best ext portable drive on the market. Not one has ever failed in many years of operation. I never use the software that comes with this. I use the shareware program Total Commander which is clearly the best utility for copying files around. Simply nothing better and only a 5Mb file download. Show details

Frustrating – External hard drives are a security risk unless the drive is password protected. I spent over 1 and half hours trying to set up the WD Security software. Don't buy. Show details

Setting up for Mac was stressful – I needed external storage in a hurry and purchased this hard drive. I followed the instructions on how to set up for using with a MAC but Im not real tech savvy and it wouldn't work like I wanted it to. So I watched a youtube video on how to reformat it and now it works like a dream. Show details

Just Died – Had this product for 3 years. I use it maybe once a week to backup data and save large files, I've always had it in a case and hasn't gone any further than the perimeter of my house. Last week it just stop working... No warning, no weird sounds, I didn't download any foreign files. I lost all the data on there........  Show details

Works fine but poor build quality, might fail – I bought this and haven't used it much. The reviews for this hard-drive seem to indicate that it is prone to failure. I haven't had it fail on me but I do experience a clicky noise. The build quality of this hard drive is very poor. All 4 of the rubber feet have come off. At times, the hard drive won't register when connected via usb. If you are… Read more

looking for something more reliable, it is probably best to look for an ssd. I only have 50gb stored on it, so I probably won't ever exhaust it till it fails.

Do not buy WD portable drives – I've bought 4 of these over the past few years. All of them have failed just outside of WD warranty. All were barely used (one had never been used, it sat on the shelf and was faulty when first unpacked). They all develop unrecoverable read errors, the WD disc software can't even tell you what the error number is.  Show details

Do not buy – WD Elements is not reliable. Mine crashed after just 2 years. WD would not replace it and would not pay for data recovery. So this piece of rubbish will end up costing me hundreds of dollars and possibly loss of valuable data. You should try a more reputable brand instead. I learned my lesson the hard way. I will use a solid state drive and cloud as backup.  Show details

Total rubbish – I bought one WD Passport Ext drive. Worked oK for the week so bought 3 more for family and extra back up for me. Various models of gig sizes. What a mistake that was. Its now 2 months later and the last of the four is also now not working. Not being recognised. And trying to install it!! What a nightmare. Its not listed to uninstall, contains no… Read more

uninstall option in its software. Its hidden away in docs. Sneaky. But moved it to Programmes in case it would then get listed. No go. Tried IO bit uninstaller and even that doesn't list it as programme! Stuck at present still trying to figure out how to get these out of our laptops and dump in bin - and spreading the word to my entire network of how lousy a product this is.

Very Disappointed – Bought this WD Elements Portable USB 3.0 HDD off ebay from Singapore, I figured it wouldn't be a problem because Singapore is the same region. It lasted 4 months then one day it started clicking and then it just died, no apparent reason. It had sat in the same spot the whole time never moved, never travelled anywhere. The "Click Of Death" they… Read more

call it, a hardware failure and there is no fix and no data recovery options. When I enquired about the warranty I was told because it wasn't in the original shipping zone there was no warranty. So what happened to the worldwide warranty. Never again WESTERN DIGITAL. One star ? should be minus one.