10 reviews for 20TB Desktop External Hard Drive

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Jim’s Tech & Music – February 13, 2024

   Lots of data backup storage at a very good price
   OK, I admit it. I bought one of these from Amazon Warehouse, “Excellent condition, packaging marked.” I needed to replace an aging Hitachi 3 TB “bookcase” external HDD which was making noises like an old steam engine on its way out. This drive was easy to set up – I connected it to a port in my notebook dock – and I had no problems in partitioning the drive and setting up backups to it. it’s extremely quiet, quite fast, and is a much smaller package (for a 3-1/2″ drive) than the old 3 TB external drive its replacing. I’ve been running error checks and data comparisons since buying it about 2 months ago, and I’ve had no problems of any kind. When the drive arrived, I could not actually see anywhere that the packaging was defaced, and everything inside appeared to be unopened. The Warehouse price was a considerable saving over the “new” price, and I wasn’t quite sure what I might receive. In any case, everything works, and works well. This was an excellent value purchase, especially for a large external drive. I try to stick to brand name drives, and WD drives have always given good service. This was a great deal all around, and this drive is compact and quiet. If they had another one at this price, I’d probably buy it for my other workstation. Certainly I’ll be keeping an eye out. Two thumbs up.UPDATE FEB 1, 2023: My original review stands as is; the drive has worked, quietly and flawlessly since buying it in 2021. I partitioned the HDD, approximately “2/3 Data & 1/3 Backup” and that’s worked out well. I’ve only needed to restore from Backup once, but it was seamless and all worked as it should. Around the end of November 2022, I bought a second one of the same model “Desktop” external HDD. It’s also partitioned, and the data storage is from a newer machine at full USB 3.0 speed. I can say (happily) that there are no problems. Both of these drives are extremely quiet, run very cool, and do the job they’re intended for. These are not a substitute for a “shirt pocket” 2.5″ USB-powered portable external drive – just the fact that each has a separate AC power supply makes them “stay put” devices. Incidentally, unlike some AC adapters I’ve known, the adapter supplied with each of these runs very cool, as they should. They also (miracle of miracles) have the AC connector arranged so that the adapter will sit at a 90-degree angle from a 110VAC outlet or most power bars, which means that they don’t cover up other AC outlets. It’s a simple thing, but very much appreciated. I purchased my 2nd of this model HDD during the “Black Friday” sale, so the price was 15-20% lower than “list” – finding something you need anyway, and then on sale is a bonus. The elderly Hitachi 3 TB drive mentioned in my original review has retired, although I check its functioning about once a month, since it holds documents that might still be needed. It did yeoman service and for its time, was at the higher end of the technology pool. That said, both of these WD 6TB (actually about 5.8 TB) drives are smaller, quieter, cooler, and have much faster i/o than the earlier generation unit. They do come with a high-grade data cable, but it’s only about 1 metre/3ft. long. Should you need more length, it’s well worth the small extra investment to buy a high-quality data cable, rather than “cheapest.” I try to keep cable lengths as short as is practical, since there is a measurable loss of data transfer speed when a long cable is used. Fortunately, not a problem in this case. I have no hesitation in giving this unit 5 stars – I liked the performance of my first purchase that I bought another – admittedly for a specific job, but still excellent in all respects. This is not the cheapest drive available, but the cost is money well spent. Five more stars.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Gord K – February 14, 2024

   Great for extra storage
   I have been a WD fan for some time and have pined a bit for a big external hard drive. This one fit the bill!

3. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Paul Hundal – February 16, 2024

   The price for storage for this item is exceptional
   I paid $21/Tb which is exceptional, so much so I was worried there was a catch. It is 3.0 rather than the latest 3.1 but for my uses it was perfectly fine. I am concerned about durability since I store files for archival purposes. We’ll see how long it lasts. WD used to have a good name but I have encountered problems with their products over the last two years so its brand name no longer inspires any confidence. I had to get a replacement on one defective WD harddrive that they replaced but I had to pay the shipping cost. Why should I have to pay shipping when their product was clearly defective. So the only reason I went 4 star is because it is WD and I don’t have confidence in WD durability.

4. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Michel desbiens – February 16, 2024

   Répond à mes attentes
   Enregistreur tele

5. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Matthew B. – February 17, 2024

   
   I bought this hard drive for a customer of mine, who was dangerously low on space with her 11 TB hard drive (she had a few hundred gigabytes of space left). I was able to transfer all of her data over to this drive without a problem. Of course, the transfer took about 10 days because there was so much data involved. My customer now has all of her data safe and secure on this new drive. She is beyond thrilled.

6. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Obaid Rahman – February 17, 2024

   Lots of storage and Reliable
   They provide lots of storage and are pretty durable/reliable.The only issue I find is they are a bit bulky, but they do the job.

7. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Xbox Gamertag – February 18, 2024

   
   I bought the 12TB version which has a WD120EDBZ-11BHA0 inside. It’s just a standard SATA hard drive inside the USB enclosure.But take note, this model is a HELIUM filled drive which has a life span of 5 years. You can see the helium level using a SMART monitoring tool like CrystalDiskInfo. If you are concerned about this, typically smaller capacity drives (under 10TB) use air instead of helium and do not have a helium leakage problem.Otherwise just be mindful that the HDD has a pretty fixed life span. All helium HDDs will leak over time, this is just an inevitable aspect of physics. Plan ahead for an eventual replacement and check your helium levels (SMART parameter #16) periodically.These enclosures run hot and have no internal fan, but they are a cheap way to get a large capacity HDD for your desktop computer if you take some time to take the HDD out of the enclosure. That’s what I did. If your desktop has good airflow over the drives then they’ll run cool.I get about 190MB/s read and write speeds which is pretty good. Formatted size is about 10.1GB as expected.

8. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Larry L. Miller – February 23, 2024

   
   This unit does just what it is suppose to do. It only took a few minutes to reformat it to work with my iMac. That is a very easy process.It is fast, quiet, and provides plenty of backup storage. It does operate off of regular house current and is not small like some of the unites that also have decent storage, but nothing like the 20TB of this unit.I did not need to use tech, so can’t comment on it.I have had this unit for several weeks not and am completely satisfied.

9. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Mojo Jojo – February 24, 2024

   
   External drives are much cheaper to use in your NAS storage than the internal drives by themselves.The Elements are very easy to open up, and pull the drive out. You do risk the warranty by doing this, so make sure to test the drive beforehand. (Smart long test, as well as other tools out there).Some of the drives in the external cases have the 3.3V reset. This means if you plug the drive into a backplane that provides 3.3v, then the drive won’t work. Make sure your backplane or power cable does not provide this voltage.

10. 

    Rated 4 out of 5

    5T1CK5 – February 25, 2024

    
    Skip to “What Worked” to see how I managed to get it to show up.My WD 12TB drive was formatted in ExFat on my mac pro. I loaded it with movies and tv series I purchased to watch on different tv sets in my home. These were all converted to MP4. After loading the HD around August of 2022 with about 3-4TB of files, I hooked the HD to my tv and was able to watch my recordings with no issues.Power SwitchThe HD does have a power switch. It is located just above the rear terminal ports. It’s weird switch and difficult to find but it’s there. It’s about 1 x 1/4 inch plastic lever that blends in with the surrounding black plastic casing and is laid out across the width of the casing–so the 1 inch is the width and the 1/4 inch is the height with the unit standing vertical. Anyway, press the area until you feel it give a little. The lever hinge is located towards the inside so the lever is pushed in more towards the left edge, when viewing it from behind. You have to depress the switch for a few seconds until you see the light finally turn off. Note that if it’s blinking, then you will have to depress the switch until the blinking cycles 1-3 times, then it will turn off for good. If the light is solid, then depress the switch until the light does out.The ProblemSo last week, I wanted to add a few more movies that I purchased a few years earlier and wanted to watch later. When I hooked up the HD to my mac, it wouldn’t show up on my desktop. So I thought I would restart the computer. That worked. I brought the HD back to a tv and watched one of the movies. Then I wanted to add a few more movies. So I hooked it up to my mac, and the same thing occurred. HD didn’t show up. This time nothing worked. For about 2-3hrs I tried everything. The drive didn’t show up in Disk Utility at all. All the “fixes” I found on the web didn’t work. I tried everything I could find on the web. Nothing worked. Most of the web pages stated that if those 4 or 5 fixes didn’t work, then the HD is likely damaged. Good thing I didn’t try to use my tv video equipment to reformat the HD, because the issue wasn’t a bad HD. I knew this to be true because it worked fine on my video equipment. The problem was with the computer hookup. I hooked the HD to a MacBook Pro and same problem.Interesting DiscoveryI looked at the HD lights when hooking up to the tv set. Apparently, the HD goes through a startup phase and the light blinks while the video equipment is getting setup to access the files. I noticed that when I plugged it in the mac, the light would simply turn on and stay solid, so it appeared that the startup phase was not occuring. One of the articles I read said to insert the USB terminal into the computer very slowly as there is some kind of power issue with USB technology that has been a bug forever. I thought if this was true, then it would have the same issue no matter what I hooked it up to, but I tried this anyway. All I got was the the light turning on and staying solid. I did it many times and it didn’t change a thing. It wasn’t a solution. I was about to give up, but I thought I this power thing was something I wanted to keep trying.What WorkedSo I inserted the USB terminal very slowly. (I think it might have been on the HD end this time and not the computer end of the cable). The moment the light turned on solid, I backed it out. I kept doing this ever so lightly about 5 times, until the light began to blink on its own. I let go of the cable and the light continued to blink. After a few more seconds, the HD appeared on the desktop! I then fully inserted the terminal and it stayed on.After that, I immediately performed First Aid from Disk Utility. Ran it on the disk then ran it on the volume. No issues discovered. So it’s some kind of issue with the USB technology. I hope this helps folks. After several shutdowns and restarts of my Mac, the HD is loading up now.