Question Is the WD Elements Portable any good

[swapjim]

I need a drive to add one more backup point on my data scheme and I'm considering WD Elements Portable.

It's the cheapest portable drive by WD. I know that it's not supported by their software and I don't care about that. What I'd like to know is whether it's any good in terms of quality and speed.

Where I live in the world, a My Passport is just 10 USD pricier than the My Passport, which a negligible price difference so I can get the Passport. But thing is that I like the aesthetics of the Elements drive a lot better than My Passport's

So if anyone knows-- is this an inferior drive? Lower quality in any sense of the word? Slower? More prone to break?

 

[manly]

There are few 2.5" HDDs still in production, so I don't expect there to be a meaningful difference in the drive inside. WD's web site lists only a single option for sale:

500GB WD Blue PC Mobile Hard Drive | Western Digital

Take your PC storage on the go with the WD Blue PC Mobile Hard Drive. WD Blue offers features that are ideal for everyday mobile needs. Shop now for FREE & FAST shipping.

www.westerndigital.com

So the Elements and My Passport lines probably use the same drives. Both have terrible reviews on westerndigital.com so I think you should also look at Seagate's portable backup drives.

The reviews for the Elements drive on Amazon are solid, so I think you'd be OK with that. Good luck!

 

[dlerious]

Only ever used the bigger Elements external drives. For portable I use Samsung T5 or T7 and have a Seagate One Touch SSD, all still working.

 

[Shmee]

2.5" HDDs are pretty much all terrible, especially external ones. You are better off with a good 3.5" HDD in an external dock / enclosure.

 

[BFG10K]

I've had two of them for years and they work well for daily backups. I use them for offline cold storage.

They're entirely powered by USB (no external power cables needed) and they copy files at pretty decent speeds.

Absolutely no complaints or problems.

 

[swapjim]

There are few 2.5" HDDs still in production, so I don't expect there to be a meaningful difference in the drive inside. WD's web site lists only a single option for sale:

500GB WD Blue PC Mobile Hard Drive | Western Digital

Take your PC storage on the go with the WD Blue PC Mobile Hard Drive. WD Blue offers features that are ideal for everyday mobile needs. Shop now for FREE & FAST shipping.

www.westerndigital.com

So the Elements and My Passport lines probably use the same drives. Both have terrible reviews on westerndigital.com so I think you should also look at Seagate's portable backup drives.

The reviews for the Elements drive on Amazon are solid, so I think you'd be OK with that. Good luck!

I didn't thought to research that, thank you, it's a nice idea.

2.5" HDDs are pretty much all terrible, especially external ones. You are better off with a good 3.5" HDD in an external dock / enclosure.

I prefer the 2.5" ones because they produce less noise.

What difference in speed are we talking about? I'm getting close to 120-80MB/sec (depending on how full it is) on a 2.5" USB drive I have.

 

[Shmee]

I didn't thought to research that, thank you, it's a nice idea.



I prefer the 2.5" ones because they produce less noise.

What difference in speed are we talking about? I'm getting close to 120-80MB/sec (depending on how full it is) on a 2.5" USB drive I have.

The speeds will vary per drive in both categories, depending also on task/workload. But my main concern with the 2.5" HDDs, particularly the off the shelf externals, is their reliability and fragility. In my experience, 2.5" HDDs are very fragile, and in general don't last that well before developing issues such as bad sectors, SMART errors, etc...now, to make matters worse at times, a lot of 2.5" external drives have a proprietary internal interface, (probably to discourage shucking?) that makes data recovery a more difficult if say the USB controller is flaky or dies.

Now, you said you value silence, depending on how much storage you need in a single drive, have you considered an SSD in an enclosure? Would be faster as well of course, though a tad bit more pricey as well probably, but IMO worth it. Even so, SSD prices are quite low right now for the most part.

 

[manly]

An external portable HDD is fine and easy to move around. I disagree that they're any more fragile than 3.5" HDDs. If anything, 2.5" drives were standard in laptops so they were constructed knowing that they would be jostled around a bit. I won't claim that they are more or less fragile/reliable than desktop drives.

IMO the main decision points are capacity and portability. You will get less for your money with portable drives, but that's fine if you only need 2TB and don't foresee a lot of growth. Since your use case is backups, any extra speed of a larger HDD will a) depend on the USB spec and b) not matter much unless your daily backup jobs are incredibly large.

 

[swapjim]

The speeds will vary per drive in both categories, depending also on task/workload. But my main concern with the 2.5" HDDs, particularly the off the shelf externals, is their reliability and fragility. In my experience, 2.5" HDDs are very fragile, and in general don't last that well before developing issues such as bad sectors, SMART errors, etc...now, to make matters worse at times, a lot of 2.5" external drives have a proprietary internal interface, (probably to discourage shucking?) that makes data recovery a more difficult if say the USB controller is flaky or dies.

Now, you said you value silence, depending on how much storage you need in a single drive, have you considered an SSD in an enclosure? Would be faster as well of course, though a tad bit more pricey as well probably, but IMO worth it. Even so, SSD prices are quite low right now for the most part.

I haven't heard again that 2.5" HDDs are more fragile. I would have thought (like manly) that they would be better suited given they have evolved for laptop. I've had two of them in operation for more than 8 years. One of them died a few days ago but the other one keeps going.

I was just thinking of that before reading your post: a SATA SSD with an external case can make a nice alternative. I only need 2TB. The Samsung 2TB SSD 870 QVO costs close to 110 USD here. I can couple that with a case that costs 20 USD. That's 400-500 MB/sec. Not a bad deal.

Thanks to everyone who posted, you've all helped!

 

[manly]

I haven't heard again that 2.5" HDDs are more fragile. I would have thought (like manly) that they would be better suited given they have evolved for laptop. I've had two of them in operation for more than 8 years. One of them died a few days ago but the other one keeps going.

I was just thinking of that before reading your post: a SATA SSD with an external case can make a nice alternative. I only need 2TB. The Samsung 2TB SSD 870 QVO costs close to 110 USD here. I can couple that with a case that costs 20 USD. That's 400-500 MB/sec. Not a bad deal.

Thanks to everyone who posted, you've all helped!

110 USD for that drive sounds pricey; hopefully you have other options to consider in your area.

Thinking about this, I'd probably choose between an economical 2.5" HDD OR an economical NVMe drive in a USB-C enclosure.
SATA SSD is somewhere in the middle and I don't see a benefit of going that route. There are lot of good NVMe drives to choose from, but not as many SATA options remaining.

 

[dlerious]

Samsung 2TB T7 Shield on sale for $120 at best buy

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-t7-shield-2tb-external-usb-3-2-gen-2-rugged-ssd-ip65-water-resistant-beige/6505714.p?skuId=6505714

 

[Shmee]

I haven't heard again that 2.5" HDDs are more fragile. I would have thought (like manly) that they would be better suited given they have evolved for laptop. I've had two of them in operation for more than 8 years. One of them died a few days ago but the other one keeps going.

I was just thinking of that before reading your post: a SATA SSD with an external case can make a nice alternative. I only need 2TB. The Samsung 2TB SSD 870 QVO costs close to 110 USD here. I can couple that with a case that costs 20 USD. That's 400-500 MB/sec. Not a bad deal.

Thanks to everyone who posted, you've all helped!

How much is a Crucial MX500 in your area? Here in the US, they go on sale frequently and are generally great value. Looks like the 2TB SATA SSDs may be a bit on the pricey side compared to what they should be, looking at 1TB SATA SSDs and NVMe drives. A good point was made that you may be better off getting an NVMe drive and enclosure, doesn't have to be a high end one as you will be limited by USB anyway. Seems like SATA SSDs and mainstream NVMe SSDs are pretty close in price these days.

I just looked online, the NVMe Crucial P3 2TB is around $115, will likely be less on black Friday.

 

[esquared]

IIRC, WD Passport drives are encrypted. No way to turn it off.
WD Elements drives are unencrypted.
FWIW.

 

[BFG10K]

IIRC, WD Passport drives are encrypted. No way to turn it off.
WD Elements drives are unencrypted.

I have both a Passport and Elements and neither of them encrypt anything. I believe you need to explicitly use WD's software to do this, which I've never installed or used.

 

[esquared]

I have both a Passport and Elements and neither of them encrypt anything. I believe you need to explicitly use WD's software to do this, which I've never installed or used.

Your Passport has hardware encryption built in. Same with the larger MyBook drives.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/external-drives/wd-my-book-usb-3-0-hdd?sku=WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-my-passport-usb-3-0-hdd?sku=WDBYVG0010BBK-WESN

Encrypted Data Protection for Ultimate Security | Western Digital

Western Digital enterprise drives are built with security in mind, so your data can be protected from unauthorized access or theft.

www.westerndigital.com

The Element drives have never had encryption.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/external-drives/wd-elements-desktop-usb-3-0-hdd?sku=WDBWLG0040HBK-NESN

Not I don't know if you now, can turn off the hardware encryption in the newer drives. In the older drives that's why people were complaining
about having a a drive go bad and losing their data

Why you’ll never see me buy a WD My Passport – DiskTuna // Photo Repair & Photo Recovery

www.disktuna.com

BFG. AFAIK its the software that manages the drive or drives if you have more than one attached and set a PW for you drive.

It's part of the reason why I never used my WD MYBook and Ultra Passport drives. After I found out it was too late to return them.

 

[BFG10K]

Your Passport has hardware encryption built in.

I've plugged the Passport into multiple PCs and it's never asked for a password. The data is always fully visible from Windows Explorer, just like a regular flash drive.

 

[esquared]

I've plugged the Passport into multiple PCs and it's never asked for a password. The data is always fully visible from Windows Explorer, just like a regular flash drive.

I understand that. You don't need a PW to make the drive function. Problem is, people at least a few years back, would think if they didn't set
a PW that the drive wouldn't encrypt. That's not true. Now maybe some has changed in regarding that in the past few years but previously
that wasn't the case.

This is from the last link I put up there.
"You may assume, that only after you set a password, you’re data gets encrypted. However you can also opt not using a password. And use the WD My Passport as an ordinary USB external disk. You may also assume that if not using a password, your data will not be encrypted. This is however not the case. A WD Passport drive always encrypts your data!

My guess it that the data is always visible because the encryption chip is built into the drive.

 

[BFG10K]

My guess it that the data is always visible because the encryption chip is built into the drive.

If the encryption has no visible effect on anything, how is it "encryption"?

 

[esquared]

the encryption has no visible effect on anything, how is it "encryption"?

Good question, I don't know. You can't shuck these drives and have it work in another enclosure.
Maybe you can't copy from this drive to another.

I just looked and it seems that the encryption may be enabled or disabled on newer drives.

Western Digital MyBook Drive Lock Encryption – Failure and Recovery – Carlton Bale

 

[Super Spartan]

I understand that. You don't need a PW to make the drive function. Problem is, people at least a few years back, would think if they didn't set
a PW that the drive wouldn't encrypt. That's not true. Now maybe some has changed in regarding that in the past few years but previously
that wasn't the case.

This is from the last link I put up there.
"You may assume, that only after you set a password, you’re data gets encrypted. However you can also opt not using a password. And use the WD My Passport as an ordinary USB external disk. You may also assume that if not using a password, your data will not be encrypted. This is however not the case. A WD Passport drive always encrypts your data!

My guess it that the data is always visible because the encryption chip is built into the drive.

I have a 4TB My Passport exterrnal HDD, it is not encrypted, I can verify that by looking at the drive in Disk Management. Neither was any WD drive I had owned previously unless I'd intentionally encrypt it which I never do.