WD24TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive for Plug-and-Play Storage, USB 3.2 Gen1 - WDBWLG0240HBK-NESN

Why did you pick this product vs others?:Came highly recommended by so called experts, so far I think they were right. No issues at all with the external drive, I plan on buying another just as an extra layer of protection. Backup capability:High capacity at a reasonable cost.

"Plug and play" means exactly that. When I first plugged this drive in to my Windows PC, it didn't recognize the drive. This is an easy fix. Just go to "disc management" and format the drive there for NTFS. It should show up in the list there "unallocated". Just format it and bam, no problemo. Follow the auto filled prompts along. It's easy. So that is my only complaint, if you want to call it one about this drive. It is built solid and great quality as usual.

Drive quality:I got one of these each for my siblings when they graduated college and high school so that way they'd be able to keep all of their school information together. They were using flash drives before and this was a great upgrade after one of the flash drives got corrupt. Easy to use. Huge storage and was a reliable companion during their studies.

My desktop is Linux Mint (Ubuntu). As with most USB-based, external/peripheral products now including my WD 8T Elements drive (this product) and also Blu-ray players and others I have bought in the past, this just works. Plug it into a USB 3 port and it will just mount, no need to format or worry about it.My through-put was typically on the order of 50M/second during copies. I'm only using this drive to back up massive copies of media.Note that the WD 8T Elements drive doesn't run off USB-provided power like some of the smaller drives, but needs the accompanying wall wart/power adapter. That's only a very minor inconvenience.

I recently upgraded my MAC and needed a larger drive for my TIME MACHINE backups. Since my past experience with WD drives has always been good, I got this one. I cannot speak for future reliability, but based on my experience with the other WD drives, some I still use a few years later, I am not anticipating any issues. It is not a huge drive, so easy to hide away near your computer, if you're on desktop. I would not want to carry this around, but it i snot so big that you could't if you wanted to.However, this drive is NOT plug and play for MAC (hence my four stars). But formatting it for MAC is very easy. The main thing is: DO NOT -- and I repeat DO NOT -- install the software that comes with the drive. As others have stated, it creates nothing but issues and you do not really need it. To this day, I have never used it with any of my WD drives. Here is what you do:1) Plug the drive. Your MAC will recognize it as 'Elements.'2) Go to your Applications folder and open UTILITIES, then DISK UTILITIES.3) Find the 'Elements' drive on the left side of the window and select it. Then, on top of the window click ERASE.4) Another dropdown window will open, asking you to choose a format. For newer MACS choose the first item on the list: APFS. It will also ask you to NAME your drive. Do so. Then, proceed to erase. Your MAC will do the rest.If you're setting this up for TIME MACHINE, another window will open after your drive is formatted and mounted, asking if you want to use this drive for that purpose. Proceed from there. Otherwise, your drive will already be mounted on your desktop and ready for your use. That's it. Takes less than 5 minutes.My only gripe about this drive is it needs to be plugged in. The rest is fine.

My last one died for some reason. This one is doing great so far but I've only had it a couple months. I use it on a tablo. A device that records over-the-air channels through an antenna to the hard drive. It was recommended as one that worked with Tablo.

I had a problem with another company so now I am all in with Western Digital. Haven't had any problems after a few years of use. I've bumped into it a few times and even dropped it from about a foot and a half and the little guy works great. Unfortunately 2TB isn't enough for information nowadays. I have had another company's external drive die on me after a few months, but WD has yet to let me down.

I've been using this drive for quite a while. And, although I do not use it all the time, I do use it to backup photos and documents, maybe four times a year. It works well for me, but it is a little slower than my SSD drive. Still, it's sturdy.