Solid-state drives (SSDs) have fewer moving parts than traditional hard drives, and they offer the speediest access to your data. Unlike a conventional disk-based hard drive, which stores data on a spinning platter or platters accessed by a moving magnetic head, an SSD uses a collection of flash cells—similar to the ones that make up a computer's RAM—to save data. Most such multi-bay devices are sold without the actual hard drives included, so you can install any drive you want (usually, 3.5-inch drives, but some support laptop-style 2.5-inchers). Their total storage capacities are limited only by their number of available bays and the capacities of the drives you put in them. The storage industry refers to these (as well as smaller-capacity externals as a whole) as DAS—for "direct attached storage"—to distinguish them from NAS, or network attached storage, many of which are also multi-bay devices that can take two or more drives that you supply. (See our separate roundup of the best NAS drives.) This change of mind return policy is in addition to, and does not affect your rights under the Australian Consumer Law including any rights you may have in respect of faulty items. To return faulty items see our Returning Faulty Items policy.

The WD Elements Desktop Hard Drive works right out of the box with Windows PCs - just plug into the USB port to instantly add storage. Hard drives may get you more capacity for your dollar by far, but first you need to consider a major difference in external storage these days: the hard drive versus the SSD. This change of mind return policy is in addition to, and does not affect your rights under the Australian Consumer Law including any rights you may have in respect of faulty items. STORE MORE OF WHAT's IMPORTANT. With capacities up to 20TB, the WD Elements desktop hard disk drive helps you store more photos, videos, music, and filesPerhaps the only thing you don't need to pay all that much attention to is the warranty. Sounds counter-intuitive, perhaps? Sure, a long warranty is nice. But if your drive breaks because you dropped it, the warranty likely won't cover that, anyway. Even if the drive fails because of a manufacturing defect, most warranties simply replace the drive and don't cover the cost of recovery services that attempt to rescue your data from the broken drive. The real value lies in what's on your drive, not the drive itself. How an external drive connects to your PC or Mac is second only to the type of storage mechanism it uses in determining how fast you'll be able to access data. These connection types are ever in flux, but these days, most external hard drives use a flavor of USB, or in rare cases, Thunderbolt. A collection of spinning drives configured with a RAID level designed for faster data access can approximate the speeds of a basic SSD, while you should consider a drive with support for RAID levels 1, 5, or 10 if you're storing really important data that you can't afford to lose. Hit the link above for an explanation of the traits and strengths of each RAID level. Some require you to sacrifice raw capacity for data redundancy, so you'll want to pay attention to the nuances of each level. You'll only see the speed benefits of Thunderbolt, however, if you have a drive that's SSD-based, or a multi-drive, platter-based desktop DAS that is set up in a RAID array. For ordinary external hard drives, Thunderbolt is very much the exception, not the rule. It tends to show up mainly in products geared toward the Mac market. Just how much faster is it to access data stored in flash cells? Typical read and write speeds for consumer drives with spinning platters are in the 100MBps to 200MBps range, depending on platter densities and whether they spin at 5,400rpm (more common) or 7,200rpm (less common). External SSDs offer at least twice that speed and now, often much more, with typical results on our benchmark tests in excess of 400MBps for the slowest ones. Practically speaking, this means you can move gigabytes of data (say, a 4GB feature-length film, or a year's worth of family photos) to an external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external spinning drive.

When your internal hard drive is almost full, your PC slows down. Don’t delete files – free up space on your internal hard drive by transferring files to your WD Elements HDD desktop storage and get your computer moving again. The sleek design offers up to 22TB 1 capacity, making WD Elements HDD desktop storage the ideal solution for easy, add-on storage of all your important photos, music, videos, and files. When your internal hard drive is almost full your PC slows down. Don’t delete files. Free up space on your internal hard drive by transferring files to your WD Elements portable hard drive and get your laptop moving again. The sleek design offers up to 20TB capacity, making WD Elements HDD desktop storage the ideal solution for easy, add-on storage of all your important photos, music, videos, and files. You can allow windows to turn off the drive when it's not in use too if you find the right USB Mass Storage Device in Device Manager. That will stop the noise when it's not in use but obviously it needs to spin up again when you want to use it. The noise the large drives make when spinning up is also quite loud and grindy.The compact design offers up to 22TB capacity, making WD Elements desktop storage the ideal solution for easy, add-on storage of all your important photos, music, videos and files.

When your internal hard drive is almost full, your PC slows down. Don't delete files - free up space on your internal hard drive by transferring files to your WD Elements HDD desktop storage and get your computer moving again. The LaCie 2big RAID array promises the reliability and delivers the performance benefit you'd expect from 7,200rpm platters, magnified by the default RAID 0 setting, while the optional RAID 1 setting is available if you want data redundancy. (A JBOD mode is also available if you don't want to use RAID.) Who It's For In addition to their physical shape differences, USB ports on the computer side will variously support USB 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2, depending on the age of the computer and how up to date its marketing materials are. You don't have to worry about the differences among these three USB specs when looking at ordinary hard drives, though. All are inter-compatible, and you won't see a speed bump from one versus the other in the hard drive world. The drive platters' own speed is the limiter, not the flavor of USB 3. When your internal hard drive is almost full your PC slows down. Don’t delete files. Free up space on your internal hard drive by transferring files to your WD Elements desktop storage and get your computer moving again.

Still, while external SSDs are cheaper than they were a few years ago (see the best we've tested at the preceding link), they're far from a complete replacement for spinning drives. Larger external drives designed to stay on your desk or in a server closet still almost exclusively use spinning-drive mechanisms, taking advantage of platter drives' much higher capacities and much lower prices compared with SSDs. That said, as a platter-based hard drive, it's best equipped to store a game library; you're better off loading the games you're currently playing from an SSD. If you conservatively figure an average game size of 100GB, the 4TB version tested here can hold about 40 titles, serving as the stylish main repository of your collection for years to come, and for a much more modest outlay than you'd spend on an SSD of similar capacity. Who It's For