12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
The Best External Hard Drive Ever.
Date of Review: Oct 25, 2008
The Bottom Line: Buy, buy, buy. The best external I have ever seen for a moderate price.
Some of the things you own suck. They never work, or they only work when you don't want them to. Or they were expensive to buy, or expensive to maintain. Perhaps they run noisy, or are slow and ineffecient. These things are even more frustrating when they are used in conjuction with your computer. And I have experienced more than one frustrating hard drive in my time. And for it's size and price, the Western Digital HD 120 GB Elements hard drive is the best on the market. Here's why.
An external hard drive generally comes with a power cable as well as a USB hookup to one's computer. This hard drive has combined both cables into one, allowing for a sleek, effecient, one plug-in usage of this memory storage device. No more crawling on you hands and knees to get to on outlet, then running it through the back of your desk, which you have to move to make space for the ridiculously oversized plug, and then realizing that the cord you just ran wasn't the cord you wanted at all, but actually ran to your alarm clock. No more of that. Just plug in, and get to work. The only problem with the cable is that is pretty short, only 3 inches long. But one could purchase accesories to alleviate that problem.
Also, the price to size relationship is very reasonable. Some 120 GB externals run as high as 120 dollars, and I found the Elements for $64. Although, some can be found cheaper, they do run as effectively, OR they come with the afformentioned power cable that has been clearly outclassed by the Elements. Well worth the potential 5-10 dollars you would save on a cheaper hard drive, especially if you use a portable computer.
It's actual, physical size is compact, allowing for easy transportation. For me, this means that it fits nicely in my backpack, or my carry bag, or my portable computer's case, no need to get a plastic grocery sack or a old time knapsack-stick combo to carry this around. Just put it with your other junk.
One thing about though is that it runs a little slowly. So if you have like a bunch of information that you need to backup on it, it may take a while to get it all on there. I have never tried to run video from this drive, but in terms of its audio feedback it runs really smoothly, it just takes some time to start, but that it is probably more of a computer issue than a hard drive issue. It also runs on a relatively low heat, making sure that it doesn't lose any of the information you store on it to overheating.
I just have one final word on it, that is that the Drive might be easily broken. I don't have verification on this, but the store manager and a friend of mine with a similar product said to be careful with this particular drive as it may break on me after very little physical abuse.
