20 Best Wii U Hard Drive (2023 Updated)

Pros: 4TB HDD built-in, an NVMe slot that runs quick (1500 Read, 2400 write), good cooling, a Thunderbolt pass-through, USB ports galore, and a Displayport. This thing has all of the ports, bells, and whistles you could want in a hub.

Cons: Very noisy. The unit can run hot, and there is no way to control the built-in fans. The HDD is also very loud. In MacOS, you can somewhat mitigate this by unmounting the drive. I also ran into various errors and kernel-panics that would pop up while the hub was connected.

USB devices also acted finicky — for example, my Corsair mechanical keyboard and M65 mouse would not work correctly when connected to my Sabrent USB 3 Hub (which was then connected to the FireCuda).

My other mobile Vava dock never had this issue. Also, the audio interface I used with the Thunderbolt pass-through had MAJOR issues during a recording session and had to be rebooted to work correctly.

Again, I’ve never ran into these issues with my other hubs I’ve used in the past. In theory, it’s a fantastic hub. But it’s not the best in practice. Maybe those who are using Intel Macs or Windows will have a different experience, but for power-users on Apple Silicon — I’d get a more reliable hub like the Caldigit TS3 Plus.

Are you a gamer? Do you have a gamer in the house? If so look no further. Thus is a must have. I have a son who loves to play PC games all the time. On numerous occasions he has asked me for more storage space.

He would constantly go into the system and wipe things out in order to get a game He wanted to play. Then be disappointed because he wouldn’t have enough space. Until now with this 2 TB external hard drive.

This has improved gaming for him in so many ways. It was easy to set up and allows you to store multiple games at once. Still has plenty of room to go. It’s sleek design also is a positive. I’ve never seen a kid so happy.

In return I have also downloaded multiple design bundles for my cricut. Which allows me some free space on my computer for other app that I need to create masterpieces. Overall this device can be used for anything you want.

I definitely would recommend this product to anyone! No cons at this time. Absolutely worth the value.

This hard drive looks awesome. The cord that comes with it is long enough. 2tb is a ton of storage. There’s a catch, it’s not 100% compatible with the Xbox one x. It can store some of my older games but anything new it is not compatible.

That really sucks considering it’s marketed showing it’s compatible. It could not run no man’s sky but all other games like Star Wars battlefront 2, Skyrim, all worked. It could not run any new games that have come out recently.

Picked up this drive for my teenager for Christmas so they could install more games (the gaming laptop they have only has a 500GB internal drive). It worked great, speed was fine, no stuttering or lagging when they played games like Apex Legends or GTA V or Valorant installed on this external drive.

Problem is that after about 30 days drive stopped working. Seems to be a critical failure. Now I get it, this happens happens, and 99% of the time if you are going to have a HD failure it will be within the first 30 days of use (as a result of manufacturing defect) or after the 5-7 year mark (when it simply just wears out).

I’m just kicking myself because I have lost the receipt and this purchase was like the ONE TIME that I declined having an electronic receipt emailed to me. So if this drive works for you it will work fine.

Works great as an external game drive. Just be sure to KEEP YOUR RECEIPT because if it fails it will fail relatively soon and still be under warranty. I’m going to end up buying another one despite the failure.

I figure now that the odds are ever in my favor.

Summary: A great little hard drive to expand your storage options while looking cool! Easy to use, set up and stylish. Pros: Looks awesome! Easy to set up No external power needed Compact Stays cool, little heat Cons: Not an SSD, stuck as mechanical hard drive speeds Not good for games that need SSD speeds Unboxing: The unit comes in a compact package.

Inside you will find the hard drive, a USB 3. 2 connector (USB A to USB Micro B), some documentation (including a Xbox game pass trial). Installation: After plugging it into a Xbox One Series X, the prompt to format the hard drive appears and asks if you want to make it the primary installation drive.

I kept it as a secondary but it was nice to get the prompt. Use: Using the drive is very straightforward, after it is set up, any use is mainly in the background if it is the primary device. If it is your secondary hard drive, you might need to manage your storage on the Xbox to move games back and forth as needed.

I recommend using older games on the external hard drives and using newer games on the internal SSD since it is faster. The external hard drive is rated for 130 MB/s which is greatly different from the internal drive at 2.

4 GB/s (uncompressed) so if you are looking to fast load times and more modern games that require faster data streaming this might pose an issue. Some Xbox One Series X games might require an SSD so be aware.

If you are looking to hold older Xbox One games or have a place to move games back and forth (archive) so you don’t need to redownload, this is a great solution. The drive has a solid metallic build and looks like it will last.

There is a white indicator light for hard drive activity that is very bright. The two tone finish which is mostly black with white accents looks very cool.

I’ve used a lot of 1T External Hard Drives. Silicon Power is my favorite brand by far! They really do well if you drop them and they last for years. As a habit, I only like to fill mine up to half full or 700gb max and then get a new one.

These are the best brand I’ve used and I don’t see a reason to change back to another brand again. GREAT VALUE for a GREAT PRICE!! I love how the cord doesn’t get fidgety and stop working either (like some of the micro inputs) These USB to USBs are awesome and FAST! I work directly off of mine.

I was looking for an external hard drive to free up space on my laptop. I found this on Amazon. It is advertised as shock and water resistant. This is a plus, as i plan to use it to bring photos to a family reunion.

I haven’t tested this aspect, but the construction feels solid with silicon corners. There is a short video on the amazon product page. The 1Tb ends up being about 970gb. It is fast! I transferred over 40,000 files in less than 20 minutes.

It comes with a short 3. 0 USB cord that clips around the edge of the hard drive for convenient carry. So far, I love it!.

Quiet and quick. Comes with everything you need. Holds the usb cord around it. Has the space to backup your hard drive and work.

Got 3 18TB mybooks for a crazy low price each from the wd store (dunno how I got that price, maybe the store was screwed up that day but I jumped). They are simple to plug in, fast, and you can disable sleep mode.

The only thing about the 18TB versions are they are LOUD. They do click/make a noise every 5 seconds (one is a click when the drive does it’s 5 second access because something in the case is lose and you can tell it’s the top plastic piece making the click).

All of the mybooks are designed to make a noise every 5 seconds to “lubricate” stuff according to the faq here. The extra warranty making them have a 4 year warranty was even better. OH and these are 7200RPM drives in the case, probably white label red’s.

I also have 4 14’s and one of those is 7200 (the rest are 5400) so i would guess it’s a crap shoot what they decide to slap in there but my 18’s are 7200 and fast over usb 3. 1. If I see the low offer show up again I’m going to get one more and max out my drive letters.

I find these more reliable than the brand that starts with see and ends with gate (the warranty on those is a year and they stuff in enterprise class drives where if you bought them bare you get a 3 year warranty and they wont honor the drive S/N, just the chassis SN).

I don’t know how WD handles shucked drives (none of mine are shucked) but I read that they dont complain and replace them. I’ll stick with WD, never had much trouble with them. Again, they’re fast, long warranty and the only complaint is they’re noisy but what can you do.

You can’t go wrong with the brand, quality or price.

Great product. Affordable, always on sale, good speeds for both gaming and digital media. Always trust B&H with my purchases. Can’t go wrong here. Still not convinced? (Read More. ) Noise scale: 3/5 Speed: 3/5 Reliability: 5/5 Stop wasting hundreds on handfuls of smaller drives and pick this up.

You’re getting quality security and storage for a great value. Speeds are good enough for most tasks and can handle a lot of rewrites thanks to WD’s amazing track record of reliability. Tips: (Windows Users) Consider formatting from FAT32 to NTFS to ensure your data/bits stay healthy.

Use USB 3. 0 for best speeds. Avoid WD Cloud service. Use a 20 digit password. Always use a quality power strip or surge protector. Consider buying a hardcase with foam inserts. This device may draw a moderate wattage from USB – be aware, this may add to battery drain on older/smaller devices.

Important: Avoid hibernate/sleep/lock device when committing large file operations or erasures/formats. With password enabled, the encrypted drive may sleep or lock down in these power-related events.

This may also cause issues if you lock device when wiping free space, MFT, or when formatting partitions. Programs may attempt to modify the drive in background and can cause problems.

If you are going to use this device with a Mac, you (may) need to contact WD technical support to guide you through reformatting prior to use. The reformatting process is logical, but can not be installed using the internal Mac disc utilities, you will need to install WD’s download and use tech support to help make this a quick and easy process.

This device, ( of which i purchased two) an 18TB My Book, will be used here as back up to my 48TB G Raid 4 bay Shuttle. I do not use the cloud for storage and would prefer to house my own back up. My digital life began with an ever increasing number of By Book’s in the 1990’s, and then migrated everything to G Drive storage.

What I have done now, in this purchase is consolidate 12 G drives into, 1 48 TB G 4bay shuttle and 2- 18 TB My Book drives to bring of my storage needs up to date, with space available for adding data for a few years to come.

This series of recent purchases represents my continued loyalty and trust in the performance reliability of products from WD for well over two decades.

I’ve had this external hard drive for a few years now and had no issues until this year. Like other negative reviews have said, this thing will crap out very easily and corrupts all your game files. Despite having never unplugging this from the PS4, it seems to disconnect itself in the middle of gaming.

Extremely frustrating to have games crash randomly all the time!! Don’t waste your money, please just buy literally any other external hard drive.

WD Gaming drive is an external storage space that provides a 1TB of storage for you to take on the go. This unit is compatable with ps4 systems as long as you have the latest update. This unit was tested on a ps4 pro so hopefully this will help with your buying decision.

The WD Gaming drive hooks up via your usb ports. Once hooked the ps4 will prompt you to format your device automatically. If you chose not to format your external drive you will then need to manually transfer your files to your external storage unit.

Once the device is formatted all downloaded digital games will be stored to this. It will only store the digital game and not the actual save files for the game. This is actually a really good feature that i like the reason being is due to the fact that external hard drives have moving parts and are more susceptible to failure vs solid state or internal drives which have no moving parts.

This means if for any reason your device fails all your going to lose is the actual game file and not your game progress. So all you would have to do is re-download the game and pick back up from where you last started.

Nothing is worse than watching your hard drive crash and have it take down your game progress with it. One thing about external hard drives to note is that they used to be really noisy. The WD external drive is very quite to the point to where it can’t be heard unless you put your ear up to the unit itself.

This is a pretty cut and dry unit that allows you to upgrade your storage without having to take apart the ps4. It takes a matter of seconds to get it set up. And while external hard drives may fail faster than SSDs, WD is a company that makes really reliable gaming hard drives.

While time will be the real test for the quality of this unit i have no doubt it will last quite awhile for the simple fact that it is made by WD. At this price and how easy it is to set up you really can’t go wrong.

If your the type of person like me, who doesn’t like to buy hard copies but would rather have a digital library then this is the way to go. What makes it nice is you can download your games to the external hard drive then lend it to a buddy to upload and play whatever games you may have.

Do yourself a favor and pick one of these up, you won’t be disappointed.

Due to PlayStation games being so heavy on graphics they tend to be massive in size. Even after upgrading my internal drive to 2Tb I was surprised how fast I was still filling it up. This external HD is a great addition because you can store games you don’t play that often or if you have completely used all of your internal space it is an easy way to give you more space rather than having to try and install an internal.

I only have two downfalls to the drive. One is that if you leave your PS4 in standby, then the drive will stay powered unless you unplug it. The other downfall is that it uses a USB and since the PS4 only has two USBs it only leaves you with one.

Usually, I use one USB for charging controller, one for headset, and this would take up a third. I supposed you can mitigate this by getting a USB expansion. Two other long-term thing I am worried about but do not have evidence to back up yet is that if it is constantly being powered it might end up breaking eventually, or it could possibly slow down due to being a spinning disk.

Overall, I believe this is a great addition to the PS4 and anyone who plans on playing a lot of games will eventually need to expand their storage.

Perfect device for the job. Works out of the box with the Wii U. My son ran out of HDD space on our 32GB Wii U very quickly, so this extra 1TB comes in handy. Keep in mind saving progress might take an extra few seconds since this is an external drive, but once you get used to that it seems to work seamlessly.

Lots of storage for extra games, only $99 – good deal.

Appears and feels to be a quality product. Nice small design.

This item came really fast and it’s great. It has all you need to connect it to the Wii U and easy to follow instructions. It’s set up and working hard in under 10 minutes.

This external hard drive is a bit weird. Some of the times, both read and write speeds are fast, sometimes they are slow (20-30MB/s). I thought I did something wrong on my side or the hard drive is faulty.

Until I found out this external hard drive contains Seagate BarraCuda 8TB drive in there. According to Seagate, 2TB or higher capacity of their BarraCuda lineup uses SMR technology. SMR is designed for archiving and reading contents, while being cheap to make.

As a result, SMR drives are SLOW with writing. They are okay with reading, but consistently writing to an SMR drives to asking them to choke themselves. If you are consistently writing files to the hard drive, I would recommend you to AVOID this.

I hate when storage manufacturers do not make it clear whether the drive contained inside an external enclousre is an SMR drive. You only can find out either by researching or by getting the hard drive for yourself.

So first, this drive is geared toward portability and not top-end performance as most would want these days. When I say portability that goes toward travel not only in the states but around the world.

It comes with 6 power adapter-style plugs so you can change out depending on where you are in the world. Not only that but it also serves as a quick USB hub so you can use different peripherals through the USB 3.

0 connection the drive uses on your system. It does have flashy RGB LEDs and you can change the colors or patterns on through the software downloaded to manage the drive. The software allows you to backup, restore, or mirror your data files.

If you have Razer Chroma then you can also link up your RGBs with that as well using the toolkit software. I did do a performance test to see what the real world specs were compared to seeing what was online and here are the ones I ran: IOPS 4K Read Min: 1.

04 MB/Sec. Average: 7. 02 MB/Sec. Max: 7. 85 MB/Sec. IOPS 4K Write Min: 0. 00 MB/Sec. Average: 0. 76 MB/Sec. Max: 5. 97 MB/Sec. IOPS 4KQD32 Read Min: 0. 93 MB/Sec. Average: 26. 96 MB/Sec. Max: 36. 09 MB/Sec.

IOPS 4KQD32 Write Min: 0. 00 MB/Sec. Average: 1. 30 MB/Sec. Max: 9. 10 MB/Sec. IOPS 512K Write Min: 0. 00 MB/Sec. Average: 36. 44 MB/Sec. 1Max: 30. 8 MB/Sec. My opinion but if you are a traveling gamer/media watcher/need storage on the go while going around the world or even in your own country then this is a great external hard drive for you.

Easy to setup and easy to pack away.

Love this thing! I’ve never owned anything above a 1 terabyte external in the past, needless to say I was amazed and blown away realizing this device is 8 terabytes! First off this external HD is easy to use like most other external HD’s, simple as plugging it in via USB 3.

2. Due to its awesomely large storage capacity, it has a nice weight to it which is good so it doesn’t feel like it’s going to slide off or fall over. My absolute favorite feature about this product aside from the large storage space is the lights! This drive is definitely marketed towards gamers which is very much appreciated.

The RGB LED lightning looks incredible, really love that it’s Razer Chroma RGB compatible. I use this with my PS5 and my entertainment center has never looked so cool. Fantastic product, would recommend to anyone, especially gamers.

10/10.

Believe it or not, I didn’t actually purchase this drive for the Xbox. That said, anyone that understands how the new Series X|S works, you will understand that (at the time of this review) Microsoft has not authorized any external drives to actually RUN games, but you can STORE them on these drives.

I’d recommend you get the 1TB SSD model though, not the 4TB HDD that I’m running. Seagate is one of the only vendors authorized to make the Expansion Card for the Series X|S — so if RUNNING games from additional storage is what you are after, make sure you get that drive.

Storage here is fine. 🙂 For me, I wanted to drive to connect to my M1 Mac Mini. As much as I’d love to add 4TB of NVMe, that’s entirely cost-prohibitive – roughly $650+ if I took that path. Besides, I’m using this as storage primarily.

So yes, this drive works just find on PC or Mac (or Linux). You may need to format to use it how you like. The drive is extremely quiet, and ironically I’m replacing a 10TB Backup Plus/Game Drive hub from Seagate.

Out of the box, the old drive was clickity-clackity and sounded faulty. Controls for drives like this are limited on a Mac, so it would fire up and grind and ding and I just had had enough. I was hesitant to go with another Seagate, but I already had a 2.

5″ form factor running as a Time Machine Backup in the same 4TB capacity. It’s been incredibly quiet by comparison, and this new drive is no different. Even after moving 1. 7TB of data the unit stayed cool (barely warm even).

The limits of the drive are the mechanical side, not the USB 3 side. While I’d like to push the throughput higher, Blackmagic gave it a 120MB/s write and 108MB/s read speed on every test I threw at it.

Since this is mostly my music library and OneDrive/Dropbox local storage, it’s not the end of the world. I can always move files to the internal SSD or my external SanDisk Extreme SSD if speed is necessary, such as movie editing.

The biggest downside is that the Seagate Drive Toolkit tells me there is a Driver available, but it requires me to lower the security of the M1 Mac to authorize it on macOS 12. x Monterey. I temporarily did this thinking it would install or update the driver and then I could flip it back, but that didn’t change anything.

It really only appeared to tweak the on/off status of the Green LED bar on the front and the white status LED on the back. As soon as I put my Mac back into the enhanced security mode, it flagged the driver extension and I lost those options.

I’m okay with that but it is annoying. Can’t speak to longevity, but as I mentioned I own several of the prior generations of this same 4TB drive (STDR400901 from Dec 2016 and STEA4000407 from Nov 2018).

The older one runs almost non-stop during the day for my Time Machine backup, while the other is the White Xbox Game Drive and stored and ran most of my XB1X games for years. Both drives have been rock solid, so I assume this one will be too.

The only drive that wasn’t was the bulkier 3. 5″ Backup Plus model, which sounds like an old dot-matrix printer most of the day. Should you get it? YES. as long as you are only needing it for storage.

You will not run games or bandwidth intensive transfers and be happy. Get the SSD model if you want that.

For it’s relative price and the amount of storage space received, this is great value – at todays prices (Jan 2022) it’s cheaper than simply buying an internal 16tb drive and plugging it in. It’s also surprisingly barebones despite it’s appearance – not necessarily a bad thing if you want a lot of (relatively) fast storage at a reasonable price, but a bit of a downer if you want to migrate to USB-C or Wireless.

The RGB is a nice (if unnecessary) addition, but ultimately cosmetic. The internal drive software lets you turn it off if you find it annoying. The drive has feet on multiple sides – allowing you to keep it mounted sideways or flat.

It also has plenty of ventilation, unlike many external drives I have owned. There are USB ports on the front you can use to help charge your devices. Also a welcome addition, which has helped me keep the clutter on my desk down.

The internal drive is relatively quick – running consistent sequential writes at just above 250 mb/s for me. However. The biggest drawback is really it’s limited connections. Only a single USB-Micro B port is provided, and out of the box it connects via a USB Micro B-to-A cable.

This can operate as a speed throttle – I only got maximum speed writes when plugged into my file servers sole USB-3 port. I’ve only been using the drive for a month, but thus far it seems reliable. There is an audible sound when the drive spools up, but I don’t mind – this is an external drive that prioritises write speed over silence.

Overall I would recommend it for the price, especially given the current cost of external hard drives!.

I’ll start by saying I’m about as computer savvy as it gets. I eat Windows, Mac, and Linux for breakfast. I can leap tall drive arrays in a single bound. That said, the instructions clearly say to go to a link to download the Seagate Toolkit to change the LED colors using your PC.

First I decided to see if it supports Mac and there is a Seagate toolkit for Mac to my surprise. However, after installing it, I found there was no option to enable/disable status LED or change colors like the online instructions for the toolkit say.

So I thought maybe it was a Mac only thing so I tried Seagate Toolkit for Windows. No option to enable/disable the status LED or change colors there either. So either I’m stupid or the option just isn’t there.

I’ll vote for the latter. I did connect it to my Series X and transfer 800 gig from my old external storage to this drive. Transfer speeds were pretty average, so it appears to at least work as a hard drive.

Of course, on a Series X/S you can’t install X/S games on it because it’s not Seagate’s special sauce module, but it works for storing older Xbox One games. Time will tell if I end up losing all of my games because every Seagate drive I’ve ever owned in the past has crashed and burned early.

Overall this drive is decent at what it does and works as advertised, but it definitely isn’t at the top of it’s class: Unboxing: Overall, the unboxing of the game drive was pretty straightforward, the packaging was relatively easy to open, and I did so with my fingers without any additional tools.

The box contained the drive itself, instructions, and some special halo stickers, which were actually pretty nice and stuck easily on both the drive and other surfaces. Performance on Xbox: Before really diving deep into this drive, I decided it would probably be best to use it on its intended platform, and did so on my xbox one s.

As far as downloading and installing games, I didn’t notice much of a diffrent between my systems hard drive and the external drive, but it did seem to take a tad bit longer for installations to actually start while using the game drive.

However, once a game started downloading, it worked at pretty much the same speed of my xbox’s internal drive. In terms of performance of games, I found that for the most part, it also did pretty well, with a few exceptions.

When it comes to newer games. like Forza Horizon 5, my load times seemed significantly slower than when using the systems internal drive. It took approximately 30 seconds to load up a race using the game drive, but it only took about 15 seconds to do so on my systems internal drive.

This isn’t really a dealbreaker, but it is definitely worth mentioning. On older games, like xbox 360 ones or any game made towards the beginning or middle of the last console generation I didn’t notice any describable difference between the external game drive and my consoles game drive.

In terms of aesthetics, the game drive comes equipped with a nice RGB light on the front of it, but in order to change the color of the light, you have to download a software on your PC that doesn’t always work as it should.

For example, I might change the color of the light, and then a few hours later it would randomly change back to it’s default color. This could also be considered inconvenient for those that don’t actually have access to a PC.

Performance on PC: While the packaging of the box didn’t really mention anything about using it on a PC, I figured that it was likely going to be a use case for quite a few people and gave it a shot.

Note that you can’t really use this drive on both your xbox and your PC at the same time, as the xbox requires that you format the drive if you used it on your PC. Another thing to note is that if you want to play any games off of xbox game pass, for PC you must re-format the drive to use NTFS instead, which isn’t really ideal.

In terms of performance in PC games, the drive struggles to handle newer games with high resolution textures. While the transfer speed on the drive is fast, the speed of the drive itself is not the fastest, clocking in at 5400 RPM instead of 7200 RPM, which is what most faster drives use these days.

With this being said, if you are expecting to play games like Microsoft Flight Sim, you can throw that idea away. This drive is best suited for playing esports games like CSGO or lower spec games like Firewatch.

When trying to throw anything too demanding at it, the game either runs really sluggish or simply crashes. Overall Review: Overall, this drive does what it is advertised to do pretty well in most use cases, but is not as fast as it should be for anything outside of the intended use case (Xbox One Games).

7. 8/10.

It’s a great little drive. Reads and writes are OK, not great and certainly not fast enough for the Xbox Series X|S or the newer games that are designed for those consoles. But it’ll do to install my older games on for the time being until I can save up for the SSD expansion card.

I like the RGB but I wasn’t able to get the drive configured with the Seagate software. Not sure why but it wasn’t showing up as configurable. in fact, it wasn’t showing up at all. The drive was attached to my system and usable (because I was copying data to it to test it) but Seagate wasn’t picking it up.

While I would have liked to configured the RGB, the yellow worked and matches the color ambiance of the drive case. Last thing to say on it: my drive scanning software was also showing the drive at only 93% health when it arrived.

I didn’t see any bad sectors or or surface problems so I’m not sure why the drop in health. Ultimately, that’s why I only gave it four stars. So far it’s working fine but we’ll see if it lasts. All-in-all, an aesthetically pleasing addition to my Halo collection that I would definitely recommend.

I received this product in exchange for an honest review and immediately used this to replace the Western Digital mechanical drive I was using as an Xbox backup. There was nothing wrong with my old backup.

until I directly compared to this model. The Seagate SSD was noticeably faster and benchmark tests showed improved specs across the board. I have used Seagate memory productss for years in my PC’s and always been happy with them.

I wouldn’t rush out to purchase this drive if I had a working external drive for the Xbox. However, if I was looking to purchase an external drive I would spend the additional money for a SSD over the mechanical drive.

The Xbox branding on this drive is a nice touch recommending this product over competitors as well. The color scheme matched the Xbox and makes the extra unit in our console blend in, rather than stand out the way the former one did.

Very happy with this product!.

Pros: NAS seems faster to me than previous 5TB Red (but then again maybe I’m just wishing it to be faster). Its fast, huge and should be reliable. Oh and it’s a disk drive, what else do you want ? Cons: 10TB still too expensive for an amateur but 8TB coming down in price as these things always do (early 2017).

Had to doctor my Synology NAS disk tray to accommodate the drive – the central screw hole + certain indentations required by the disk tray are missing on this (super high capacity) disk design. After removal of the tray lugs there are now just 4 screw mounting points albeit they have high quality rubber shock absorbers.

All seems secure but disk mounting is important in a high capacity NAS. Easy enough to fix but if you’re less mechanically minded then this might tax your grey matter.

Bought for a new UDM Pro. So far it has worked great. Stores lots of surveillance footage and no issues scrolling back through footage. Have 4 cameras continuously recording.

I purchased 4 of these on May 27 to use as rotating backups for my 2x3TB Seagate SATA 6. 0Gb/s drives (model Constellation ES. 2 ST33000651NS) that are connected via SATA 6. 0Gb/s to a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4 TH motherboard.

The DriveStations arrived quickly and were well packaged. The enclosure for the drives is plastic and feels kind of cheap, but I’m sure it will stand up to normal use. Upon connecting one to a USB 3.

0 port on a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4 TH motherboard and prior to installing the DriveNavigator software, I used Windows Explorer to copy ~100 GB consisting almost entirely of large (>100 MB) files from one of the Seagates to the DriveStation.

I was disappointed to only average about 140 MB/s with peaks of about 170 MB/s. This test was repeated with all 4 drives and the results were very similar. I then installed the DriveNavigator software, verified that the motherboard’s BIOS was up to date (it was), and verified that Windows 8 was fully patched and up to date (it was).

The test was repeated and there was no noticeable difference in write speeds. As a final test, I connected one of the drives to a different PC that is running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and has an Intel motherboard (BOXDH77DF).

I was copying large files from a Samsung 840 SATA 6. 0Gb/s SSD drive and once again barely averaged 140 MB/s. The main reason I bought these drives was for the advertized write speeds. On the box Buffalo shows a write speed of 408.

1 MB/s when using an Intel 3770K, 4GB DDR3, Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H, and Windows 8 Pro 64-bit. The box compares the 408. 1 MB/s of the DriveStation to 172. 9 MB/s for a standard USB 3. 0 hard drive and 35.

8 MB/s for a standard USB 2. 0 hard drive. Since I wasn’t even at the top-end of the “standard USB 3. 0 hard drive” range, I decided to email Buffalo support. They were quick to reply, but this was their response: “Thank you for contacting Buffalo Technologies, I apologize for any inconvenience.

We here at the Buffalo support team are responsible for ensuring the basic operation of our devices. There are too many variables for us to accurately diagnose read/write speeds on external hard drives.

As such, I’m afraid I can offer no suggestions on how to improve the performance of the unit. ” I can understand their point, but they could have at least suggested something to try. Like trying a 3rd party file copy utility like TeraCopy (which is something I plan to try when time permits).

And it’s not like my test environments were totally different from the one that apparently achieved the 408. 1 MB/s write speed. To anyone considering this drive for the advertized write speeds: don’t expect any help from Buffalo support if your results fall short of their claims.

I’ll start off by saying that my only previous experience with Buffalo has been their value-priced routers, which were pretty reliable and lasted a good, long time. As mentioned in the title and the Pros section, this is a fast drive! In CrystalDiskMark, using the USB 3.

0 interface, it scored 245-256-226-255 (SeqRead=245MB/s, SeqWrite=256MB/s, RandomRead 512KB=226MB/s, RandomWrite 512KB=255MB/s). That squashes my next fastest USB 3. 0 drive (A Seagate 3TB Backup Plus) which scored 125-123-49-75, which in turn easily beat my fastest eSata 2TB external drive setup by 30%.

But, those were all empty drive stats and, frankly, who uses an empty drive?! As part of this testing, I put data on the drive and re-tested. I started with 300GB and then bumped it up to a full terabyte (so well over half full) and, with both amounts, I had almost identical outcomes.

So, with 1TB of the typical data I store, this brought the scores down a bit to 213-246-212-243. Down from super-awesome, however, is still awesome! Note: the Random read/write speeds are on par with the Sequential Read/Write speeds, which I haven’t ever seen! In addition to the straight-up speed increases on the sequential reads, this seems to be the real strength of this drive.

Knowing this, I believe the best possible use for this drive would be a situation where the user needed a portable/external data store that performs similar an internal drive would be a good utilization scenario.

Sure, it would do fine as a backup drive, but is quite pricy for that purpose, as you can get double the storage space for less money. That’s my take on it… In conclusion, if it were possible to dock it a half an egg, I would do so for the bulkiness, but as I cannot, I will give it the full five.

I love new tech and especially love it when it does what it says it will do!.

Even though you can go to the website. There is programming on the DriveStation that I recommend making a copy of for use later on. I saw no reason to keep it on the hard drive while using it for backups.

It’s a non-restricted hard drive with a really nice backup software package and the unique cache control system that gives the advertised speeds. I got curious when I noticed that the TorboPC EX File Copy was the control window when I was transferring data from a different external drive to my PC so I tried a few different cash sizes to see if there was, in effect in the transfer speeds and yes, the more cash, the faster it was.

I also noticed that my W. E. I went from 7. 7 to 6. 0 when I had the RamDisk cache on vs: off. The DriveStation available cache didn’t seem to have any effect, though on my FPS during gaming or speeds.

I see my computer running at. So depending on your need and how often you backup you can turn up the RamDisk cache amount when you want the ultrafast backup speeds and adjust it lower for incremental backups, gaming, or any other reason.

It makes it a little effort, but it also seems to make it simply good options, it’s very easy to change or turn on and off. When set Windows recognizes this and it’s awesome that you can control your backups by the hour or down to the minute and as often as you’d like.

For professionals and offices. This is a perfect individual backup device and for the homeowner. It’s a great way to have a set and forget backup system. Again curious, I asked and found that nobody I asked does a backup.

So here’s a chance to do backups, easily turn up the speed through cash and get that long time involved backup to be done quicker. I am using.

I wasn’t sure how this even worked, but all I had to do was plug it into the XBox. It’s plug and play, so you just plug it in and the XBox sees it. Then when you install a game it goes to your storage, not the XBox.

This hard drive works great and with 3TB you don’t have to worry about storage ever again. It’s user and XBox friendly and it’s so simple anyone can do it. We’ve had it for almost a year and it’s been working magnificently.

If I had to, I would buy another. Definately worth the money.

Hello This is the best product !! Great product, amazing quality and also a great price highly recommended to anyone of all ages AMAZING PRODUCT !!. Love the clean design and unique function. I feel it would be a great fit for our SUBSCRIBERS Because they love this kind of product.

I will include the product URL and price at the end of the Facebook Page post so people know where to purchase it from. If you are interested in offering my viewers a discount or promotional code I would be happy to include that in the Facebook Page post.

Thank you for your time.

im not a tech savy individual. but this was as easy as possible to connect to my first gen, xbox one. connects by USB connection only. not outlets. glad i bought it.

This is a follow-up to my review about a year ago. Again, my use case is an 8 drive RAID in a Linux system (Fedora). These drives were purchased Nov 2020. I have also since moved from an Adaptec RAID card to a MegaRAID card, to hopefully get a better experience, however, that did not help.

I was running these as a RAID 5, but because of the failure rates I have switched to a RAID 6. I have now had 10 of these drives replaced in 8 RMAs (88473645 88545097 88568417 88587158 65073767 65099873 65155823 65162324 65191095).

Smartctl is also giving me the tell-tale warning signs that another is now going out (increasing ATA error count). So WD may expect my 11th RMA very soon. The response to my last review, to contact customer support, went no-where.

I did as suggested and it seemed to be promising at first. However, I got bounced around 3 different groups and eventually no more replies. Again, these drives appear to do very well as stand-alone drives.

But in a Linux RAID, seriously, hands-down the worst drive I’ve ever had the misfortune to use. And as an IT pro with over 20+ years. I’ve used a LOT of drives, different types, configurations, etc. I would not ever recommend this drive as a RAID drive.

WD customer support on this matter was a disappointment. However, their RMA program is fantastic.

I love WD’s higher end drives like the Blacks, Reds, and Purples (Greens and Blues are garbage). I pretty much use WD exclusively, except for SSD which I prefer Samsung Evo’s. I have 2 Synology NAS’ with WD Reds in Raid 5 arrays (4 drives each).

one drive starts to die approximately every 3 years (IO errors with a few bad sectors). I just configured a new Synology RS820+ in raid 10 w/(4) 4tb WD Red pro drives. No problems at all. The drives were shipped in OEM boxes, within a bigger box.

All nice and tidy. I then ordered another drive, as a spare, which was also nicely packaged. I went with red pro over regular red for the higher cache.

I can’t put in words how great these Red Pro drives are. This is my second Red Pro drive adding to my Alienware R8. I have been building my home library for streaming. My friends were all saying to get a Synology NAS system but I had a perfectly good R8 that I wasn’t using for gaming or anything so I thought why not use it.

The area I live in (near Chattanooga, TN) is where the EPB Electrical Utility has the GIG Fiber available to all of it’s customers. I know my i9 processor might be overkill but these drives are awesome.

The Plex software has not had 1 glitch in retrieving anything on my library. I have put this thing to the test with multiple streams and the drives have been flawless!.

The product itself works, but you have to figure out how to make it work with lots of googling and work arounds. I spoke with a WD representative for over an hour (he was very friendly) but everything he told me to do did not work.

YouTube and google and other people figuring out the work arounds are what actually got this product to function for me. I would go with a different company to purchase this product next time so that I could skip the 2-3 hours of trying to make it work like the directions say it should.

– The drive is formatted in exFAT. Both of my Windows 10 Pro machines, as well as my MacBook Pro running macOS Sierra immediately recognised this drive. – I have run some speed tests using my desktop PC through USB C (3.

1) PCI Express Host Card (NewEgg item N82E16815114044), an ACER laptop (through USB 3. 1 port) and MacBook Pro Retina (2014) through USB C port. PC – USB C connection: Read: 234 MB/s Write: 198 MB/s PC – USB 3.

0 connection: Read: 340 MB/s Write: 185 MB/s MBPr – USB 3. 0 cable: Read: 380 MB/s Write: 202 MB/s – The most surprising fact about the performance of this drive is that there is not much difference in performance between USB type C (3.

1) and USB 3. 0 connections. – The included WD branded USB type C cable (with included 3. 0 adapter) performed very well. This WD SSD external drive did not work well with two generic USB type C cables I have.

I was only able to clock 40 MB/s read/write speed with the generics. Not all USB type C cables are created equal. – Included in the box are: SSD drive, USB Type-C to Type-C cable (supports USB 3. 1 Gen 2), USB Type-C to Type-A adapter, Quick install guide.

There is following software present on the drive: WD Backup, WD Security and WD Drive Utilities software. My MacBook Pro running macOS Sierra immediately recognised this Hard Drive and worked at full speed.

Two different PCs running newest built of Win 10 Pro immediately recognised this drive and I was able to access the drive’s content. However, the device manager shows the yellow exclamation point next to the drive until WD utilities are installed.

– Included WD security allows to lock the drive with the password. This work well across platforms. I set the password up on Windows PC and when I plugged the drive to my Mac I was prompted for password and the device would unlock easily.

When using Windows PC, there is an option to automatically unlock the device with Windows credentials. – This little drive, weighing only 1. 4 ounce, packs lots of storage and excellent read/write speeds in a very small package.

It is silent. It is light, portable and much, much smaller than traditional portable hard drives. Its an excellent drive for someone who demands reliable, portable drive with fast read/write speeds.

I couldn’t decide whether or not to keep it. For a whole week I didn’t open the package thinking that I would return it however finally I decided to keep it since there are not that many USB flash drive that would have this read/write speed power and size of storage, perhaps Samsung but since the pricing are similar it might as well be the WD My Passport 1TB.

I like the packaging size, the lightweightedness and lastly the USB-C connection for my MacBook when it isn’t on the dock. When I’m using my dock, I am able to use the USB 3. 1 connection to give me still similar speeds of 470MB/s read/writes compared to 500MB/s for USB-C.

1TB is good enough for backups, ebooks and music files. USB Local storage is better than a NAS for small file access since there is a processing overhead when reading large directories on a NAS through SMB via Mac; it can take up to 30 minutes just to read a 10,000 epub directory via SMB on a NAS.

AFP will reduce the directory access to a minute. USB access is immediate with no protocol overheads. Great little device for adding to the meagre MacBook storage.

Now combine the two cons and you have the potential that if the drive were dropped on the side with the USB port cover into a puddle on the side of the street; you could very well crack the side cover, dislodge the port cover, and water splashes in.

Dead drive? No. it’s not powered. Open up one side, put it all in a ziplock bag with a piece of bread on top and set it in a closet or other confined place with a small heater running for about 8 hours.

The warmth will evaporate any water that got on the circuitry as well as around the drive itself. The bread will absorb the evaporated water. Now you should go over the circuitry on the board and the drive for debris and smudges.

Put it all back together and it should work fine provided it survived the shock which is likely. All that said, this situation is highly unlikely. If you are fiddling with the drive in such a way this could happen, it’s a niche circumstance at best.

It’s likely going to be tucked into some pocket or pouch in your laptop bag, getting pressed into other luggage when traveling. This level of protection is actually rather overkill for typical stowage situations.

Now if you check my other reviews you’ll learn I love poking holes in others. This is no exception as in only two reviews we have one case of user error to redeem: The drive only goes to sleep if your system allows it in your power profile.

If you disable HDD spindown and set prevent system idling to sleep, this will not happen. Two options, both system configurations, and neither having anything to do with the quality of the product. Perhaps best to ask about these things or contact support before posting a review that cannot be edited or deleted without contacting Newegg support.

I ordered it and it cam within 3 days of purchase. it is really fast and i am saying this because i have usb 2. 0 not usb 3. 0. i really wanted an external drive which has waterproof and shockproof capabilities and i also wanted one of those drives that when it fell down from my hand or from the table , it would not break into pieces.

i have had it since 1 week and it is quite good. i watched several youtube videos where they torture the silicon power and it is still operational after test. search for ‘silicon power a80 torture test’ without the quotes.

you actually get 2 usb cables. the first one is a little bit too short\(suitable for a laptop) – the second one i used to connect it to my cpu. i have not tried this on smartphones- i don’t know if you can use the lighning to usb connector to transfer data from smartphones.

i also haven’t tried this on ios devices(iphone, ipod, ipad, etc. ) it also works with mac, i don’t have a mac but it should work with it. thanks for reading this review.

I acquired this hard drive due to the large files I use to work and it’s great so far. I work on a process plant and I knew that I needed a reinforced chassis with water and dust resistant but comfortable to carry with me on the field.

Comparing with other rugged brands like Adata, Western Digital and Sandisk, this Silicon Power is a steal! The color blue makes it look sophisticated, device is (kinda) light for the protection level it offers, speeds are not that good (It’s not SSD so keep it in mind) but for the price tag and features it’s a purchase I recommend to everyone if you’re looking for a portable hard drive with advanced protection against the elements.

I bought this in 2019 for my PS4 PRO which had a 1TB HD from the factory. Until about 2021, 1TB seemed like enough. Then along comes lots of cool games, taking from 50-150 GB each (many less than 30 GB too).

Suddenly, that 1TB inside was not useful as I had to delete and download over and over which was a hassle. My internet has a download cap too so that wasn’t helping. But I could add more storage and I decided to go with the WD – Game Drive for PS4 External USB 3.

0 Portable Hard Drive – Black/Blue. The blue color was nice too and it was much more affordable than any SSD. I did not upgrade/update the internal storage of the PS4 PRO. I thought 2TB would be enough but estimated I had 1.

73TB of games I wanted downloaded, so I opted for the 4TB model which was more expensive, but as it turns out worth it. Every penny. The drive is quiet, reliable, fast enough, especially on a PS4 PRO, and is 2.

76TB full with room to spare for more games. In total I have 5TB with the internal storage and I’m set. I now have room to download movies too ! All good.

Here’s my challenge. I asked the Best Buy agent through chat, which extended storage works with the PS5 console. I was referred to this product. It will not allow you to transfer games that are specifically PS5 games to it, HOWEVER, it will hold PS4 games.

I was skeptical with the advice but purchased the product anyhow. I know the PS5 is new and the information is new, which is why I sought advice. Back to the drawing board I suppose. The product itself works fine and is quiet (very important to) and transfer speeds are pretty decent.

Amazing!!! I am very happy with my purchase. I was skeptical at first because this is new to me. I have never bought an external hard drive and even less thought about buying one for my PS4. But this one is perfect.

Great deal in regards to price too.

It says in the fine print on the box that this thing is PS5 compatible but can only store PS4 games, which was disappointing, but it turns out that’s not accurate — I tested it and was able to move a PS5 game from the system to the external drive and back again with no issues (you can’t run PS5 games off the drive, you can only store them — but that’s true of every external drive).

And of course it can also store and run PS4 games. My guess is the packaging was designed sometime last year or early this year, before the PS5 got the system update to allow PS5 games to be stored externally, and they just never updated the packaging.

It’s decently fast for an HDD. Obviously snail-paced compared to SSDs but the point of buying a drive like this is capacity and affordability, not speed. A 4 or 5 TB external SSD would probably cost much more than the PS5 itself, if you could even find one.

Note that my 5 star value rating is in part because I was able to buy it when it was discounted to $100. Its normal MSRP is $150 and I’m pretty sure you can find comparably-sized options for cheaper than that.

The WD Black external drives are extremely dependable. This is my forth drive, and ALL of them work excellently for the purpose in which I purchased them for. I bought them to expand my gaming hardware.

The Two Xbox Series X, and two PS5 gaming consoles have never experienced any performance issues. The Drives are perfect Mules to transfer, and store files that would otherwise be too large to retain in the consoles internal storage, and I would go so far as to say they are absolute necessities to get the most out of your hardware.

The price is extremely fair too, and is unbelievably low when you consider the amount of space you get for your buck. I’d advise you to purchase this drive before you lose out, because once people begin to realize how much they need them after the holiday season is over, you won’t find them in stock.

I own 3 of these drives. 2 4tb, and a 5tb. I also bought one for my son, and requested my GF get one. We were working on getting our games organized, and the storage space was cheap boasting gaming performance transfer speeds.

So let me begin. My first 4tb is hooked up to my PS4 Pro. It rocks. No stutter or anything. I’m guessing the PS4 doesn’t require quite the transfer speeds some programs do on a PC. My second 4tb is for my Lossless collection, Videos, and Pictures.

For the most part this one is ok, but sometimes if a high demand file (Lossless files, both 16bit and 24bit), it can stutter in a track. I found a workaround to this by using Musicbee, and having the track write to memory.

Video also has an occasional skip about every 10 to 15 minutes. It’s only a few seconds, but very annoying. My 5tb drive was to be for games, and VR. Honest, it’s very nice having it all under one roof.

However. Skipping on my media occasionally and being able to work around it a bit is different. Games?! GAMES!!! 🙁 This drive is literally called a “Game Drive” and stutters frequently. It’s not my PC.

I’ve tested this on all 3 drives, double checked USB bus drivers to make sure all software updates were in place, unplugged everything from my PC, tried different ports, etc. I have a Dell G5-5590. The USB ports are current.

I get 5 second pauses on most games, but are about 15 to 20 minutes apart. All my PC’s cooling is running max 82c out of the power limit of 100c. My video card is also cool. I have no throttling going on what so ever, but am still dealing.

Due to the portable nature of my rig, I continue to use this because I can’t afford a better option at this size. Some may argue this review due to this, but again. It’s broadcast as a Game Drive. Runs everything, and loads everything fine.

just mad stutter. I can tell you that once a game is transferred to my internal 1tb 5400 drive, everything is silk. I just don’t get it. I can run games off my flash drive better than this drive. I have contacted Support twice over this, and it’s been a shrug off everytime.

I don’t know enough to be sure, but it seems like it has a cache refresh that occurs and it causes the stutter on whatever you are doing. I’ve stuck by WD for many years, but the performance one these for gaming, and the support received gets a 3 out of 10.

The reason I am rating this as 3 stars is due to the space to cost ratio and it does work for just storing your data, and console gaming. My son experiences the same stutter, and so does my GF with their 4tb drives.

Same make and models. and different PC’s. So 3 PC’s, 5 drives total, all stutter. P. S. Just to push the point, I also DJ. I can run music off any flash drive, and external. except this one. Same stutter when playing my lossless.

in a mix this is awful. I’m just sayin. been burned pretty bad on this for my personal practical uses. I copy the files over to my internal before a gig now, which I didn’t even have to do on my USB2.

0 drives back in the day.

I am using this drive in a USB 3. 0 connected external dock along with a 4TB WD NAS drive bought at the same time. I use it to backup Photos using Acronis TrueImage backup for WD. The highest speed of writing as displayed by the Backup software has been 1143 MBps while doing 1.

1 TB full backup. More commonly for the differential backups I get around 514 MBPs (1. 8GB backed up in 3. 5 minutes). Compare this to the 4TB Blue NAS Drive which clocked 884 MBps for a full backup and typically 132MBps on a differential backup.

Note these are not true benchmarks as they depend on a lot of factors: what’s going on the PC and the disk from which the data is being read and differential backups particularly are based on what has changed so the backup software is also coming into play.

One issue with this drive is that I was unable to register it on WD website and I have a case open with them.

I use this as a hard drive for games, alongside my Samsung M. 2 operating system drives, which are significantly more expensive. I basically have a three-tier setup. M. 2’s for OS and applications that need a lot of performance, this SSD for intermediate performance applications/games, and mechanical drives for larger storage.

I’ve got several of these WD Blue SSDs and they all work flawlessly, and performance is quite good. Reliability has been good so far on the older ones as well. And the price point is good. Overall, I have no problem recommending this drive.

Hello I have a lenovo ideapad 110 15isk with wd5000lpcx hdd. I upgrade it with 250 gb ssd. I wanted to use hdd the 2nd drive in a caddy instead of odd. The bios detects it, but not in the windows. 2 piece hdd from another manufacturer (1.

5 TB SATA3 and 250 GB SATA2) works properly. Why not works it in the wd5000lpcx caddy? What is the reason?.

Backups are lightning fast due to the multiple connection options provided in the packaging. It comes with both USB-C and USB 3. 0 cabling making it transfer as fast as your equipment will let it. It is fast enough for me to run Lightroom photo processing off of this drive but, I choose not to – it’s THAT fast! Solid case protects it while sitting atop your rig.

Thin profile is small enough to fit in your pocket without unsightly panty lines!!! Buy this drive if you are in the market for a large capacity external SSD drive – you will NOT BE SORRY.

Plug ‘n use simplistic device. Like my Digistor 500 gig unit I use for my PS3 I wanted to get another larger 2TB to accommodate my newly upgraded 2TB HDD PS4. Since the Digistor units are no longer available I decided on the U32 Shadow and it did not disappoint.

Simply plug it into a PS4 go into the setting menu and chose to backup your HDD to the U32. Make take a few hours depending on the amount of data on your drive. Simple to restore to either existing or new HDD by using your restore feature thru the PS4, again may take a few hours for restore but well worth it if you’ve invested mega-hours into your games! Quality case and user cable included although somewhat short length, but so is the cable for my Digistor unit.

Simply backup you’re HDD data every so often and never have to worry about an HDD failure and starting out at ‘ground zero’ with you’re games. I know there’s the cloud saves you can do, but I’ve never been a fan of any cloud server since they first came around.

I rather be in charge of my own game & data saves. If you need a dependable HDD back up for you’re PS4, look no further than a U32 Shadow either in 1TB or 2TB sizes. MAD.

My answer was, the item is good but hasnt good sound, but it good I like it

Good quality, got here fast!

Cheap and fast NVME M.2