WD Elements Desktop WDBAAU0010HBK 1 TB > Reviews (1)

WD Elements Desktop WDBAAU0010HBK 1 TB

Because the 320 gigabyte (GB) of memory on my laptop was not enough and sometimes because I format my laptop, I have an external hard disk. I went for the brand WD Elements. WD stands for Western Digital. They sell external hard drives in lots of different sizes. My WD Elements contains a Terabyte (TB) of memory on it which is equal to 1000 GB of memory. There are several WD Elements with 1 TB of memory and all have different product codes. My Elements 1 TB WD is the WDBAAU0010HBK.

The external hard drive is about 17 cm long, 12 cm wide and 3 cm high. The top of the box is matte black and has a grainy texture. The WD logo is on the front. The sides are shiny black and have a smooth texture.

At the back of the machine are two openings and a little light can be seen. The bottom looks the same as the top but without the logo and it has a sticker with the code of the product and all corners of the bottom have rubber feet to stop the machine from sliding. The adapter cord is over 150 cm long. Another cable connects the hard drive with your PC.

As mentioned above, the device has a memory of 1 TB but in practice you only have 931 GB to use which is more than enough.

You connect the hard drive to a standard PC with a USB 2.0. The external hard drive is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. For Apple Mac’s operating system the hard drvie needs to be formatted first.

1 TB offers space for about 120 hours of HD video recordings, 250,000 MP3’s or 200,000 JPEG photos.

You don’t really need the manual because installation is easy although the manual is nice and clear. You connect the hard drive with your PC and the hard drive is automatically recognised and you do not need to install any software to use the hard drive.

A pop-up window will appear and you can then open your external hard drive to find and add files. You can also use Windows Explorer to find the external hard drive and on your PC the disk name assigned is Elements (E:).

When you first use the hard drive it is completely empty. You just drop and drag the files you want to the external hard disk. If you move data over a pop-up window with the expected processing time and the amount of data will come up.

Putting files on the hard drive can sometimes take some time. It took me 2 hours to move 180 gigabytes of data from my PC to the external hard drive but then this is a lot of memory to move.

The expected transfer time is displayed immediately when you start to transfer but as often with transferring data the expected time can go down and up again so isn’t a very reliable indicator. However this is Windows fault and not the external hard drive.

Deleting files on the hard drive is much faster and only takes a few minutes to wipe the whole drive.

The WD Elements 1 TB external hard drive is quite compact and fairly light and it looks simple but stylish.

Connecting and using it is simple when using Windows and I have had no troubles with it so far.

1 TB is a large amount of space and will for the most people be sufficient for their movies, images, music and other forms of data.

I paid £60 for this external hard drive and I think this is a good price for so much more memory.