WD - Elements 2TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black

I bought this to use with my PS4 after new update. Works great I kuat pluged in & the PS4 formatted by itself. Now all my games im playing are installed & can play without wait. Where before you could only have 3-5 installed and would have to keep deleting something to add new. I've only had this about a month so I'm not sure how it will work in the long run, but I believe it's an excellent choice for the right price

These are great for backing up pictures and videos, especially since I only run a laptop for the past few years after having a kid. I like to keep my internal laptop drive as a 7200 rpm drive with an SSD that runs the OS and games. These hard drives have been getting much cheaper since the first one I bought in 2015 or 2016, and the newer ones are much thinner (especially the 2 TB drives). I have one of the 2 TB drives as just a movie drive. I formatted it to FAT32 so it can run easily on any BluRay player, DVD player, Windows, Mac, Linux, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 / Xbox One. I haven't tried it on the PS4 yet since I don't have one yet. These drives work well for Xbox One S games and help with the stutter in those games that I haven't seen on the Xbox One X yet. I had 4 of these (two of which is a 4 TB) and one of the 4 TB ones failed. It was running backups on the laptop on my bed when kids were jumping on it like crazy one day, and it fell off the bed. After that, when I plug it in, it just makes clicking noises and stops trying. It's a mechanical drive, so keeping it stationary as it runs, and don't let it fall. (I should have been smarter about that)

This is my review regarding use with the Playstation 4. If you need an external hard drive for your PS4 and don't want to overspend on bundled software with it, this is the way to go. Been using the 2TB version of this drive for 2 months now and it works great. My only complaint is that in the end, it is still a mechanical drive which means it won't be anywhere near as fast as say, an SSD. For what it does, it does an excellent job. Just plug in, format, and move your games. This drive doesn't make any unusual or loud noises and so far I'm pleased with it.

I am using this on my PS4 to expand my storage. Since the new system update I can use this storage device not only to store games but also to play games. The device is plugged directly into the PS4 which formats the device. Games played from the device work as well as from the internal storage.

Bought this as an external storage expansion for my PS4. Worked perfectly right out of the box, and had about 1.8 TB available once formatted, as expected. The drive is fast (I don't really notice a difference between loading from the internal or external drive, though I haven't run a timed comparison) and reasonably quiet. I have a number of WD hard drives still in use (including a couple of ~15 year-old internal drives that still see occasional use in an old desktop, a ~5 year-old 1TB external for general backup, and a ~7 year-old 320GB external currently in use with my Wii U) which have been very reliable. My only criticism with this one is the activity light; it's a bit on the bright side. No big deal, though.

These drives have always been reliable for us so far. We have a couple that are presently in use for various purposes. We needed to expand our Xbox Ones storage capacity. These were on sale (deal of the day) and ended up being cheaper than buying the 1TB version. All drives (regardless of brand) have a chance of failing, but we have had a good experience with these and will continue to use them. Also, if you are a gamer; games will run off of these drives well and the playing experience will be just as smooth as if you were playing them from the internal drive. Hope this review is helpful.

What can I say, so far, no problems at all. Very small, little bigger than a credit card, maybe twice as thick. I replace my externals every few years regardless of capacity. I suggest you do the same, rather than lose data. Copy over the current stuff, shelf the rest until needed (on the old drives) to reduce mean time to failure, and risk losing data. The pricing makes it affordable. Don't wait until your drive fails.

Nice basic USB drive for backups and extra storage. A bit slow and the WD software utilities (for Mac OS X) are kind of clunky and of limited value.