Customer Reviews:
 Differences in , and performance of the 400GB elements drive February 7, 2008
Ol' Nite Hawk (LA, (no, not L.A. California))
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My first 400gb elements I bought on Amazon has an on/off switch, which I like very much. About two months later, I bought another one from Amazon. It DOES NOT have an on/off switch. However, when my laptop is turned off, the drive shuts down too, and boots up when the laptop boots up. And the first one only shuts down via the switch. They both work extremely well. I have downloaded 350GB of MP3 music onto one of these drives all in one session. I have some case fans which I rigged up for 110v a.c. I use them when I have a lot of files to load or transfer to different drives. I put one fan in front of these drives and one behind them, as I have had the drives running full time for up to 20 hours at a time. The drives are stacked one on top of the other. They stay very cool with these fans. I have had absolutely no problems of any kind with these drives. They don't freeze up, slow down after reaching max heat levels, shut down mysteriously, and even without the use of the fans, they don't get excessively hot. They are both used daily. If you need an intermediate size backup system, this is one you should have. They have never let me down.
 Nice storage device, no on/off switch October 31, 2007
Carlosrc (Dayton, OH)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Nice drive, very easy to use. The only reason I did not give 5 stars is because it does not have an on/off switch.
Speed and heat issues, but a good value September 17, 2007
Helvetiaphile (Arlington, VA)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
I have the 400mb version but expect these notes will apply to other sizes.
The drive arrives formatted in FAT32. I was immediately struck by how slow the drive was compared to the ATA100 drives I normally use. I changed the file structure to NTFS and the speed, gigabyte-wise, was doubled and is now acceptable. I have a Windows XP SP1 system.
I was alarmed by the temperature of the drive after writing about 10gb. It has no fan, just an aluminum enclosure to dissipate heat. Since the drive has only a 1 year warranty I decided to learn more. I taped the probe from an indoor/outdoor thermometer to the center top of the case and measured the temperature in my 75 degree room, while writing 70gb of data. Although the drive quickly reached 93 it topped out at 97, which doesn't seem to be a problem. Because the drive is only used occasionally I tried to find a way to power it down after a period of idleness, but the only way I could find was using XP's power options which apply to all hard drives, and I have been disappointed with XP's ability to bring the drives back up reliably.
No software is supplied with the drive, but I use WDs Data Lifeguard Tools for Windows, v. 11.2, readily downloadable and, until now, rock solid. I was unable to change the drive from FAT32 to NTFS using this SW. I could delete the old partition and establish the new partition but then the SW would hang, requiring Ctl-Alt-Del to kill it.I had an unformatted partition which I then formatted with Windows and that worked fine. No idea why Data Lifeguard failed. I tried 3 times. I have 14 other WD drives and never ran into this.
Another reason to format it to NTFS is that you can't do a Windows Backup onto the drive if it will generate a file > 4gb, and it will.
Regarding disconnecting the drive, Windows sometimes reported that the drive was in use when I used the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the system tray. I knew it was not in use so just disconnected the USB cable and that works fine.
The drive is a good value if you don't need a really fast drive, and Western Digital is a super company. Register your WD drives and when the warranty expires you are eligible to 'upgrade' the drive with a choice of several closeout drives at excellent prices direct from WD. Make this 'upgrade' purchase a day or two before your warranty expires and get an additional $3 off. You do not have to turn in your old drive or stop using it. Got an old WD drive laying around? Register it now just to see what offers are available.
An Excellent Drive May 14, 2007
S. D. Mortenson (Aliso Viejo, CA USA)
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
I got a WD external hard drive (60 GB) about a year ago and was impressed with how easy it was. The Elements 400 GB is just as easy with six times the storage. I highly recommend this drive.
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