WD Elements Desktop: 8 TB on Your Desktop for 200 Euros

Beyond some fluctuations of the euro against the dollar and the tariff festival on the other side of the pond, we are in one of the most favorable moments to buy storage. Our guide dedicated to the best hard drives presents options for all budgets, and if you prefer a solid-state solution, remember that a terabyte can already be had for 200 euros (and a bit less) However, if density is your priority and you like external solutions, you can put 8 terabytes on your desk today without burning budgets thanks to the WD Elements Desktop.

A 4K video of three minutes takes up more than 300 megabytes, and that's without a scandalous bitrate. Some games already require more than 60 gigabytes of installation, while Final Fantasy XV terrified several players with its 100 GB requirement. Nobody denies that with good management and certain isolated tricks it is possible to install multiple programs and games on small drives, but the cost per gigabyte has plummeted. That gives us access to huge disks at reasonable prices, and one of the most recent examples is the WD Elements Desktop.

WD Elements Desktop: A Robust and Affordable External Drive Option

Western Digital presented its WD Elements Desktop in different sizes, but our attention is focused on the 8-terabyte version. The overall size of the case is 165 by 135 by 48 millimeters, so it won't be too hard to find a place for it on our desks. Its interface is based on USB 3.0 (with guaranteed USB 2.0 backward compatibility), and it uses a 12-volt transformer as a power source. The drive comes preformatted in NTFS, but nothing prevents us from deleting the partition and reformatting for use in Linux or Mac OS.

When talking about speed, the bottleneck is none other than the mechanical aspect, but the WD Elements Desktop should deliver on average about 150 megabytes per second reading, and a very similar number writing (120-130 MB/s) according to the multiple published benchmarks. The official warranty is two years, and if you want these 8 terabytes now, you can access them for 209 euros. Even internal drives with similar capacity cost more than that.