Western Digital Elements 8TB External Desktop Drive

Because it is a 3.5-inch desktop-class external hard drive, it requires an external AC power adapter to operate. Unlike smaller 2.5-inch portable drives, it cannot draw enough power solely from the USB 3.0 connection.

The drive comes pre-formatted in NTFS, which is optimized for Windows PCs out of the box. If you want to use it on a macOS system for both reading and writing, you will need to reformat it to exFAT or Apple's APFS.

While the USB 3.0 connection provides fast data transfer speeds suitable for large file backups, it is a mechanical HDD rather than a solid-state drive. You can store games on it, but loading times will be significantly slower than an internal SSD.

Many users buy the WD Elements 8TB drive specifically to shuck it, which means removing the internal hard drive to use inside a desktop PC or NAS. These internal drives are usually high-quality Western Digital White labels.