A Massive 14TB Drive For A Surprisingly Low Price
The WD Elements 14TB external hard drive is back on sale for $169.99, which is about 55 percent off its usual price. For anyone who needs a lot of storage on a budget, this deal is worth a closer look.
Fourteen terabytes is a huge amount of space. To put it in perspective, you could store:
- Thousands of PC and console game installs
- Years of uncompressed video recordings and streams
- Massive raw photo libraries
- Backups of multiple PCs and laptops at once
At this price, you are paying a very low cost per terabyte, which is why this sort of offer usually sells out fast when it pops up.
Why This Drive Is Interesting For Gamers And Creators
The WD Elements line is designed as a simple plug and play external drive. You connect it with USB, your operating system picks it up automatically and you are ready to drag and drop files.
For gamers this means an easy way to offload huge game folders from your main SSD. Modern titles can take up 100 gigabytes or more each, and a few big releases can fill a system drive. With a 14TB external drive you can keep a large library ready to go without constantly uninstalling and redownloading.
For content creators a drive this size is ideal for storing:
- Long form gameplay recordings for YouTube or streaming highlights
- Project files from video editors like Premiere or DaVinci
- High resolution screenshots, renders and assets
- Archives of older finished projects you do not want to delete
The drive is also handy as a backup target. You can schedule automatic backups of your main PC or laptop so your saves, documents and media are safe if something goes wrong with your internal drive.
Because it is external you can easily move it between devices. Use it with a desktop for most of the week, then plug it into a laptop or a media box when you want to bring your files somewhere else.
What To Consider Before You Buy
Even with a big discount it is smart to think about how you plan to use a drive like this and what tradeoffs it brings.
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Speed
Drives in the WD Elements family are typically traditional spinning hard drives, not SSDs. They are fine for bulk storage, media libraries and backups but they are slower than internal SSDs. For most people that means you use your SSD for active games and projects and keep the WD drive for long term storage. -
Noise and size
An external desktop style drive is larger than a small portable drive and it may make a bit of spinning and clicking noise when in use. It is usually meant to sit on a desk instead of travel in a backpack every day. -
Power needs
Many large capacity external drives use an external power adapter instead of drawing all their power from USB. That is not very travel friendly but it is fine for a permanent setup next to your PC or console. -
Backup strategy
Even a big 14TB drive is still a single device. If you are storing important data it is smart to back up your most critical files in more than one place or to a cloud service. Treat this drive as one big piece of your overall backup plan, not the only copy.
When a drive like this goes on sale at 55 percent off its regular price you are essentially getting near enterprise level capacity for an everyday user budget. If you are constantly fighting with low disk space warnings, uninstalling games to make room for new ones or shuffling project files between smaller drives, this kind of upgrade can clean up your whole storage situation in one move.
As always with popular storage deals, stock and price can change quickly. If 14TB of plug and play space for $169.99 fits your setup and you have been waiting for a big capacity drive, this is the kind of offer that does not show up every day.
Original article and image: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/external-hdds/grab-14tb-of-shuckable-storage-for-usd169-wd-external-hard-drive-back-to-all-time-low-for-black-friday
