We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
A dependable external drive is one of those things you don’t realize you need until your laptop storage is nearly full or your photos are scattered across cloud accounts. Western Digital’s Elements Portable USB 3.0 Hard Drive is built for exactly that situation, and it’s currently on sale for $64.99 on StackSocial for 2TB of storage. That’s enough space to offload years of pictures and videos or stash work files without juggling thumb drives. At just under half a pound, it’s light enough to carry around in a bag, and since it uses USB 3.0, transferring large batches of files feels quick and painless compared to older drives.
It’s plug-and-play for Windows 10 and newer, so you don’t need extra software to get going. You can literally connect it and start dragging files over in seconds. The design is also more thoughtful than you might expect for a budget drive: the casing is made from over 50% recycled plastic, and the packaging is recyclable as well—a small but welcome improvement. It also has fast file transfers, straightforward backup, and a three-year limited warranty in case anything goes wrong.
What do you think so far?
That said, there are limitations worth noting. This particular model is formatted for Windows out of the box, so if you plan to use it with a Mac or Linux system, you’ll need to reformat it first. Like all portable hard drives, it also isn’t built to survive drops or rough handling—WD even cautions that a small fall can cause data loss. And unlike pricier SSDs, this is still a spinning-disk drive, so while it’s reliable for everyday backups, it won’t be as fast or durable as solid-state options. Still, if your main goal is affordable, dependable storage that you can toss in a backpack and trust with years’ worth of files, this 2TB WD Elements drive is hard to argue with at this price.
Deals are selected by our commerce team