I had applied on www.myoffers.co.uk website quite long ago, and honestly speaking – I had forgotten about it, having doubts whether it’s even true or real. Then I received an email from John with information that I was selected to test 10 TB external hard disk which was complete surprise for me. After confirmation that it’s all legit and genuine, I had to send my address and sign the agreement to receive HDD. The delivery from well known marketplace went almost smoothly, so I could test WD Elements 10 TB drive.
The unit looks like a heavy book, in that one edge is curved, where you will find quite small the single, white power/activity LED.
On bottom it has small rubber feet such that it stands in a vertical orientation – just like a book in a book case. Perhaps this is the best orientation for air flow given the vented top and rear edges. But personally speaking, I don't really like drives standing up like this, as it's too vulnerable to being knocked, if it stood on our busy or cluttered desks.
I think WD should provide an optional to fit stand with wider feet to provide better stability, a simple plastic stand would cost next to nothing to produce and would give customers the option to have a more secure base.
When connected to Windows 10 laptop it immediately works without any prior actions needed from user side, coming pre-formatted in NTFS file system, so Mac or Linux users will have to format in their own file systems. I had also connected it to my advanced NetGear router D6400 which has ability to make a shared network drive, but D6400 complained about NTFS suggesting formatting in Linux native EXT3.
According to CrystalDiskInfo the drive inside is a WD101EDBZ-11B1DA0 which is a CMR drive, not SMR which would make usable only for archival purposes. Further tests on CrystalDiskMark show rather typical transfers for HDD with 7200 RPM, about 180 MB/s sequential write, 150 MB/s sequential read, but random write/read is around 3 MB/s and below 1 MB/s. In real use when copying mix of different files of around 1 TB altogether, from my laptop to the drive an average transfer on USB 3.0 cable oscillated between 22 MB/s to 27 MB/s and took around 75 minutes.
The only real issue I would criticise is the overly aggressive spindown timeout, which makes it very frustrating to use as additional live storage, since every time you want to open or save a file, you find the drive has spun down and you have to wait about 10 seconds for it to spin up again. It makes your application or system hanging for several seconds when this happens, but can be switched off with special tools. Can be an issue in constant use of drive, but not if you're just using it for quick backups or use it as external storage for less important data.
Concluding this short review, when drive is used accordingly to its specifications and intended purposes – I find no fault in it.