Drive was very quick to setup, less than 5 minutes and I found I didn't need to read the instructions. As drive was pre-formatted to FAT32, I re-formatted to NTFS and unlike some reviewers I experienced no delays using the 'quick format' option - less than 1 minute was required. Relative to some of my peripheral devices the power supply is quite neat and is easily placed out of sight. Supplied USB cable is a little short, easily swapped for a slightly longer one. Drive is very quiet...I cannot hear it as the twin fans on my PC tend to hide noise from external devices.
With regard to performance I backup up my entire system partition (30gb) of which 19gb is currently in use. Resulting image file stored on the WD Elements USB drive is 11.9gb and the whole backup run took less than 20 minutes. I've noted reports in other reviews that backup runs tend to be slow but imo that's down to backup strategy rather than drive speed itself (given that USB drives are slower than internal SATA drives). The key to my backup strategy is to create a separate system partition solely to hold the operating system (Win XP Pro in my case) and program files. All data i.e. email files/folders, music, photos, documents etc is stored on a separate partition (or on a separate HDD given that I have 2 internal SATA drives). In the event of a system partion failure it then only takes around 20 minutes to restore a working system to a new disk and then restore the data more gradually - photos and music, for example, can be restored overnight. Critical files i.e. email and files one is actively working on can be restored first thus this drive enables a fully working operating system plus critical data to be restored in less than 1 hour. By my reckoning that's great timing especially given the low price per gb of storage associated with this drive and its ease of setting up. For those who still feel this drive is too slow it's worth checking if your PC has a spare slot and install a 2nd internal drive which, being directly connected to system board, is always going to be significantly faster than an external USB drive.
The lack of an on/off switch is not a limitation on this drive alone as I checked competition including Maxtor and Toshiba external USB drives which also only turn on and off with the PC. I easily overcame this minor limitation by plugging power supply into a separate switched socket and then not turning the power to the drive on until scheduled backup time or when I otherwise need to access the drive.
In summary quiet, neat, easy to setup and great value per gb of storage provided. If speed is a problem consider a 2nd internal drive or swap existing internal drive for a higher capacity version. Highly recommended.Get more detail about Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - Black.
