'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
Get this 18TB external hard drive for 40% off right now
18TB WD My Book Desktop external hard drive.
Whether you need a backup tool or you just need more storage space on your laptop or desktop system, adding an external drive is a cheap and effective way to do this.
And while hard disk drives (HDDs) are nowhere near as fast as solid state drives (SSDs), they can be more than fast enough for most applications, and you can pick up massive hard disks for a price that won't break the bank.
Also: Hardware fails, but I've never lost data thanks to this backup plan
Take this 18TB WD My Book Desktop external hard drive, which you can currently pick up on Amazon for an amazing 40% off, bringing the price down from $540 to $330.
$210 off means you're paying a little over $18 per terabyte, which is a good deal indeed.
View at Amazon18TB WD My Book Desktop specs
- Capacity: 18TB
- Interface: USB 3.2 Gen 1
- Drive: 5400 RPM HDD
- Wireless: No
- Encryption: 256-bit AES hardware encryption
- Compatibility: Windows 10+, MacOS 11+
- Warranty: 3-year limited warranty
Note: While this is a WD drive, this is not affected by the wiping bug that's affecting some WD and SanDisk external SSDs.
One feature that I like about the WD My Book Desktop external hard drives is that they have built-in support for 256-bit AES hardware encryption, which means that you can encrypt your data without relying on some third-party software -- it's all handled on the drive.
Just remember, if you forget your password, your data is gone, and nothing will be able to recover it.
Also: How I recovered 'irreplaceable' photos off an SD card for free
For easy backups, this drive comes with WD Backup software, but it is also compatible with backup tools built into Windows and Mac.
For power efficiency, the drive is designed to go to sleep after about ten minutes of inactivity. For most home users, this is a perfect setting, but it can be customized or disabled using the WD Drive Utilities software. I've had mine set to not go to sleep since day one, and it has no problem with this.
I've got a couple of these WD My Book Desktop external hard drives that have been in use 24/7 for over a year and they have been flawless in their operation.