WD Elements 8TB drops to $171 on Amazon, about $0.02/GB

The Western Digital 8TB Elements Desktop external hard drive is on sale at Amazon for $171, down from a $225 list price — a $54 savings (about 24% off), which works out to roughly $0.02 per gigabyte, and is available now.

The desktop-style Elements drive comes in a compact black enclosure meant to sit beside a computer tower or monitor and offers 8TB of capacity for large backups, media libraries, game installs and archived projects.

WD says this version of the Elements Desktop offers faster data transfer speeds than previous models. Setup is simple: plug in the power and the included USB cable and Windows-based PCs will recognize the drive immediately.

The drive ships pre-formatted for Windows; Mac users will need to reformat before use. The enclosure is designed for quiet passive operation, making it suitable for long file transfers and scheduled backups.

Buyers looking to free up internal storage can use the drive for full system backups, archiving old projects, or housing large media collections. Note the sale price is listed on Amazon now; the outlet does not specify how long the discount will last.

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