Western Digital 4TB WD Black Performance Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5 - WD4005FZBX

I use these drives only for digital file storage. Very Happy, Pricing was great for a 4TB drive

Although I am not a gamer, I bought this gaming edition because I like the extra cache (256 MB). Drive has good throughput: both read speed 250 MB/s and write speed 225 MB/s. This was using an external enclosure with USB 3 connection (eSATA connection yielded slightly higher throughput in both read and write). I also like WDs 5 year warranty (as opposed to standard 2 or 3 year on other drives). Since the 1980s, a have mostly used WD drives in my many various builds over the years and they have never disappointed me. (I have extra drives laying around that are over 15 years old (these are smaller capacity SATA1 and SATA 2 drives) and they all still work good. Recommend this drive for anyone looking for decent performance at a decent price. Only one caveat: This drive tends to run hotter then the WD Blue drives, but still within manufacturers specs. So if you plan to use this drive in an external enclosure, be sure the enclosure has a fan, or at the very least is well cross-ventilated. If you put this in a fully enclosed fan-less enclosure, it WILL get hot.

This review is on the 8TB WD Gaming HDD. It is an OEM HDD, so no cables, no Acronis software, and no manuals when you purchase. The Amazon description should be adjusted to match this. You need mounting hardware if you dont already have it. You will also need a SATA data and SATA power cable. Other than that, great drive.

First of these drives, very recently, was a 6TB. It was incredibly fast (~200ish MB avg) versus my other drives and quite quiet. It did click when writing data, but not very loud. I just got another 8TB and it spun the platters up to take off speed, and slowed down the computer post speed (must have had problems recognizing drive), so obviously something very wrong. Amazon is replacing (will update when received, but Amazon takes 2 weeks to ship replacement somehow now) But...for those saying this is loud, if it sounds like a crazy spinning wheel of death, its broken!...it shouldnt be louder than most case fans... I cant hear my 6TB over the fans (which are very quiet) when the case is closed. Just wanted to point out that some of these loud issues may be bad drives...I had never seen a drive try to take off with its platter spinning like the bad 8TB drive.

I have had good experiences with WD hard drives through the years. I dont have the money to purchase a large SSD so this drive was my comprimise. So far the experience has been really good. The drive is faster than the one it replaced. The new WD 3.5 6tb drive provides plenty of needed space over the WD 2.5 700gb it replaced. It did take me a while to divide into maximun partition sizes under Windows 10 which as far as I can tell is 3tb. So I divided it into two 3tb partitions one of which is the operating system. Someday I hope this limitation is overcome so that the entire 6tb can be one partition which is recognized as the system drive. Now durability is the only issue that remains unknown. The system runs 24/7 so it is burning in and in a year I will be comforted as to its future durability. This is why I only give it a 4 star rating. In time I hope I can give it a hearty 5 star.

I am using this hard drive to play FLAC and WAV files on a KDlinks A400 media player. I consider myself to be something of an audiophile and I love good quality audio. The hard drive that I had been using prior to purchasing this WD Black was the Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM006 (A 2TB hard drive). The Seagate was solid and reliable for roughly two years and I had no complaints. The reason I decided to upgrade to the WD Black 6TB hard was because it was specifically made for multimedia and I wanted to ensure I was futureproof with regards to available hard drive space, so I decided to splurge on the WD Black. When I initially installed the hard drive in my A400, I was disappointed, because the sound was bright and shrill sounding. However, I heard all sorts of detail in my music that I never heard before and overall, the volume was louder as opposed to how the Seagate sounded, so I was a bit conflicted. I had to change the settings on my receiver (Pioneer SC-79) to try to remove that bright and shrill sound. There were a few factory settings on the receiver (Upsampling, Hi-bit32 are what I remember) that I had to turn off or to the lowest setting because they were processing the sound and making it sound artificial along with it sounding bright and shrill. These changes made it sound better, but it was still bright and shrill. I was really disappointed in the WD Black, but I remembered that some electronics require a break in (especially for audio purposes), so instead of giving up and returning the hard drive I figured Id keep it and hope that it would break in. After about 90 days (not 90 days straight without shutting it off, but just playing it whenever I had time to listen to music or wanted music playing in the background), I noticed a magical thing. One morning, I sat down and turned it on and I noticed for a few hours that I did not get up because my music was sounding especially good. My music was extremely clear, the music had excellent detail (far more than the Seagate) and the volume was louder than the Seagate. The sound coming out of my speakers was something I was not prepared for (in a good way). I figured maybe I was just in some sort of a good mood and wanted to listen to music. Well, I made it a point to turn on my system for the next few days as time permitted and it sounded so much better (as opposed to Day 1) to the point of not wanting to get up and move on with my day. Another observation I noticed after the break-in is that the music has a darker background. its hard to describe what I mean but think about it like this. If you know what white noise is in the background, this hard drive seems to deliver less of that sort of sound. You hear more of the artist and instrumentation. It even made the difference between FLAC files and WAV files less pronounced. What I mean by this is that some albums I have ripped in both FLAC and WAV. WAV is the absolute best sound (between the two), but FLAC is close. it was far more noticeable on the Seagate drive, but less noticeable on this WD Black. In closing this review, if anyone is buying this for audio purposes, I suggest exercising some patience with the break in and if you are using a receiver, turn off anything that is processing the sound (similar to what I mentioned above). The audio output from this hard drive is pure. Read the owners manual and find any audio processing settings that are turned on as a default. There may be some things you leave on and you may also have to do some EQ adjustments, bass, treble, etc. but the result is well worth it. Exercise some patience with your receiver and you will be rewarded. As for my A400, there are some settings on that for optimal audio output that Ill be covering in my updated review on that whenever I get around to it. It is seriously a good piece for music. I did NOT expect anything special from a higher end hard drive other than available storage space, but I have been pleasantly surprised and I no longer regret my purchase as I did on Day 1. I highly recommend this hard drive for audio purposes. in fact, I cannot recommend it enough. Hope this helps with your purchase decision.

Super fast shipping. Re-installed windows 10 on the new hard drive and my computer works sooooo much better. Amazinf what a difference this made.

safe packing and fast delivery recommended

Working for intended use, moved from 5tb to 8tb… drive is almost full… black line needs some larger sizes.

This review is for the 6 TB black hard drive. I have owned several different brands of hard drives and several different versions of WD’s hard drives over the years, including the greens, reds and purples. I have only have had one failure in that time, which happened to be worked hard, operating on a security camera server for a few years before failing. This is my first black as I wanted a reliable drive for backing up my desktop. These hard drives have a great 5-year warranty, which is one of the big reasons, I purchased this. I connected this drive to my Windows 10 computer with no issues. It took less than a minute to get setup and going. It was pre-formatted, so it was quick to a drive letter and get going. File transfer speeds are fairly speedy for a large size drive. I do think the drives are a bit pricey, but have come down in price over the last couple years. Overall, other than being slightly pricey, these are great hard drives with good speeds and good warranty that I expect to be reliable over the long term. 4.5 stars