Western Digital 4TB WD Red Plus NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 64 MB Cache, 3.5 - WD40EFRX

Product met the sellers description

I purchased several of these hard drives to populate a NAS. I have been using Western Digital drives for decades and they have always been reliable and affordable. For my project, I under-estimated my drive requirements because I completely forgot about the dishonest business practice of drive manufactures counting 1000KB = 1MB. In real life, 1024KB = 1MB. The end result is that the consumer loses space and the manufacturer gets to advertise a larger capacity than what the hard drive can actually deliver. In a 4-bay NAS using 8TB drives, basic math says 4 drives x 8TB = 32TB of storage. In reality, you only get 29TB (4x7.25), which is a significant loss of 3TB over what the manufacturer advertises! Grrr!

I bought these to run in a RAID Array after my WD Blue RAID array kept failing. The RED drives, with their TLER support, prevent arrays from breaking due to read/write delays unlike the blue drive,s which was the issue I was having. Also, with their 3D Active Balance Plus you can run them in multi drive environments (or even in a PC with other fans running) without fear of increased wear/tear or damage. At first I had thought all the technology was just gimmick, but when my Blue array kept failing, I upgraded to these and havent had a single issue since. They are not the fastest drives available, but then again most people with NAS dont have enclosures fast enough to take advantage of the increased speed regardless... I use my HP Z600 as my NAS, which allows me to use the data/drives without a network bottleneck locally, and allows my other computers to access it through the LAN. It works well for what Im using it for. Overall, I can say Id buy them again. They have been running 24/7 for 7 months now without any issues, so so far, so good. Ill update this review if anything changes.

Over the years Ive purchased several WD red drives for my Synology home NAS. I started with the 4TB, then moved up to 6TB and finally 8TB. I havent had a chance to try the 10TBs yet, since the price is still up there unless you REALLY need the space (time of writing is mid-2018). But Im sure Ill get there eventually. Prior to the reds being available, I purchased many of the WD green drives (at least 7 at last count). Unfortunately, the greens were not designed for NAS use, so you had to find a Linux system to plug the drive into to change a firmware setting to disable a 300 second idle timeout... the drives idling repeatedly in a 24-hour environment after many months of use would eventually add additional wear and tear on the greens that would reduce their overall lifespan significantly. The reds were definitely a nice addition to the WD lineup, as they were the first budget drive from WD that were specifically designed for (home) NAS use... no firmware tweaks necessary. OK, enough of the history lesson. I would rate the WD green drives as being very reliable, but not perfect. I believe I received one that was DOA, which was an easy process with Amazon to ship back and replace. During many years of operation (my first green was purchased in 2009 and is still going strong today after continuous use for almost 9 years), I only had 1 drive that failed in my NAS. It disconnected from the array, which immediately degraded the RAID. The drive that failed was not the oldest drive that I owned, so I ran the SMART tests and everything came back A-OK. I let the Synology rebuild the RAID array with the failed drive, and everything seemed to be working for a couple of months... until it disconnected again. This was a good indication that it was time to replace the drive, which I did. OK, so Ive had a pretty good history with WD drives. Getting back to the reds, I own at least 6 of them in various capacities. First, let me say that none have ever failed outright or caused any data loss in my system, so overall their track record is great. However, both of the 6TB reds that Ive purchased have had multiple disk re-identification events in my NAS. These re-identification events have not caused any data loss, nor do they require a rebuild of the RAID array. Synology says that re-identification events are an early warning sign that the drive could fail, so to keep an eye on these events to see if theyre increasing in frequency... if so its probably time to replace the drive(s) to avoid any potential data loss. On both of my 6TB reds, Im averaging about 1 disk re-identification event every 12 to 18 months, so Im not overly concerned. Ive never seen any strange events (re-identification, re-connection, bad sectors, etc.) on any of the 4TB or 8TB reds that I own, so this problem seems to be specific to the 6TB model (or its a huge coincidence). My 6TB reds were purchased in 2014 and 2015, so its possible that whatever was causing the issue was corrected. I have the 6TB reds loaded into a backup NAS, but I will personally not be purchasing any more of them. YMMV. Overall Im giving these drives 4 stars. If possible, Id give 3 stars to the 6TB reds (simply due to the anxiety factor), and 5 stars to the other reds (well, at least the 4TB and 8TB, which Ive had personal experience with), but Amazon does not allow for split review ratings.

I run a project studio that deals with a LOT of media. From recording bands to full HD video editing, I need a lot of reliable storage. I started out with an EX4 Western Digital NAS unit that was loaded with 4 Western Digital Red drives. 4 drives at 4TB each for a total of 16TB of storage. After a year, I upgraded the Ex4 to a PR4100 unit as it was WAY faster then the EX4. I ended up moving the 4 drives from the Ex4 to the PR4100 and continued with them for another year; and they where in the NAS unit running 24/7 without any sleep mode activated on the drives. They where awake, on, and running 24/7. I just recently purchased 4 of these WD Red drives at 8TB each for a total of 32TB. I again, run the drives 24/7 in my NAS unit without any sleep modes enabled. There is no spin up/spin down time. I can not state how solid WD Red drives are. I have been using them for almost 3 years now. Theyre reliable, solid in speed when used in the right RAID configuration inside the proper NAS environments , and they are overall quiet (unless of course you are running a format on them for a new RAID setup, then they all get hammered on at the same time and make some noise). When I upgraded to the 4 new drives with 8TB on them, I took the older 4 drives with 4TB on them, and started using them in desktop PC as basic extra storage drives. No issues with any of them. They are still running solid after 3 years of use. All the drives run 24/7. I have never had a Western Digital drive die on me unexpectedly. Most of them run 3 to 4 years and I usually only replace them because I need bigger capacity drives, not because they die or fail. I highly recommended WD drives, and these red drives are fantastic!

Great drives. Ive got 4x 4TB Reds in a custom server i made that has been running for 2+ years pretty much 24/7. Had to replace a failing Seagate drive (my fault using a standard Desktop HDD in a build like this) and these just work, and well. Build: CPU: ................Intel Core i5-4430 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor Motherboard.......ASRock Z87E-ITX Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard Memory.............Kingston Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory Storage.............Crucial M500 120GB mSATA Solid State Disk Storage.............4x Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive Case.................Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case Power Supply.....Rosewill Capstone 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply Running Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials and Pooled using Stablebit Drive Pool. I use it to serve up movies and TV shows via Plex, backup my other computers, and as a storage server. These Red drives work well as they are built for NAS usage and so they work well in situations where they are spun down frequently. I have considered the Seagate NAS drives too as they are sometimes cheaper but Ive had some issues with Seagate drives in the past (still use a 3TB one in my main desktop) and I have never in 20+ years had an issue with a WD drive. Others mileage may vary. For now and my needs 4x these are plenty of space with room to grow. Would be nice if they came out with 8+TB versions sometime soon though at an affordable price point. Seagate has had a 8TB drive out for a while and its generally cheaper than the 6TB Red, however im not sure how reliable the 8TB Seagate drive is.

I bought four of these drives a month ago and have been evaluating them since. I was so pleased with them that I bought a set of four for my self. Pros: * Excellent performance on large read and write workloads such as backing up large files. I plan to use these to as backup/archive servers where they will have 16 to 500G individual files copied to them nightly. As single drives or in RAID 0 or 10 sets, performance has been very, very impressive. * Power consumption is very low at approximately 4-5 watts each. If youre using these for a home NAS unit then four drives will use about the same power as some of my single older 7200 RPM drives. This appeals to me from an environmental responsibility perspective as well as keeping my utility bills from climbing. * Very quiet: I dont hear them at all. * Cool to the touch: Since they dont use much power and spin rather slowly, they dont generate much heat and can tolerate hot environments rather well. * They can be made very fast by short-stroking them: allocating only the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the disk for a RAID array and using that. Seek times drop in half and the high platter density provides some incredible performance numbers. * Price is very good for 3 TB of reliable storage. Cons: * They are not ideal for heavy workload, high simultaneous-transaction environments. Their average seek time is about double what Im seeing on some of my Hitachi 1TB drives which are much more aggressive for transaction processing workloads but cost $100 more for the same size, use more power and generate more heat and noise.

Update: 2016/10/10 - Amazon is accepting a return of the drives with the miss matching serial number. I bought the same drive advertised from Frys Electronics. My issue was unrelated to the drive itself. Im changing this to a 5 star because I am using the same type of drive without issue. WD tech support willing to help resolve my issue. For that I give my compliments to WD tech support. Update: 2016/10/01 - Im currently working with WD on this issue. I expect that Ill be changing this to a 5 star review in the near future. It turns out that the root of my problem was that both drives received were improperly packaged in the wrong box.The box had the correct SN and it did have the correct warranty for these drives. ___ Im giving this a 1 star because when I called W.D., they said both of my drives are OEM hard drives and that any RMA requests would have to go though the manufacture of the computer it was sold in. Im very confused by this because it the item isnt listed as OEM. If you buy one of these drives, register your device to verify it isnt an OEM drive. I bought a WD Red 3TB on 9/27/2016 (Received on 9/28) - Dead on Arrival - ASRock Motherboard bios wouldnt detect it. - ASUS Bios wouldnt detect it. (Used SATA cable / power that i used for a different drive) - Unraid 6 and Windows 64bit device manager wouldnt detect it. - External hard drive dock didnt work. - Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows didnt detect it (using SATA port). - Called WD support and they told me the drive is bad. That I can do an RMA or return to amazon. I returned to amazon for a replacement. Replacement arrived 9/29 - Dead on Arrival (This time it shows up in bios, but makes clicking sounds after spin up. I speculate the clicking sounds are made when the computer is attempting to access the drive.) - Booted into ASRock bios. The drive name did show up. (Details about the drive including smart were unknown) - In windows device manager it showed the drive as unknown and not initialized. I would expect that, so I attempted to initialize the disk. Windows gave me an unknown path error. I didnt expect it to work, because the drive was making clicking sounds. 9/29: I called WD support again, this time to discuss the second drive. I provided the Serial Number of both drives to WD and they said the drives are OEM. OEM drives are not covered under the WD warranty. That the two drives I had were sold to a manufacture. That I would have to go though the manufacture to get a replacement under that manufacturers warranty. Im rather confused at this point because this item is sold by Western Digital according to the Amazon product page. Ive saved the S/N of the drives in case WD responds to this post wanting them. Personal Opinion: I bought WD Red for my Unraid6 server to build out a NAS due to the higher levels of vibrations when next to other HDDs. I find it very odd to have two hard drives DOA. If I heard someone else saying that, i would speculate that they had a bad cable or didnt know how to set up a new hard drive in their PC. Based on the reviews of the drive, Im going to assume that this is more of an isolated case. I would of forgiven this product for the failures due to the many unknowns during shipping. The only thing I couldnt excuse and the reason for the 1 star was that the dive didnt have a warranty according to WD because it is an OEM drive. Note on shipping: The hard drive box is marked as fragile, but that is contained within a generic amazon box. So the fragile warnings are not visible when the item is shipped. This could explain why the hard drives were damaged. Update: 2016/01/10 - Im in the process of packaging the 2 HDs to return. Ive discovered that the S/N on the boxes do not match the drives they shipped with. WD has replied to my review. I will be calling them and updating the review after. Update: 2016/10/01 - Ive contacted both WD and Amazon about the issue. Amazon noted on my return that the SNs wont match.

I had a HGST 3TB that got filled so ordered their 6TB recently but it was really loud that I had to return it. I searched for a quiet 6TB HDD and a lot of people mentioned WD Red series. I saw a couple of HDD noise level postings that said WD Red 8TB was the quietest but I ordered 6TB since I didnt think I needed to spend that much more money for extra space I dont really need at the moment. I knew it was 5400RPM but since I this is going to be for storing big files such as photoshop files, music, videos, photos etc., and I have SSDs and a 7200RPM HDD for software, I decided to go for it; plus the chance of a 7200RPM HDD being too loud I thought might be bigger than getting a 5400RPM HDD. I just installed the drive and the speed of file transfers from my HGST 3TB Deskstar to this WD Red 6TB is around 90-134 MB/s (saw 160 MB/s for certain files) Its really quiet as well and I would recommend this HDD for those who need big storage spaces without the HDD being loud!

So far VERY GOOD. I actually just purchased this to use as a backup drive and I had a very specific mission that this helped me complete. From I dont know, 1999-Now Ive used close to 15 drives, going back to 16gb (or so) HDDs which were big back in the 90s up to 1tb drives of today, but I had a huge problem of missing files. Photos in particular. I was using drive bays to attach the old drives to the PC and try and search them all at once but Windows search really sucks. (Yes I should have booted into Ubuntu - shame on me), but I said, you know what, enough is enough, I know WD has these 6tb drives, let me literally copy the contents of ALL of the drives Ive ever owned onto it, and do one main search. Thanks to this drive, and some other creative methods *dusts self off* I did one big search of everything on this drive and found lots of old treasures, including the fountain of youth, just kidding. In recent weeks I realized, well, not that it would have helped with Windows not recognizing/initializing certain drives, but a freeware app like UltraSearch does things that windows explorer search refuses to, I guess Windows Explorer has dark moods, was tired of me playing Iggy Azalea on it, and went on strike when I tried to search for things; UltraSearch casts no aspersions with respect to my musical interests, so it just does searches for me regardless... Lo and behold, while I couldnt copy ALL the drives I own onto it, nor did I need to with respect to trying to find files from 10+ years ago, I was able to (with the help of Ubuntu), recover data off of drives that Windows 7 no longer read, but Ubuntu did, thanks Microsoft, and recover otherwise lost data onto this 6TB RED, and other newer drives from the 2000s. Its still got about 1.5tb free so Ill be using this as a third backup drive, keeping it disconnected from the PC not even in a NAS device, so I figure it will last ALOT longer. Perhaps putting it into a safe deposit box will ensure its survival in case of another Hurricane Sandy, or an Iggy Azalea attack of some sort.